One of the pleasures of living in a small town is that I can walk to the grocery store, the bank, Carmen's church, the haircut place, the post office - pretty much anywhere I want to go - in less than a half hour. Just this morning I walked to the downtown supermarket at 6:00 because we were out of coffee ! ! ! Then later I walked to the bank at 9:00 and opened my own checking account.
Walking downtown is, more often than not (and not at 6:00am) a social occasion. I see people I know nearly every trip, and people I don't know are likely to smile and say hello. A far cry from Boston.
I generally walk Chestnut Street, the main drag running east and west from downtown to our house. It goes past a couple of funeral homes, an assisted living place, several churches, the Y, Diamond Park, the Historical Society of Crawford County, the local office supply store, the Academy (live)Theatre, a bunch of restaurants, an ice cream shop and - The Stereoscopic Museum! Someday I have to go in there. It's only open a couple of afternoons a week.
Chestnut Street dead-ends into the Downtown Mall, anchored by a Big Lots. The mall contains a liquor store, a couple of flea market styled miscellaneous crap stores, a haircut place, a snack and sandwich shop, a Dollar General and a few more stores I can't recall. The Greyhound bus stops out front, and tickets can be bought at one of the miscellaneous crap stores. The public transit buses also stop at the big bus shelter out front.
Way out yonder on the other side of the tracks is where the interlopers reside: Home Depot, Walmart, Staples and the Giant Eagle grocery store. It's too far to walk and I wouldn't want to anyway!
It reminds me of Vero Beach, Florida. I lived there for about sixteen of my first thirty-four years. I walked everywhere. When I worked at a grapefruit packing house, I started work at 5:30am about once a week, and I could pretty much expect to be pulled over by a cop in the downtown area each time. I thought about that today as I walked downtown at 5:45. The other difference was: I was wearing a hoodie in August! That NEVER happened in Vero Beach.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Four Fifty, Four, Three Fifty, Three
Fortunately for two weary humans and two herbally drugged cats, the trip from Albuquerque to Meadville, PA was pretty uneventful. We had a few arguments with Hermione, our GPS. We had a long walk for short gain the first night, a gut-buster pork steak the second and a teen-ager convention the third. The most distressing thing that went wrong was that the batteries in our little CD player were missing and somehow we just couldn't seem to get them replaced. Still!
Shyanne Moving And Storage came for our stuff on the morning of Monday the 5th of July. We spent Monday night cleaning and working out how to pack the car. Tuesday morning we put out trash in our can and that of the absent next door mean lady, loaded the car and Carmen rubbed "Rescue Remedy" on the ears of the kids. The garbage truck came, I returned our can and the neighbor's to their desired locations, and off we went! It was a little after ten by the time we gassed up and headed for the interstate.
I could hear the glee in Hermione's voice when she said "Drive four hundred thirty miles and exit right." We were on the "one-Interstate-a-day" plan. I-40 took us to Oklahoma City. We passed "The Largest Cross In The Northern Hemisphere" in Texas - the highlight of the trip. It was wet from recent rain when we got to OKC, and darkness was approaching by the time we got the car unloaded and the kitties settled in. We walked outside to look for a place to eat. There were the usual McD and BK and Taco Bell, but we were in the mood for something a little less fast. There was a billboard almost directly overhead touting "Cracker Barrel - Turn left here, one block" so we walked a block to the turn, turned down a street with no sidewalks, walking in wet grass or out in the street, cut across a grassy field and landed wet-footed in the restaurant. The food was good old Cracker Barrel food. Afterward we looked out across the grassy field and saw the lighted sign of our motel. We struck out toward it and were almost there when we realized we were fenced-in fy a "fun center" with putt putt golf and an arcade. We followed the fences to another road, the on-ramp to the interstate, walked on the grass or in the street to the highway and cut across a gas station to our motel room. If we had it to do over again, we would settle for something fast.
Day two was I-44 to St. Louis. The most fun that day was driving through Tulsa, where Carmen had lived and worked for a couple of years in a previous life, and seeing what had changed and what had not - in the midst of pretty much solid construction from one end to the other.
Columbia, Illinois is the suburb of St. Louis where our cat-friendly hotel was. Hermione had never heard of the address, so I had to call for an alternate. We arrived with plenty of daylight left, and were advised to go to the shopping center for dinner at Bully's Bar-B-Q. For some reason I can't now fathom, the 23 ounce barbecued pork steak sounded good to me. My guts wrestled with that pig for two days after I ate - the whole thing! The next day I was further nauseated when we passed a series of signs for a steak house featuring the "50 Ounce Belly Buster - FREE!" if you can eat it all in some specified amount of time. If I had it to do over again, I'd go with the barbecued chicken.
In keeping with the tradition - this was my third time in St. Louis, and the third time I failed to even catch a glimpse of the famous arch. I did see the river, however, which I failed to do the first two dead-of-night incursions.
