Shortly after the end of school, we flew to Atlanta for our annual summer visit. Just as we did last year, we opted for MARTA to save my parents a drive to and from the airport, and to protect everyone from the stress provoked by that alarming ride. (See Fun with Ground Transportation, July 2012.) We waited only a few minutes at the Arts Center station before we saw Daddy rounding the corner from 16th Street in his red station wagon. My generally healthy father had frightened us this spring by catching a persistent bug that required two hospitalizations and prevented him and Mama from traveling to Virginia for our daughter’s school musical. We hadn’t seen my parents since early November, and I had been increasingly aware of their absence. I felt a real sense of delight as I saw Daddy driving up, waving, and I’m sure, whistling. He tends to whistle when he’s happy.
It was the second day of summer, and the temperature was pleasantly spring-like. Atlanta’s signature oppressive heat was blessedly absent. The city was in glorious, fragrant late June bloom. Our visit coincided with an occurrence I’ve been saddened to miss for a decade or so: the blooming of the gardenia bush outside my old bedroom window. In years past, we’ve arrived in early July, just after the heyday, when the blossoms are withered and brown. It’s like reaching the home of old friends, only to find that they left a day earlier for a year-long journey. I found it reassuring to behold those familiar, powerfully sweet-smelling blooms, snowy and velvety white. The idyllic scent of summer, and of long childhood days (without air conditioning) will always live for me in the smell of gardenias.
Gardenia blossoms.Gardenias, seen from the window of my old bedroom.
The gardenias were only one group of voices in the welcoming symphony of fragrance that greeted us as we stepped out of the car. A stand of privet, much enlarged over the years, and at the height of its bloom, bent its dense and shady canopy over the driveway. Tall hedges of abelia, buzzing with bees, hugged both sides of the house. Enormous blossoms of magnolia in the next-door neighbor’s yard could be glimpsed and enjoyed. Leaning over the fence was a mimosa tree, covered with fluffy pink flowers borrowed from a Dr. Seuss book. A few late-blooming clusters of purple wisteria still remained. To my recollection, Atlanta had never smelled better, or appeared more beautiful. It sure felt good to be back in my hometown.
Privet canopy.Abelia.Mimosa.
Wisteria.
All this week, back in Virginia after our return, the words of this melancholy John Prine song have been echoing in my mind. It may be a while before I can lay myself down again the arms of my darling hometown. I hope I’ll go there in my dreams.
Far away over the sea there’s a river that’s calling to me. That river she runs all around the place that I call my hometown.
There’s a valley on the side of a hill and flowers on an old window sill. A familiar old picture, it seems, and I go there tonight in my dreams.
Where it’s green in the summer and gold in the fall Her eyes are as blue, as the sky, I recall.
Far away over the sea there’s a place at the table for me. Where laughter and music abound. It’s waiting there in my hometown.
The river, she freezes when there’s snow on the ground, and the children can slide to the far side of town.
Far away, far away me, hung up on a sweet memory. I’m lost and I wish I were found in the arms of my darlin’ hometown.
With the evening sun settin’ on the top of the hill and the mockingbird answering the old chapel bell.
Far away over the sea my heart is longing to be. And I wish I could lay myself down in the arms of my darlin’ hometown.
We arrived at our London destination around midnight. For the next few nights we would be bunking in a dormitory of King’s College Hall. Instead of five or six of us in a communal chamber, as before in France, each of us had our own tiny cell. The barren, ascetic rooms offered limited distraction, and you’d think this would have been our chance to get some rest. But no. Katie, Jackie and I stayed up that first night until around 3 AM, indulging in giddy doses of adolescent humor.
The next morning we were in a fog of drowsiness on a bus rolling through London. Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben, still black with the coal dust of a century and a half, were blurry, dream-like images dancing improbably before my eyes. Once we began our walking tour, I was sufficiently awake to be irked at not having more time to spend in the Abbey, and at seeing the Tower of London only from the outside.
That afternoon we went shopping at Selfridge’s and Marks & Spencer. According to my journal entry, I wasn’t especially impressed; I described them simply as large department stores similar to Atlanta’s now long-defunct Rich’s. I’ve never been an enthusiastic shopper. Postcards and guidebooks were my primary European purchases, but in Marks & Spencer, Rebecca and I bought identical fuzzy white wool sweaters. London meals and evenings are among the vaguest of my memories. I’m certain, though, that we prolonged our nightly festivities at the dorm until well into the morning hours.
