Scene on the Road

Getting back to the Route 611 road trip and the Shrine of Czestochowa with more about the statues ("the Polish Pope who visited a couple of times when he was the Polish Cardinal...and an American nicknamed "Dutch."). THIS statue isn't one of those two, but part of a new outdoor Rosary Walk. There is something about open space that inspires.

Driving in, I passed multi-tiered parking lots with spaces for hundreds of cars. But on a cloudy weekday, between masses, I was able to find a spot in the front row, right under the twenty five foot high statue of Pope John Paul II, "portrayed with raised open, loving arms." There's a photo in my previous post. You can't see my car, a Honda Civic, because it's hidden by the statue's base. Like my cameras, and laptop, it's company gear. For those who've asked, I use Nikon. A D200, with fixed focal length 18mm and 180mm lenses and 28-70mm zoom. I keep a 300mm in the trunk along with a spare D100 body.

Towering another 200 feet above him is the Bell Tower and the main church. But I walked the other way, directed by the arrow for "Gift Shop." You can tell a lot about a cultural, educational, recreational -- or even spiritual -- institution by their gift shop. That's not quite a "Road Trip Rule," like "Don't eat anything that's served out a window (except ice cream)," but if it were, this one would make the cut. As far as gift shops go, it could even live up to the highway hype of a South of the Border or Wall Drug. It is one impressive gift shop.

Of course they have plenty of replicas of the "Miraculous Painting" of Our Lady of Czestochowa (story is the original was painted by St. Luke and first brought to Poland in 1382). And more Polish candy, crackers and snacks than you can find outside of Warsaw. They have shelves after shelves of Polish books and all kinds of religious articles, souvenirs, books, and Polish imports. There's even a cafeteria and Polish deli (open only on Sundays).

A priest and sales woman were speaking in Polish, then switched to accented English when a third woman joined them in a discussion about per-call-fees on the international phone cards the shop sells. "Sure, if she talks for three hours straight it's a bargain," the priest says.

Besides the thousands in the gift shop, I expect a religious shrine will have lots of religious statuary. So the secular bronze couple seated at a picnic table caught my eye.

I walked up just as Teresa Laudanski of Mercerville, NJ was greeting nearby workers in Polish. "Czesc." They're replacing the stucco on the main church with granite. She saw me climbing all over the base looking for weird angles and getting up close to photograph the bronze guy in the suit with the folk-costumed lady examining something tiny between his fingertips. She offered to take a picture for me with my camera standing next to them. After I introduced myself she said I should go find her building contractor husband Joseph, with "a big hat and beard."

So I did. He first started coming to the shrine after emigrating in 1979. He helped construct the stage when President Ronald Reagan was a guest at the annual Polish-American Festival in 1984. News reports from the time say Reagan, campaigning for his second term, drew cheers by declaring: "Thank God for Pope John Paul II," after Philadelphia's Archbishop Cardinal John Krol praised him for supporting federal aid to religious schools.

Twenty years later, Laudanski wanted to commemorate the historic visit. But he didn't want it to look like all the other hero statues "standing" in town squares. When he saw an old news photo of the president, sitting at a table holding up a single placki (Polish potato pancake) with costumed festival host Jennie Gowaty -- he knew he had his statue.

Except for the pancake. In the picture, Laudanski thought, it blocked the Gipper's face. So he had the artists leave it off. But they left the fingers holding ...? It was dedicated at last year's festival.

This year the festival will be the first two weekends in September, with polkas, food, rides and games for the kids, and even 17th century costumed cavalry reenactors doing battle.

All this reminded me of my maternal grandparents, Thomas and Katherine Opatz, who were farmers in the Polish immigrant heart of Minnesota. The area inspired Garrison Keillor's fictional town of Lake Woebegon, although HIS farmers are mostly of the Norwegian bachelor variety. I have childhood memories of grandma in her kitchen saying the rosary in Polish along with a priest on the AM radio every evening. If you go to the Lake Woebegon link, the photo is from homecoming at the high school my cousins attended. It was shot by photographer Richard Olsenius who was one of my heroes when he worked at the Minneapolis Tribune and their excellent Sunday Picture Magazine in the 1970's.

Still from last week's inaugural road trip north on Route 611, this is what the old 60-mile Delaware Canal and towpath looks like after last summer's flooding destroyed almost everything south of Easton. This recently restored lock, a remnant of the great canal building era of the early and mid-19th century, was right along the bike and hiking trail.

I show this photo to illustrate both the antithesis of serendipity and to ask you to send me YOUR photos to share.