Day three was Interstate 70, which I ran quite a bit back in my truck driving days and my bus-riding days. It runs all the way to Baltimore, my point of origin. Today, however, we only ran it as far as Columbus, OH. The memorable part of the trip was in Indiana when we broke out the CD player. While I went into a grocery store, Carmen tried to get the player up and running. She discovered that there were no batteries in it, which made it dysfunctional. She called my cellular phone, which I was turning on on my way back to the car in the rain. She heard her message at the same time I did.
The hotel in Columbus was right beside some major athletic field where high school kids from all over Ohio were gathered to compete in various sports. There was no peace at any place at any time in that hotel. Friday morning was our earliest departure of the trip.
We had an ongoing argument with Hermione from the time we exited the parking lot of the hotel until we were settled into the mainstream of Interstate 71 many miles north of Columbus. I never really figured out how she wanted us to go, but evidently once we got going on 71 she was okay with it. I think she still wanted to go back to Massachusetts, and 71 was an acceptable compromise route. It was raining as we drove through northeastern Ohio, and rained all the way to Meadville, where we stopped at the Real Estate office for our keys before driving the final few blocks home.
Home. Wow, that sounds good!
Shyanne Moving And Storage came for our stuff on the morning of Monday the 5th of July. We spent Monday night cleaning and working out how to pack the car. Tuesday morning we put out trash in our can and that of the absent next door mean lady, loaded the car and Carmen rubbed "Rescue Remedy" on the ears of the kids. The garbage truck came, I returned our can and the neighbor's to their desired locations, and off we went! It was a little after ten by the time we gassed up and headed for the interstate.
I could hear the glee in Hermione's voice when she said "Drive four hundred thirty miles and exit right." We were on the "one-Interstate-a-day" plan. I-40 took us to Oklahoma City. We passed "The Largest Cross In The Northern Hemisphere" in Texas - the highlight of the trip. It was wet from recent rain when we got to OKC, and darkness was approaching by the time we got the car unloaded and the kitties settled in. We walked outside to look for a place to eat. There were the usual McD and BK and Taco Bell, but we were in the mood for something a little less fast. There was a billboard almost directly overhead touting "Cracker Barrel - Turn left here, one block" so we walked a block to the turn, turned down a street with no sidewalks, walking in wet grass or out in the street, cut across a grassy field and landed wet-footed in the restaurant. The food was good old Cracker Barrel food. Afterward we looked out across the grassy field and saw the lighted sign of our motel. We struck out toward it and were almost there when we realized we were fenced-in fy a "fun center" with putt putt golf and an arcade. We followed the fences to another road, the on-ramp to the interstate, walked on the grass or in the street to the highway and cut across a gas station to our motel room. If we had it to do over again, we would settle for something fast.
Day two was I-44 to St. Louis. The most fun that day was driving through Tulsa, where Carmen had lived and worked for a couple of years in a previous life, and seeing what had changed and what had not - in the midst of pretty much solid construction from one end to the other.
Columbia, Illinois is the suburb of St. Louis where our cat-friendly hotel was. Hermione had never heard of the address, so I had to call for an alternate. We arrived with plenty of daylight left, and were advised to go to the shopping center for dinner at Bully's Bar-B-Q. For some reason I can't now fathom, the 23 ounce barbecued pork steak sounded good to me. My guts wrestled with that pig for two days after I ate - the whole thing! The next day I was further nauseated when we passed a series of signs for a steak house featuring the "50 Ounce Belly Buster - FREE!" if you can eat it all in some specified amount of time. If I had it to do over again, I'd go with the barbecued chicken.
In keeping with the tradition - this was my third time in St. Louis, and the third time I failed to even catch a glimpse of the famous arch. I did see the river, however, which I failed to do the first two dead-of-night incursions.
Day three was Interstate 70, which I ran quite a bit back in my truck driving days and my bus-riding days. It runs all the way to Baltimore, my point of origin. Today, however, we only ran it as far as Columbus, OH. The memorable part of the trip was in Indiana when we broke out the CD player. While I went into a grocery store, Carmen tried to get the player up and running. She discovered that there were no batteries in it, which made it dysfunctional. She called my cellular phone, which I was turning on on my way back to the car in the rain. She heard her message at the same time I did.
The hotel in Columbus was right beside some major athletic field where high school kids from all over Ohio were gathered to compete in various sports. There was no peace at any place at any time in that hotel. Friday morning was our earliest departure of the trip.
We had an ongoing argument with Hermione from the time we exited the parking lot of the hotel until we were settled into the mainstream of Interstate 71 many miles north of Columbus. I never really figured out how she wanted us to go, but evidently once we got going on 71 she was okay with it. I think she still wanted to go back to Massachusetts, and 71 was an acceptable compromise route. It was raining as we drove through northeastern Ohio, and rained all the way to Meadville, where we stopped at the Real Estate office for our keys before driving the final few blocks home.
Home. Wow, that sounds good!
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