On our second day in England, we were back on the bus, heading to Stratford-on-Avon. During the drive, we were all elated when snow began to fall. Snow! In April! This offered further, indisputable proof that we were very far from home. Has a snowflake ever fallen in Atlanta in April? Possibly, but if so, it was terribly lonely, and it melted immediately. The English countryside was as beautiful as that of France. Scenes worthy of Christmas cards were plentiful: medieval-style barns, peacefully grazing horses and sheep, neat, increasingly white fields criss-crossed with ancient rock walls. We stopped briefly in Oxford, where we got off the bus for a glance at Christ Church College. The visit was long enough for me to fall in love with this town of unbelievably gorgeous student housing, and to determine to get back there one day, when I could linger, and wander.
In Stratford, we hit the usual tourist attractions, including Shakespeare’s birthplace and the cottage of his wife, Anne Hathaway. That evening, many of us at last managed some sleep. Unfortunately it was during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry V. We were not at all prepared for the play; we had no idea of the plot, the actors’ Elizabethan English was indecipherably foreign, and we weren’t anywhere near the action.
Outside Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford.
After our extended nap in Shakespeare’s theatre, we headed back to London. The last thing I remember about the trip was our group assembling the next morning on the sidewalk in front of King’s College, awaiting the bus that would take us to Gatwick Airport.
The long trip home has completely dropped from my memory, and in a way, I’m glad. In the years since, I’ve learned that going home requires far more time than getting wherever it is we’re going. It also demands vaster sums of patience and fortitude. But in my mind, I can skip right over all those tiresome hours of waiting and traveling. Suddenly, I’m my fourteen year old self, hugging my young parents in Atlanta’s as yet unremodeled Hartsfield Airport. Soon we’d be turning into our driveway, and I’d see that the azaleas were in full bloom. Daddy would be unlocking the door to the back hall, and my dog Popi would be waiting at the top of the stairs. I’d look into his eyes and know that he missed me. I’d drop my bag in my room and look around at the familiar surroundings of home. I would be completely happy. Happy to be home. And happy to know that one day, somehow or other, I’d get back to those far-away places that now seemed a little closer.
Most of us were not ready for this photo, taken outside King’s College, but we were ready to go home. Our remarkable teacher, Mrs. Correll, smiling at back left, is her usual cheerful self.
After our night at the lycée in Saint-Malo (See European Vacation ’75, Part III), our group was back on the bus early the next morning, heading to Le Havre and the Channel for our crossing to England. I was surprised at the size and relative luxury of the ferry; I guess I had been expecting something bare-bones and rudimentary. I hadn’t imagined that it might house several restaurants, shops and comfortable lounge areas. It was fortunate that it was roomy and fairly pleasant, as the crossing took over six hours. My friends and I wandered freely all over the boat, exploring every level.
When someone discovered a door that led outside, we stumbled upon a real thrill: the open decks. We had never felt such a fierce, strong wind. We were amazed that we could lean into the wind at a sharp angle and remain there, without falling. With the wind behind us, we could jump and be carried as though in flight. Luckily, no one sailed over the railings into the icy waters of the Channel.
After a while, when we began to feel the chill, we noticed two teenage boys hanging around farther down the deck. They were older than we were, probably around sixteen, and they weren’t involved in wind experiments. We could hear their English accents. Evidently this Channel crossing was old hat to them. They soon walked by, ostentatiously ignoring us, trying to appear caught up in their own conversation. When we returned inside, we saw that they remained near the door, still deeply immersed in their dialogue. We began once again to ramble throughout the ship, to see if the boys would follow us. They did. We conspicuously refused to acknowledge their presence, and they did the same to us, despite trailing us at a distance.
After a meandering circuit of the ship, the boys climbed the stairs to the observatory lounge. We remained on the level below. Not long afterwards, several younger English boys appeared. They looked to be about twelve or so. After much heated whispering among themselves, with frequent glances in our direction, they shyly approached. It didn’t take long for them to start firing off questions: How old were we? Where did we live? After each couple of inquiries they would dash upstairs to the observatory, only to return quickly with more questions.
The older boys, apparently, had opted to send in scouts on a reconnaissance mission. Once the younger boys had run through all the questions they could think of, they revealed their purpose. They had been sent to report that there were two “lads” on the upper level who would like to meet us. Due to their accents, we couldn’t at first decipher the word “lads.” Two whats? Lads? Oh, lads! How unbelievably quaint! None of us had ever before been pursued by a “lad!”