I stopped along the canal at the suggestion of an outdoorsy photo editor here at the Inquirer. He said it was a shame, because it was such a great trail, and promised to show me some photos he shot. He's still looking for them. So that's where you come in. If anyone has any photos of hikers or bikers on the towpath from BEFORE the flood, I'd like to see and share them here. You can't upload photos directly to blogs on philly.com, but I just got an email address just for Scene on the Road, so you can send your photos to me and I'll post them. It's Roadtrip@phillynews.com. And see the state parks website for updates on trail repairs.

Now the antithesis part. The scale of the towpath/trail's destruction really was amazing to me. Just like walking through a dense forest crowded with underbrush and stumbling upon the trunk of a giant Sequoia, it's hard to show the scale of some things in a single photograph. No matter how impressive. The tow path was like that. But it wasn't just something I stumbled into. This was starting to feel to me a lot like WORK. Like a difficult newspaper assignment, the kind you can't just blow off saying "there's no photo there, so I didn't take one," because someone - editors, reporters, readers - are counting on you to deliver. Anything BUT the serendipity of wandering on a road trip. But hard as I tried, without other people to include in the photo for scale, I couldn't see a way to make a picture that effectively communicated what I was seeing. Especially when viewed as a four inch photo on the web.

But, after hiking for twenty minutes past the "closed trail" sign to reach the washed out area, I felt compelled to take a photo. That's 611 at left, the Delaware at right, and the washed out canal and towpath/trail in the middle.

If I were an artist, I could just call it expressing myself and not worry so much about whether or not anybody else understood. Whenever anyone every asks, I tell them that's one of the biggest differences between art and what we do as photojournalists.

Nobody asked me that last night when I spoke at the Churchville Photography Club in Bucks county, but I did get many other -- much smarter -- questions. They're taking the summer off (from meetings, NOT from taking pictures) but if you live in Bucks County, check out their website, and plan to attend the next meeting in the fall. It's an excellent club, with active and involved photographers.

I'm off now on my second road trip, this one on Route 206 in New Jersey, from Hammonton to Trenton and Princeton north to the NY border.

On Route 206, near Shamong in Burlington County, I pass a bunch of gas stations, each with signs declaring themselves "American Owned," punctuated with rows of American flags. Up the road, just past the Red Lion Circle, it's another row of flags, this one set back behind a big grassy lawn on tall poles. I wonder, is this the Pine Barrens headquarters of some movement? Or an early Fourth of July?

Neither, I find out as I pull into Acme/Lingo Flagpoles. Jeff Lingo is a fifth generation flag pole maker. John C. Lingo, his great, great grandfather, a tugboat captain on the Delaware River, started making wooden spars in 1897.

At the time, he was one of twenty-seven spar yards on the Camden Waterfront using trees to repair masts, booms and gaffs on sailing ships. John C. Lingo AND SONS, was soon making flag poles as well, eventually making the switch to steel. They have flagpoles all over the country, including the White House. Still a family business, and still in Camden, they're now Lingo Inc., a manufacturer & designer of "tubular metal pole products." Son Jeff spun off the flagpole business to the Pine Barrens.

He tells me his own tale of photo serendipity. A few years ago he was on his boat on the Delaware River on a Sunday afternoon when he passed the Camden Aquarium. The flagpoles he'd made for the building looked great against the puffy cloud-filled blue sky, so he took a picture with his point and shoot digital camera and posted it on his website that night. The next day, he gets a phone call from the prototype architect for the Home Depot chain. After 9-11, the chain wanted to put an American flag on their sites and they were looking for a supplier.

They open some 200 new stores every year, and now every one has a 28 foot Acme/Lingo flagpole, right in the middle of the Home Depot sign on the roof.

Heading north on Route 206 from Hammonton, in the Wharton Forest, a huge turtle on a stick just a few feet from the road catches my eye, where the Mullica River flows into Atsion Lake. Pulling over for some wildlife photography, I see Bill Schmidt in a kayak collecting a stick of his own from the shoreline of what nearly everyone describes as the "root-beer-colored" water of the cedar lake. His wife Marylee paddled up, also in a kayak. From Buena, he, a glassblower, and she, a retail manager, were in middle of their two week vacation staying in one of the cabins at the state park, and had the lake all to themselves (the turtle dipped under the water when I stepped too close). "It's what, twenty minutes from where you live," friends laugh, he says, when he tells them where he's going. Marylee adds that it's a great place to go, "especially before the crowds come after the Fourth of July." Bill also carves wooden birds, that he mounts on the driftwood sticks he collects.

Swimming is only allowed on weekends through June at the park, and after that, every day as long as there are lifeguards on duty. Bill and Marylee will be back, for a second vacation, when it's quiet again, in the fall.









Summer swimming isn't only a saltwater shore thing. If you have photos from Atison Lake's freshwater beach, send them to me as an email attachment at Roadtrip@phillynews.com. I'll post some on the blog.

