"Yesterday was plain awful."
"You can say that again."
"Yesterday was plain awful. But that's..."
"...not now..."
"...that's then..."
                      "I Don't Need Anything But You," Annie

It wasn't totally awful, since we had two very nice meetings, but most of yesterday plain stunk.

It started off badly: Neither of us had slept well, and then James was out packing the car when a sparrow smacked into one of the car windows. He picked it up and it did squirm, so he placed it out of cat reach in a bush, but he said it was still there when we left.

We stopped by the post awful and after I waited in line for 15 minutes, we got one piece of junk mail for our pains. Also, the guy at the desk would not let us speak to the carrier for the street, as we had been advised to do yesterday. I did fill out a change of address form, but the lady I brought the form back to said some mail might be delivered to the house today. I planned to call my godmother later and ask her to check.

Meanwhile we went west via Route 6 and I-84, and stopped at Countdown Hobbies in Bethel, Connecticut. We ran into the same road construction on the way, and when we left Bethel, we got stuck in lunch hour traffic in Danbury and then more road construction getting back to the freeway.

This was the lietmotif of the day, being stuck in traffic (or taking the wrong turn, which we did at least twice). I rather expected the congestion on the Garden State Parkway; nevertheless the stop-and-go traffic was horrendous. Even worse, there were traffic jams on the Jersey Turnpike. I've traveled the NJT Turnpike for 30 years and I've never seen traffic like this on that road.

Even worse, while we finally stopped at one of the service areas for something to eat because it was so late, my cell phone rang while I was juggling two Nathan's hot dogs and a large lemonade. It was my cousin Debbie. She had gone by the house, and...you guessed it...guess what she found in the mailbox. Yes, the death certificates had been delivered after we left, after we spent all that time waiting for them!!!!! Thank God we had talked to Jeff (our lawyer) last night and given him the key to the safe deposit box, etc. Debbie was going to call him and ask him to pick up the certificates. Of course now he has to send some to us so we can cancel some services and cash in the insurance policy. Arrrgh! Why couldn't this have happened during the three and a half long weeks we were there??????

Doggedly we continued. We took what we thought was a "shortcut" to our Motel 6 off I-695 south of Baltimore, but the Harbor Tunnel Freeway told us we had to get on I-695 East. Except there wasn't an exit for I-695 East. So we had to go to I-95 and turn around, which means we could have gone through the other tunnel and gained the same results. Then we almost couldn't find the motel because our instructions didn't include the fact that the road the motel was on was off the road the exit dumped you on. By the time we got to Baltimore we had been enroute twelve hours and were tired and cross (plus I have a heat rash—or something—nearly everywhere and itch like crazy).

On the other hand, we had some lovely visits to balance out the frustrations of the way. When we were in Bethel I got phone calls from both Rupert Holmes and Rodney Walker. We stopped at Rupert's home and had lunch (we had sandwiches with us, made from leftovers we had at the house) in his backyard. Willow got to explore and barked furiously at the dachshunds next door. We were there for about two hours and had a long chat, most of which I was very fuzzy about because I was so tired. He did tell us that Kevin O'Rourke had a new play which is going to be in Atlanta. Also that TV Land had commissioned an outline for a half-hour pilot for the series Art in Heaven, which is presently online at www.testtube.tv. Kevin O'Rourke and—he hoped—Chris Murney would still star in it and he hoped to include all the Remember WENN cast if it became a series. Cool, eh? We also got to say hi to Rupert's dad who we used to talk to on chat when Remember WENN was still on the air.

Rodney we met for dinner after arriving in Baltimore. It was, as I said, after nine when we got in and Olive Garden, which was about 14 miles away, closed at ten. I got there in somewhat less than 25 minutes. It was a fun dinner even if I was half asleep. Damn right we had the black tie mousse cake for dessert. After today we deserved it.

Note to self: want to eat a fast meal at Olive Garden? Go before they close! We were served immediately.

We were so pooped when we got back from supper that, although it was only 11:30, we showered immediately and went to bed.

Today, on the other hand, was rather nice except for overextending ourselves this afternoon. We left south of Baltimore a little after eight. After our horrendous time on I-95 yesterday, we said "screw it" and headed west on I-70 to I-81. Eastern Maryland, the little sliver of West Virginia, and Virginia were all lovely to drive through: beautiful rolling countryside and lots of farms. Even better, south of Harrisonburg it became cloudy and cool and even spattered a bit but never really rained.

It was so cloudy and cool I handed James a flyer I'd picked up in the Virginia Welcome Center and said, "Can we go?"