Nevertheless, we weren’t interested in the elder lads. They appeared overly serious and lacking in humor. Tall and gangly, they verged on being men. Although we were flattered by the attention, we knew we had no business flirting with men, or almost-men. Looking back, I wonder at their interest in us, several goofy, wind-blown fourteen year olds. Maybe our American-ness gave us some cachet.
Jackie, Rebecca, me and the mighty wind.
The younger lads, though, were an altogether different type: funny, cute, spunky, sweet, smaller than we were, and non-threatening. Their Englishness was simultaneously exotic and reassuring. They reminded me of members of Fagin’s gang of urchins in the Disney movie, Oliver! We never went upstairs to meet the older boys, but spent considerable time chatting with the twelve-year olds. They told us they lived in Staffordshire and were returning from a school “holiday” in Normandy.
I talked primarily with a golden-haired, blue-eyed boy named Graeme Bailey. He gave me his address, which he wrote on a page torn from a small notebook. On the other side was his drawing of a soldier. The address was other-worldly and old-fashioned. It included only one number, and that was a single digit. In looks, in name (and its spelling), and in accent, Graeme was perfectly, enchantingly English. But because he was so open and approachable, before we said goodbye I felt as though I had known him for a long while.
That night, I wrote in my journal that this had been one of the best days of the trip, even though all we did was travel. As I remember, I was feeling rather elated, wide open to life’s possibilities. Before setting foot in Britain, I had met a quintessential English lad, one who took a friendly, cheerful interest in me.
I think I was beginning to grasp the transcendent power of travel. It’s a truly wonderful thing to experience first-hand the vastness and variety of our world’s natural and cultural beauty. This is certainly an adequate reason to roam the globe. But to me, the real power of travel is this: it reveals the depth and strength of the bonds that unite us as a human family. Custom, language, differences in physical appearance–these are simply thin layers of veneer, the candy coating on an M&M. No matter where we were born or where we live, we are more alike than different. This awareness equips us with a powerful force for living with compassion and understanding.
Our group was a few minutes late in returning to the bus after touring Mont Saint Michel. The Chickamaugans, hopping mad because of the delay, demanded an apology. I can’t remember if we apologized or not. If we did, I’m sure we managed to ooze contempt and condescension. Our traveling companions had clearly missed the magic of Mont Saint-Michel. That night we were to stay in nearby Saint-Malo in a French boarding school, empty over the Easter holidays. The trip to the Lycée Jacques Cartier didn’t take long. The school, in a pleasant wooded setting, consisted of long, low gray stone modernist buildings. It appeared to be very new at the time. We immediately went to dinner. In a big room adjacent to the dining hall were several huge round basins for washing hands. The water, controlled by foot levers, came out from the center in a smooth round sheet, as in some fountains. Bars of soap on metal rods extended out over the basin. Seven or eight people could wash their hands at once. It was the highest-tech lavatory we had ever seen. Dinner was unremarkable. After dinner we headed up to the dormitories. The girls all slept in one enormous room. Partitions that approached but did not reach the ceiling separated the space into smaller areas, each with six beds. My friend Jackie, her mother and I found ourselves rooming with three Chickamauga girls, much to our dismay. The bathrooms were of great interest. There were eight shower stalls and perhaps even more bidets (a word I misspelled biday throughout my journal), but only two toilets. Very strange, we thought, but consistent, as our hotel room in Paris had had a bidet but no toilet.
That night, of course, none of us was in the mood for sleep; the camp-like living quarters spoke to the fundamental need for teenagers to indulge in late-night antics. Our Chickamauga roommates seemed to have forgotten their animosity toward us after the bus incident, and we gained a new appreciation for them. They entertained the crowd with comically rendered country songs, liberally borrowing from episodes of the TV show Hee-Haw. My friends and I considered ourselves too cosmopolitan to admit to watching that show, but we had to say that the Chickamaugans could have starred in it. They had the requisite country twangs, the goofy, expansive personalities, and they really sang well together.
