It is an interesting name: Tate’s Hell, a swamp in north Florida. I’ve been there once. The place wasn’t a state forest then. I don’t know who owned it, which was the case with a lot of places I wandered around in my youth, a practice which could best be described at trespassing.
I saw a [...]
The sky over Washington, D.C. was enamel blue. Cherry blossoms and dogwood bloomed. The wind was whipping and the Visine was flowing. Union Station was over-run by commuters, tourist and at least one chubby congressman whom I recognized, but could not wrap a name around. I strolled toward the capitol. Police road-blocked and sirened their [...]
Saying that Washington, D.C. has a traffic problem is like saying Angelina Jolie has huge lips. It is too obvious to even utter. But if you spend time in it, you begin to realize some patterns that lend prescience to bigger issues.
Have you seen the images from the new full-body scanners being used at airports now? It is supposed to better detect weapons by seeing through travelers clothes, allowing TSA officials to get a damned good look at your body, as if you were naked. I remember the glasses in the backs of comic books that [...]
Another 1,800 miles on my odometer. Only 300 more to go. Over 6,000 on I-95, I-85 and I-65 since Christmas. The road is crowded, but lonely, everyone in their moving cans like tomatoes on the way to the shelf in Wisconsin or Atlanta or St. Louis. This week, I have spend another 35 hours driving a [...]
We were driving through West Virginia last weekend. The countryside was beautiful, the sun was shining, it was porcelain cold on the other side of the windshield glass, snow stretched to the mountains on our right. Farms with humped barns pressed against the highway. As we topped a hill, we noticed something gray and short [...]
Over the weekend, I heard about a brilliant piece of thinking from a man in Florida. His name is Ricardo. I hate to use peoples’ names in this space since sometimes my writing attracts unsavory elements and angry retorts, but suffice it to say, Ricardo’s idea was not mine and it is genius.
The snow in Virginia continues. People who live in places like Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis see this yearly, and scoff at our confusion and school closings. But, to bastardize the phrasing of Scotty on Star Trek, Virginia is not built to take this kind of punishment.
On a recent trip to the Deep South to take care of some unpleasant business, I began to notice a few incidences of the famous Southern accent evolving into something akin to a foreign language. Not everyone speaks it, but here and there, a few people have swallowed a mouthful of slurry verbiage.
In the last two weeks, I have driven a little over 4,300 miles, not by choice. I have hit every city from Hartford, CT to the Gulf Coast, and several of them twice and four times. That’s what happens with those you love have difficult times and you do what you have to do to [...]
I hate to admit this, but I have eaten an animal we hit during a rainstorm as we were driving down the road. Truth is, I have eaten more than one. It’s been a long time, and it was in Alabama, but I still remember the deer staring us down before leaping to its death [...]
Recently, we had the opportunity to shoot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Michael Jordan is from Wilmington. They shoot movies and TV shows there. It is a friendly town, filled with college kids from UNC Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College. The Cape Fear River winds through downtown and between swamps and under bridges like it [...]
With no money for vacations and more people taking staycations, other cheap excursions are gaining in popularity. We went to the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C. this summer. They are free and filled with things to keep a family occupied for days. We walked around the National Mall and Arlington Cemetery for free. Some people, [...]
A little girl walked out of the Ape House at the Washington Zoo last week. The sign above the door promised apes. It definitely smelled like apes, but the apes were not at home. They were all lounging and roaming outside in the jungle area. One ape scratched his apish rear (scratching is as popular [...]
My father did not take many vacations, but when he did, we always packed a box of groceries, filled the ice chest and drove to Destin, Florida. It was a very different place in the 1960’s.
The Frangista Motel sat sandwiched in cinderblock splendor beside Highway 98, pushing hard against the oyster-shelled two-lane in the front [...]