So we did. When we got to Staunton we went east on I-64 to Charlottesville and then turned south on Route 29 and went to the Waltons Mountain Museum in Schuyler. I'd wanted to go here for ages. And this is where the "cool and cloudy" really came in handy: we could leave Wil and Pidgie in the car near a tree with the windows open halfway and they would be comfortable.

When Earl Hamner says he grew up in a small town in the Virginia backwoods, he means "small town." You turn on progressively smaller and smaller roads, three in all, to get to Schuyler, which consists of a church, a post office, about three houses, a souvenir store, the soapstone quarry down the road, and the old elementary school, which closed in 1992 and is now the Waltons Mountain Museum. It's a lovely old school: you walk in and are immediately in what used to be the auditorium (I think some rooms have been removed up front) and the different exhibits are in the old school rooms. First you see a film about Earl Hamner, his books, the movie Spencer's Mountain, and then the special The Homecoming and finally the series. They talk to each surviving member of the cast (since the film was made Ellen Corby, Mary Jackson, and Helen Kleeb have passed away).

Next, the other rooms: there is John-Boy's bedroom, which also has books and magazines with The Waltons on them, the Living Room where the actual radio used on the show plays old radio programs, the Kitchen, a library that has all of Earl Hamner's manuscripts, a room talking about the soapstone quarry with models of the Walton house and Ike Godsey's store made by fans, a room that did not have the actual "Recipe machine" but did have an actual moonshine still that was confiscated by the Feds along with a history of moonshining, and finally "Ike Godsey's store," the gift shop (of course we went in; it's a state law). All I bought was a magnet for our fridge, but I will have to order Earl Hamner's bio from Amazon. It really is neat and has material on The Homecoming and The Waltons along with Earl's story.

We did find out that Earl had been in town as late as three days ago; he had a book signing at Polly and Jim-Bob's Bed and Breakfast and Gift Shop last Saturday, but stayed over Sunday and Monday.

Well, here's where we were...um, stubborn (and no, I can't blame this on James). Two different maps we had suggested that the road that goes through Schuyler (617) went back to Route 29. We wanted to go back that way and south on 29 because there had been a horrendous traffic accident on I-64 Westbound as we came in: looked like an entire mobile home had turned over and smeared all over the road. Traffic was backed up for at least five miles. So instead of going back the way we came, we went in the opposite direction. We now understand why you have to go the way you do: (a) 617 eventually becomes a one-lane gravel road and (b) it doesn't go directly to Route 29. So we spent at least an hour driving the backroads of Virginia, long stretches of trees and fields with occasional houses dotted among them, with locals who drive much too fast for these narrow roads! There must be hundreds of these little roads, all known by numbers. We finally managed to get to a main road by guess and by golly, and back to Route 29 and headed south, only to run into rush hour traffic in Lynchburg, which wasn't bad, but James had been driving for hours and we had never eaten lunch.

Other than the traffic in Lynchburg, however, Route 29 is a nice parkway, four lanes with a grass median between the two pairs. The southern part, at least, is going to eventually become I-785. So we stopped just south of Lynchburg, had something to eat at Hardee's, and swapped off, and I drove the rest of the way to Greensboro, NC.

Oh, and God sent us a miracle: we got into town and at the I-85/I-40 split, I had headed for I-85 when James saw a sign for a Drury Inn on I-40. There was a Motel 6 on I-85 before us, but I got off at the first exit to turn around and found out the road led to I-40 anyway. So we are happily ensconced in a nice comfy Drury Inn that doesn't mind your pets and has a recliner so Wil can sit in James' lap for the first time in a month and a nice big king size bed that I could just topple over into if I wanted, and we have the prospect of a nice free hot breakfast tomorrow with eggs, cereal, fruit, muffins, toast, and milk, milk, milk (I haven't had any all day; every place we went to was out of it).

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:10:00 PM

Comments:

Linda - So happy to hear from you!!! Hubby pretty much told me not to worry - that you probably could not write because you didn't have access. Boy, it just figures about the certificates!!!! Stay well and stay cool, and please kiss "the children" for me.

# posted by  Anonymous : 7:21:00 AM

 

About lunch time, I slapped myself on the forehead (and wanted to kick myself). "I forgot to tell them about the Wilson Bridge! If they go I-95 South instead of I-81, they'll run into a traffic snarl and they've had enough of those!"

Luckily, you managed to avoid that delay. :) Enjoyed the visit!
--Rodney

# posted by  Anonymous : 9:46:00 AM

 

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