After the North Georgians had concluded their performance, Jackie and I joined Katie and Rebecca in the room they shared with other friends from our school. We were engaged in some sort of forgotten silliness when one of us happened to look out the window and notice several boys hanging around outside. We didn’t know them; they were evidently French locals. This was an unexpected and exciting development. My memory of what follows is hazy, and my journal, surprisingly, doesn’t record the details. My guess is that windows were opened, and intercultural flirting began. The boys felt sufficiently encouraged that they tried to scale the building and climb in the windows. Seems like I remember one of them standing on a portion of the lower roof. When it looked like they were really planning to storm the barricades, our group tried to backtrack. We didn’t really plan to invite them in. How do you say Never mind in French? I assume we locked the windows and hissed Arretez!Allez-vous!Va t’en! The commotion awakened one of our chaperones. She addressed the boys with severe words, the gist of which was unmistakable no matter the language. After they had retreated and disappeared, she treated us to similarly severe words and herded us back to our little beds.
Although Jackie and I returned to our room, we still had no intention of sleeping. We sneaked off quietly to the expansive bathrooms, hoping for further distraction. To our delight, we found a couple of forgotten bras hanging on hooks outside the shower stalls. They were for full-figured girls, unlike us, and made for ideal comic props. Whatever we did with those bras (and I can’t remember), it was the height of middle-school hilarity. It must have been near 3 AM when we returned to our cubicle. I had never been to sleep-away summer camp, and I never would go, but that night, I got an exhilarating taste of it.
It was Jackie’s birthday yesterday. After all these years, when we get together, we still tend to stay up late, talking and laughing. The difference is that today, we catch up on the current events of our lives while also reveling in so much shared history. It’s one of the nicer things about growing older. It makes the present moment all the sweeter.
On the bus to Normandy, once again my friends and I battled the urge to close our eyes in sleep. Mrs. Correll resumed her patrol duty, walking the aisle, tapping shoulders, urgently entreating us: Wake up! Dont’ miss the beautiful French countryside! As soon as I noticed the loveliness of the landscape we were passing through, I had no more trouble fighting drowsiness. This was the idyllic countryside of fairy tales: rolling hills, pastures and fields neatly enclosed by fences and hedgerows, small cottages, many with thatched roofs and ivy-covered stone walls, the occasional grand manor house. The chic Parisians had disappeared, replaced by timeless country folk engaged in timeless pastoral activities, like the farmer above, carrying a hay bale on his back. We saw French sheep, horses, cows and dogs. They looked somehow more charming and worldly-wise than their Georgia or Kentucky counterparts. It was cold outside, but the sun was bright and the land was poised for the greening of spring.
The drive took nearly four hours. We shared the bus with a larger group of high school students from the north Georgia town of Chickamauga. The French countryside evidently held little charm for them. Restless and bored, they whiled away the time by pining for the far-away, all-American life. They bemoaned the typically much-missed delights: juicy hamburgers, thick steaks, “real” toilet paper, cold Cokes, water with ice. Mrs. Correll had made it clear to us well before the trip that if we uttered such clichés we would risk her wrath. She would not hear us talking like ugly Americans. We were a sophisticated group, she stressed. We knew we weren’t especially sophisticated, but we didn’t want to disappoint the teacher we revered. Seeing the Chickamaugans behaving boorishly inspired us to try to act cultured and urbane. We considered them to be country bumpkins. I’m sure they thought of us as annoying little city twits.
Mont Saint-Michel, seen from our bus window.
My first glimpse of Mont St. Michel was magical. I was not alone; the vision was sufficient to switch the Chickamaugans’ attention away from the pleasures of home. I’ve returned to Normandy twice over the years, and each time, the initial sighting of that towering castle-church on the rock, rising out of an immensity of flat sand, retains its unique power.
According to medieval texts that recount the beginnings of Mont Saint-Michel, in the eighth century, the archangel Saint Michael appeared in a dream to Aubert, Bishop of nearby Avranches. He commanded Aubert to build him a church upon the rock. When difficulties arose, as one might expect with such a tricky architectural undertaking, the archangel was said to have worked miracles that allowed building to continue. Aubert’s church was consecrated in 708, and word spread of the majestically situated church divinely ordained by an angel.
By the twelfth century, Mont Saint-Michel had become one of Europe’s premiere pilgrimage destinations. In an age that valued visible, tangible relics of a saint’s earthly life, an angel might seem an unlikely candidate to become a popular pilgrimage saint. Saint Michael, a heavenly creature who never dwelt on earth, could offer no bones, blood, hair or instrument of torture to be venerated. But Aubert and those who succeeded him in tending the shrine were creative and enterprising; if the people wanted relics, they would have relics.
