Road Trip

Toni and I traveled to Punta Gorda, Florida, to spend a week with her sister Mary Ann and Sonny, a long drive that we did in two days. The main purpose for driving was to retrieve an Oriental rug that we inherited when my mother moved to California but had loaned to niece Charlene until we were ready to move into a condo. On route 75 we went through Indianapolis, Louisville, and Nashville before switching to 24 east. A bad accident caused us to spend the night in Smyrna, TN, population 38,000 and the namesake of an ancient city in Turkey founded by Alexander the Great. The next day we reached Route 65, passing through Atlanta, and making it to Tampa by twilight, where we stopped, saw niece MaryAnn and her two young’ins Bella and Ben, and spent the night in their guesthouse. As we got further south, signs of spring became more and more pronounced.

Florida highlights included eating Philly steaks (the joint was opened by a Philadelphia native who allegedly has fresh rolls flown down daily) and Blue Point crabs, hot tubbing and playing pinochle with Sonny, playing ping pong with 15 year-old Connor (he won four of six games), and discussing music with 17 year-old Alexandria. Concerning my favorite groups, she hadn’t heard of MGMT (I told her to check out “Electric Feel”), liked Owl City, and used to like Phoenix but not anymore (too much air play and their songs all sound the same). Niece Charlene spun some great anecdotes as always, andwith hubby Jim Quinn I watched the Masters (Tiger sucked but still finished fourth) and a crucial Flyers game (they won in a shoot-out to make the playoffs). Sonny and I had brunch with his 78 year-old friend Harry, who complained that on Tuesdays his two favorite shows, “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars,” were on opposite each other. I told him I was rooting for Pamela Anderson on “Dancing.” I told him I was rooting for Pamela Anderson on “Dancing.” Anderson once was married to Tommy Lee Jones of the band Motley Crue, and won a big settlement after a sex video taken during their honeymoon was stolen and made the rounds. She has denied rumors that she wasn’t wearing panties during her dance routines.

At Mary’s condo I found a book on famous speeches throughout history. Most entrees were what one might expect, but there was one by Indira Ghandi on the importance of educating women and two moving speeches by Nelson Mandela, one at his trial and the other upon assuming office as President of South Africa. A conservative, she also had a book by Newt Gingrich and his daughter that nonetheless had some inspirational advice from Bill Clinton.

On the way home we stopped in Gainesville to have lunch with high school buddy Bob Reller and his wife Karen. Although he had a stroke a couple years ago, Rel looked good, walks four miles a day, and the only serious aftereffect is that he has very limited field of vision so he can’t drive. Although he is less prone to reminisce than I, he expressed interest in how my recent Facebook pals Pat Zollo and LeeLee Minehart Devinney are doing (he asked where LeeLee lived and I confessed that I had no idea – the answer I now know, Long Beach Island, New Jersey). I told Karen that I spent many hours playing basketball in his driveway and that one summer while we were in college we played tennis at an industrial park. Rel and I traded anecdotes about the Union League in Philadelphia, a club started by Republicans during the Civil War (supposedly new members have to swear they never voted Democrat). He was there to accept a citizenship award in high school. I was a finalist for a scholarship to study in Scotland my junior year in college. I recall spotting a finger bowl and not knowing what it was for. When Toni told Karen that we met at a law firm where she was a secretary and I a mailroom messenger, Rel asked what law firm. It was Dechert, Price and Rhoads; turned out a good friend of Rel’s worked there. I told them that when Mr. Dechert married his secretary, some of the partners were up in arms. Perhaps that helped steer me to be a History professor rather than a corporation lawyer.

To make the road trip go faster we picked up some audio books from the library. On the way down we listened to a thriller about an Asian leader who wants to unleash germ warfare. On the way back we listened to Lincoln Child’s “Terminal Freeze” and a rendering of Anne Tyler’s “Digging to America.” The narrator did the Iranian-American accents brilliantly, and Toni enjoyed the personality contrast, tension, and friendship between two families that adopted Korean girls at the same time and stayed in touch. The book featured two strong but quirky women characters, Bitsy Donaldson and Maryam Yazdan. After Bitsy’s mother dies, her father befriends Maryam. He’s lost after retiring from a teaching position (they roll out the red carpet and then pull it up behind you, he laments). He proposes to Maryam in front of both families; she accepts and immediately realizes that was a big mistake. For a time it causes a rupture in the relationship between the two families. I had forgotten how moving the ending was, when the entire Donaldson family goes to Maryam’s house to fetch her to join one of their annual get-togethers.

Arriving home after an overnight stopover north of Atlanta, we discovered that we were without electricity and everything in the refrigerator was ruined and smelly. After the circuit breaker got turned back on, it became apparent that a power surge had messed up two TVs, our phones, and some other stuff. Bummer. While Toni commenced cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, I went out for ice so we could at least have cold beer. One time after a winter trip to California, we got home to find the house frigid. Moving to a condo soon seems better and better to us.

Picked up two weeks of mail at Gary’s central post office. A thank you card from niece Niki included a great photo of newborn Crosby Declan Lane. The middle name is the same as Elvis Costello’s given name. At school it didn’t take as long as expected to go through my backlog of hundreds of emails. Former student Adam Stingley found me on Facebook and said complimentary things about the courses he had with me. IU Vice President John Applegate thanked me for the Shavings history of IUN I sent him and mentioned that he used to teach a course on environmental justice and included material on the city of Gary in relation to the steel industry. Ron Cohen dropped by the Archives and filled me in on the OAH conference he attended, in particular a session honoring recently deceased radical historian Howard Zinn, at which Staughton Lynd delivered a moving tribute. In the early Seventies Staughton started a Labor History Workshop in a Glen Park storefront that Ron and I attended. Several old radicals including Joe Norrick and Kathryn Hyndman told about their past struggles with management and the government, and these accounts eventually found their way into Lynd’s book “Rank and File.” Ron reported that Ray Mohl, whose job I inherited when he moved on to Florida International, is still going strong doing research. He also ran into Marylander Don Ritchie, like me a former Sam Merrill student who now is historian for the United States Senate.

In the news: a volcano emanating in Iceland has been sending clouds of ash east over Europe disrupting air traffic. Obama’s scheduled trip to attend the funeral of Polish president Lech Kaczynski is in doubt. The President has had a good week hosting a conference to limit the spread of nuclear weapons although the friggin’ Republicans keep harping on how he isn’t being tough enough on Iran. I haven’t kept up on local events while gone. Right before I left there was a Times column on the former feud between Sheriff Roy Dominguez and current candidate John Buncich, how once the opposing camps called the rivals “Buns Itch” and “Dumbinguez” but now the two call each other friends. Ron told me that Dominguez endorsed a long shot candidate for sheriff named Ligon rather than either of the two frontrunners. My friend Clark says Ligon, an African American with experience in law enforcement, is the best man, so I’m glad Roy did what he did.