Some pilgrims may have come for the relics. Probably more came to soak up the romance of the place itself. Its exceptional location and the drama inherent in the site offers its own enchantment. Thrill-seekers made the pilgrimage because it entailed risk and adventure. Getting to the church on the rock meant navigating the bay’s capriciously shifting sands and the rushing tides that transformed the mount into an island twice daily. There was also the danger of losing one’s way when the thick fog settled in.
The church and the buildings of its surrounding village seem to grow from the rock.
A series of fires required sucessive rebuildings. With each disaster, reputed miracles were interpreted as proof of Saint Michael’s continuing support. He had not abandoned the site. On the contrary, he required a bigger, taller church. The Benedictine Abbey that stands today was begun in 1023. While portions of this Romanesque building remain, most of the church dates from the Gothic period. The archangel was traditionally worshipped in high and lonely spots, and the church that evolved over the centuries might be seen as a sort of architectural portrait of Saint Michael. The building’s massive heaviness and its apparent unity with the rock reflect the military saint’s enduring strength, while its soaring height stretches toward his heavenly domain. On stormy nights, as lightning struck, wind howled and thunder rumbled, the medieval faithful claimed to witness the archangel’s battle with Satan at the top of the mount.
That chilly April day in 1975, our group hadn’t had to brave the elements to reach Mont Saint-Michel. We weren’t exhausted from months of walking in all weathers and through difficult terrains. But we were tired of sitting, and delighted to get off the bus. As we hurried along the causeway, a few of us may have been nearly as excited as some pilgrims before us. The view of the mount retained its drama even at close range. Winding our way up the narrow, cobblestoned street, the adventure continued. The story-book town, with its tightly packed medieval buildings, the upper levels jutting out above those below, was quaint yet scruffily authentic, not a plastic Disneyesque quaint. Inside the church, the shadowy crypts, cut into the depths of the rock, were austere and fortress-like, making the soaring nave, with its pointed Norman arches and tall clerestory windows, appear all the more gloriously luminous.
Dusk was approaching as we climbed to the top of the ramparts to look out over the vast expanse of sand and sea below. The wind was picking up. There was no lightning, but the atmosphere felt charged. That night, we did not see Saint Michael engaged in a furious war with the devil, but the possibility didn’t seem at all far-fetched. What a spectacular sequel to our Super-8 movie Dark Secrets we could have shot at Mont Saint-Michel!
This all-encompassing view of Mont Saint Michel was taken by a neighbor in 1937.
Yesterday, our daughter went to New York City on a whirlwind, 24-hour trip with her drama class. The group left from the school by bus at 5 AM, and returned at 5 AM this morning. They saw two Broadway shows–Newsies and the eagerly awaited Matilda, still in previews. A Newsies cast member led the kids in a dance workshop. They had some free time, so I’m expecting a a full report on wandering Times Square characters. Are the Naked Cowboys in season yet? Were there plentiful sightings of Elmo, Shrek, Hello Kitty, Grandma Liberty and the Tin Man? How was the singing waitstaff at Ellen’s Stardust Diner? D is still asleep, so I haven’t heard the details of the trip yet. I’m very grateful to the drama teacher and to the parent chaperones accompanying the group. I’m especially thankful that I was not among them. While I enjoy New York in small, metered doses, I’m relieved that crowded, pre-dawn bus rides are predominantly in my past.
As D was preparing for the excursion that launched her spring break, I was recalling the days when I looked forward to my own eighth-grade adventure. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had the unlikely good fortune to participate in a school trip to France and England. (See A Small Reunion of the Rutherford Hall Gang, Nov. 2011.) As I said then, it was a rare event for a group from the Atlanta Public City Schools to venture anywhere for spring break in the 70s, much less to Europe. It was just about unheard of then for middle-schoolers in our area to take part in such study trips. But we were blessed with a dynamic and unusually dedicated French teacher, Martha Elizabeth Correll. She decided we must see France, and we must see it with her. We loved and admired the young, fun and charismatic Mrs. Correll. She seemed to be fond of us, too. She found a bargain-priced trip through the now extinct Foreign Study League. Nine of us, including several of my best friends, managed to persuade our parents that this was an opportunity not to be missed.
Mrs. Correll encouraged us to keep a journal during our trip, and naturally I saved mine. In my first entry, dated a few days before our departure, I mentioned my vague fear of flying. I had never been on a plane before: It couldn’t be especially frightening, could it? Katie, who wouldn’t ride the roller coasters at Six Flags, had flown before, and she wasn’t scared.
Above, most of our group at the Atlanta Airport, ready to board the plane to New York. Several of us hold our blue and white Foreign Study League carry-ons. Our teacher, Mrs. Correll, is at the far right, in her signature, whimsically decorated bell-bottom jeans.
My journal from the actual trip continues on the subject of airplane travel. The flights were unexpectedly smooth, I reported. Apparently I was expecting a roller coaster experience, despite Katie’s evidence to the contrary. But every aspect of flying was novel and amazing, if not particularly enjoyable. I wrote at length about the unbelievably cramped quarters on the overseas flight, the tiny bathrooms, and the unidentifiable food (my friend Jackie maintained that we had been served baked rat).
After a sleepless night on the plane, we arrived in Paris in the gray dawn and boarded our bus for an introductory tour of the city. I recall powerfully the miserable war I waged against my leaden eyelids during my first, much anticipated hour in a foreign country. We were surrounded by legendary sights, yet the yearning for sleep was overwhelming. After the discomfort of the airplane seats, the tour bus provided an ideal environment for snoozing. Most eyes were closing, most heads were bobbing. Mrs. Correll, ever vivacious, walked the aisle, rousing us. She hadn’t taken us with her to France so we could sleep on a bus. Once in the heart of Paris, I shook off some of the muddled fog of half-sleep. After stops at the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame, nearly everyone was awake enough to feel rejuvenated by our surroundings. Avoiding sleep became even easier once we noticed that our Parisian guide, Salvador, was charming and exotically handsome (so French!).
Rebecca, me, Jackie and Katie in our hotel room on Easter Sunday morning.
Because my expectations had been low, our hotel was a pleasant surprise. It had one of those old-fashioned elevators I had seen in movies, with a folding iron grille in place of a door. Our room was almost grand, if slightly faded. I liked its high ceilings, ornate wallpaper and elegant fireplace. Its large size was fortunate, considering there were five of us in it. Katie and Rebecca shared one double bed, Jackie and her mother shared the other, and I got the single. I remember being cold at night and sleeping huddled under my coat. We had been told not to expect a private bathroom, so we were surprised to find a spacious one with lavatory, bathtub and bidet. The toilettes, as we learned to say, were down the hall, in claustrophobic compartments. One of our friends went in one and couldn’t get out. He was finally extricated by a team of chamber maids speaking in baffling, rapid-fire French. After that, we were all careful about locking the door just so.
The 13th-Century Sainte-Chapelle, built by King Louis IX.
Our three-day visit to Paris was like a fast-paced tasting menu of the city’s highlights, most of which Mrs. Correll had discussed with us previously in vivid detail. She wanted us to understand and appreciate the history and culture of France, as well as its language. Paris came alive for us during that short time because our teacher had prepared us well. We heard some of the Easter mass in Notre-Dame. We saw the forbidding Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette spent her sad last days. We beheld the lovely Sainte-Chapelle, the Gothic jewelbox that Saint Louis built to house the Crown of Thorns. We wandered the Latin Quarter, alive with bohemian student activity. We explored the courtyards of the Sorbonne, where Mrs. Correll had studied.
We watched old soldiers playing boules outside Les Invalides, fishermen casting their nets from the Pont Neuf, and children sailing paper boats in the Luxembourg Gardens. Everywhere there were Frenchmen carrying baguettes and wearing actual berets. We spent some time (not nearly enough for me) in the Louvre. Of course we walked the Champs-Elysees. We cruised the Seine at night in a Bateau Mouche. I got to witness first-hand the view I had most anticipated–the tip of the Île de la Cité with the lacy spires and flying buttresses of Notre-Dame just behind.
I loved the wealth of intricately decorated Easter candies and pastries that beckoned from the windows of small shops on narrow streets. Never before had fruit and vegetables looked so beguiling as they did in the city’s outdoor markets. Even displays in butcher shop windows were strangely beautiful, recalling old-master still lifes. We ate in cafés and brasseries, and learned that a croque-monsier, an omelette, or anything with frîtes was a good choice. We learned that French ice cream is served in minuscule metal dishes. And we found that paying for our meals and managing francs and centîmes was as difficult as we had feared.
Real Frenchmen, real baguettes, and real berets.Some of our group (dressed in the height of 70s middle-school style), in the gardens at Versailles.
We were busy during our three days in Paris. But we weren’t so busy that we missed getting a sense of the city’s unique, ebullient, quirky atmosphere. Sooner than we would have liked, it was time to head to Normandy, to Mont-St-Michel, and on across the Channel to England.
This Angelica house, built in 1884, is one of the town’s newer structures. It is now the Park Circle Bed & Breakfast.
If you ever find yourself in western New York, perhaps after fulfilling a quest for authentic maple syrup at Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn, I would recommend another stop in the nearby historic village of Angelica. (While Cartwright’s has an Angelica address, it is several miles outside the tiny town.)
Postcard-pretty Angelica was named for Angelica Shuyler Church (1756- 1814), scion of two eminent New York families, the Schuylers and the Rensselaers. Angelica’s father was a general in the Continental Army, later a member of the Continental Congress and a U.S. senator. Her brother-in-law was Alexander Hamilton. After eloping with the English-born merchant John Barker Church, Angelica lived most of her life in Europe. Intelligent, well-educated, charming and beautiful, she mixed in elite circles. During her years in Paris, her confidants included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson (with whom she kept up a lifelong correspondence), and the Marquis de Lafayette. Her London acquaintances were equally renowned. Angelica and her family returned to America for a visit to attend the inauguration of George Washington.
When her family purchased a 100,000-acre tract of land in the wilds of western New York, Angelica’s son Philip scouted the area for a suitable location to build a town. He chose a site along the Genesee River. In 1802, he named the new settlement after his mother. Thanks to Philip and his surveyor, the town has a pleasing geometric plan, its main street radiating out from a central circular park.
Considering the name of the town and that of its founding family, it’s appropriate that Angelica is notable for the many lovely old churches that ring the green and dot Main Street. Nearly all the town’s buildings date from the 19th century and have been little changed. Modernism sidestepped Angelica. Large, still beautiful homes, plus a library, academy, court house and post office, are interspersed among the churches and shops. We typically visit in February, when the view from the snow-covered central park recalls a tabletop Christmas display of quaint ceramic buildings.
Angelica’s central green, showing two of the town’s churches.
The former Presbyterian Church.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, which dates from 1847 and includes several Tiffany windows.Yet another Angelica church, surrounded by homes.
This Gothic revival house was built in 1826 for the family of Aaron Burr.
The Lloyd House, built from 1834 with local stone quarried from nearby Joncy Gorge.
When Kiko spotted these two dog figures on a side porch of the Lloyd house, he confronted them with extreme wariness. They remained silent, and he moved on, disappointed.
In 1797, Angelica and her husband returned to live permanently in the U.S. Their grand home, known as Villa Belvidere, is located on the outskirts of town. Begun in 1806, its design is attributed to Benjamin Latrobe, architect of the U.S. capitol. The house remains in private hands.
Last weekend, we drove to upstate New York for pancakes. Not just for pancakes. Pancakes and maple syrup. We met H’s family at Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn, a glorified sugar shack located, really, in the middle of nowhere. Its actual address is County Road 15A, Angelica, NY (2 miles from Short Tract), which, in the language of our GPS system, is “not on any digitized road.” Despite its truly out-of-the-way location in the midst of snow-covered fields, it’s a popular spot, with big crowds on weekends. It’s only open during the maple sugar season, which typically runs from mid-February through March or mid-April, depending on the weather. H’s family has been trekking out to Cartwright’s for decades, and now it’s among our winter traditions, even though our drive is far longer. Of course, we don’t return directly to Virginia, but spend the weekend visiting H’s family in Rochester.
The Cartwrights began producing maple syrup on their farm in the 1850s. The Maple Tree Inn dates from 1963, when the family decided to build a restaurant specializing in Grandma’s buckwheat pancakes served with their own maple syrup. In the adjacent shop, the syrup, maple butter and maple sugar cakes became available directly to the public. The somewhat ramshackle building has been expanded over the years and is now fairly large. It will win no awards for architectural style, but that’s not the point. In the chain-store sameness that dominates so much of our country today, the Maple Tree Inn offers a unique, quirky, authentic experience. It’s living history, and it’s worth a visit.
Before I met my husband, I had never tasted true maple syrup. The first time we ate together at PJ’s Pancake House in Princeton, I was surprised to see him pull a small container of pure maple syrup from his pocket. At the time, PJ’s didn’t serve the real stuff, although that has since changed. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. Growing up, when Daddy made pancakes on Saturday mornings, we used the typical supermarket syrup–Log Cabin, Aunt Jemima–whatever. H was no food snob, so I found his insistence on unadulterated maple syrup mystifying. That is, until that day at PJ’s, when I tasted the liquid from that little jar. H was right. There is no topping the perfection of the stuff that comes straight from the tree.
Visitors to the Maple Tree Inn are welcome to descend into the building’s lower level to learn how the sap is boiled down, in huge wood-fired evaporators, to its golden maple essence. Several years ago, a Cartwright grandson, no more than twelve or so, gave us a comprehensive tour that began in the frozen fields where we could examine the taps on the trees and see the liquid running into the buckets. As far as I know, this is not an option at IHOP.
These days, the rarified nuances of maple syrup, like those of chocolate, coffee and small-batch whiskies, are earnestly discussed at considerable length, using wine-lingo terms such as terroir. H doesn’t do this, although he can and does enjoy discerning, in blind taste tests, the variations between light, medium, and dark amber syrups. My palette will never attain such a degree of sophistication, but I can say this: a little true maple syrup makes life sweeter.
The snowy landscape behind the Maple Tree Inn.Kiko and I walk through the surrounding fields before I join the others for lunch.
Kiko keeps vigil in the car during our meal. Animal advocates need not be alarmed–he has his sheepskin bed and blanket if he needs to hunker down for warmth. Before this trip, in case it was particularly cold, we bought him a red plaid fleece coat. The temperature wasn’t low enough to warrant it, and he appeared perfectly comfortable, peering out from the front seat, when we returned. For his wait, he was rewarded with an extra sausage patty H’s grandmother had carefully saved for him.
Kiko and D atop a tall snowpile on an earlier visit to Cartwright’s, in 2009. Kiko looks almost exactly the same as he did four years ago, when he was two. D, on the other hand, has changed.
After our return from the railroad tracks, the predicted rain was not yet falling, so we walked past broad flat fields to the Ford Farm Market, a showcase of pumpkin glory and diversity. On this beautiful old family farm, Tom Swain, a former middle school science teacher, grows a vast variety of pumpkins and gourds. Signs proclaim the availability of pink pumpkins. Indeed, some are peachy-pink. There are pumpkins in nearly every conceivable earthy hue, including white and many shades of yellow, orange and green. There are also multi-colored varieties, some speckled, some striped, some uniquely patterened. The range of sizes is equally wide, from tiny palm-sized pumpkins to enormous giants, and everything in between. In years past, the largest Ford Farm pumpkins have topped 1,000 pounds. Tom’s wife Sharon is a pumpkin carver of great skill and imagination. Each year she creates a series of gigantic, intricately designed masterpieces. The family’s extensive and charming collection of Halloween decorations is displayed in the barn.
We made no pumpkin purchases because we would soon be flying back to Virginia, although D bought an apple for the walk back. A cold rain was falling steadily by then, but our cheery dose of Ford Farm fall spirit sustained us along the way.
In front of the old farmhouse, more pumpkins, including some of the giant ones Sharon Swain typically carves.
A colorful celebration of roadside vines and wildflowers.
When I was young, I spent my summer days
Playing on the track.
The sound of the wheels rollin’ on the steel
Took me out, took me back.
Big train, from Memphis. Big train, from Memphis. Now it’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
–John Fogerty, Big Train from Memphis
For many of those who grew up hearing the whistle and roar of passing trains in the night, the sounds evoke home, family and childhood. My husband and I each became accustomed to the music of the trains, and we miss it here in Virginia. When we return to Rochester or Atlanta to visit his parents or mine, we savor the familiar, comforting sounds of the train.
H and his childhood friends really did spend their summer days playing on the tracks and beneath the adjacent highway overpasses, at least when they were not deep in the neighborhood woods. The tracks are easily accessible from his sister’s house in Rochester. If we have time, we head over to see what’s new and what’s as it always was. It’s a particular joy for H to explore the area again with his daughter by his side. She appreciates his tales of boyhood adventure as well as the desolate beauty of the landscape along the tracks.
D was delighted to find this sturdy rope well-anchored to the underside of the bridge.
The unruly landscape bordering the tracks gets a beauty treatment of fall colors.
A mingling of the seasons: touches of gold and green among the fallen brown leaves.
D negotiates the tangle of weeds as she emerges from down under and years gone by.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