This week I am on Route 206 in central New Jersey, driving north from Hammonton toward Trenton and beyond (passing through Columbus and an off-day at their weekend Farmers Market).

At least that was the idea. This is my second week of road trip blogging, and just like last week's journey up Route 611 in Pennsylvania, I am again living up to my premise that the journey is more important than the destination. Between talking with people I meet, and spending lots of time trying to get the photos just right, I am averaging somewhere around 7.5 miles per hour. So this week, my "Trenton and beyond," ended up being about as far as Lawrenceville.

This was also the same week the blog engaged in what's called “reverse publication,” with Scene on the Road web content spinning off into a column in the newspaper. So I able to make a mistake in two places instead of just one. I misquoted Teresa Laudanski in my June 16 post. I included the Russian word for "hi there," instead of the Polish one. I corrected it on the blog, and the Inquirer ran a "clearing the record" about the error in Saturday's paper. I apologize to speakers of both Russian and Polish.

The newspaper experience also presented an opportunity for editors at the Inquirer to weigh in, and most of their excellent ideas and suggestions will be implemented in the newspaper next week, and some of the online improvements have already occurred (see the more informative heading above).

That brings me to my greatest hoped-for improvement: getting photographs from you that I can post and share with everyone.

Flag Day just passed, and the Fourth of July is just around the corner, so in the spirit of Acme/Lingo Flagpoles (see the post for June 21) I am inviting you to send me your favorite American flag photos. Email photos as jpeg attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com.

I will post some for the Independence Day holiday, as I continue with my travels up Route 206, where I stopped in at the 1893 Battle of Trenton Monument (above). More to come. Cheers, TomG

This week I'm on Route 206 in central New Jersey, driving north from Hammonton toward Trenton in Burlington County. If you listen to traffic reports on KYW radio, you know the weekend boiler plate announcements: "Westbound Schuylkill backed up due to zoo volume...Kelly Drive closed for a regatta...the Martin Luther King Drive closed for recreation and in NJ...both north and southbound 206 is slow, with folks headed to a flea market in Columbus...."

So as I approach the several acre Columbus Farmers Market on a bright sunny morning, it is with anticipation of seeing hundreds of bargain hunters at the outdoor flea market. Well, the outdoor market is open Thursday, Saturday and Sunday year round. I'm here on a Friday. So what I see are rows and rows of empty 12 foot wide spaces with empty wood tables, and in the middle of it all -- two trucks. Beside one, Art Weyman is tossing boxes into the back of a stake bed truck. Behind the other, a garbage truck, is George Faber. They and their crews are out early cleaning up the grounds after a busy Thursday, getting it ready for the weekend.

Weyman is normally the one who opens the flea market gate at 5 am -- most of the vendors have been waiting since 3 am. "I'll line them up like horseshoes, like a big S," he explains later during his breakfast break. On this day though, "three guys called out," so he's picking up cardboard for recycling with seventeen year-old Don Cummings (in passenger seat, at right), in his third year as summer help. It doesn't take long to fill up the bed, even with mother nature occasionally undoing their work: "seems like everything we start card-boarding, it gets windy."

Angel Lova with vendor left-overs.

Working with twenty year-old Angel Lova picking up yesterday's one-of-a-kind antiques and collectibles -- today's trash -- Faber asks me if I want the discarded copy of On Photography by Susan Sontag I've spotted. Her classic 1977 collection of essays included a line about photographers just like me-- and you? -- taking pictures, on road trips and elsewhere : "Essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality."

I let him toss the book into his bin along with old clothes, a pillow, a chair, a broken lamp and a framed still life.

Here's a thought for the day.

Sontag described photographing people as "something predatory." Comment below on how you feel about her view that "..to photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."

So, what do YOU think? Does photography steal your soul?


Let me know. And don't forget to send in your favorite American flag photos for posting here during the week of Fourth of July. Email jpegs as attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com.

Plastic shopping bags were banned in South Africa in 2003, where some called them the country's "National Flower."

These bags are on the INSIDE of the Columbus Farmers Market. The high fence keeps them from blowing out onto Route 206 (rear) where I first saw them (not as dramatically back lit) during my drive north from Hammonton to Trenton and beyond. Even as I am taking this picture, the market's cleanup crew is along the fence picking up.

In March, San Francisco became the first big American city to ban the use of plastic bags -- unless they're biodegradable. Around here, Ikea has started charging 5 cents to customers who want plastic shopping bags.

Driving north on New Jersey's US 206, the Pine Barren and rural scene turns urban as the highway nears Trenton. Passing a few blocks from the NJ State House I head up the hill toward the neighborhood known as "Five Points." There a towering Doric column of granite (twice as high as the 75 foot tall obelisk I saw in downtown Easton on last on last week's road trip) rises over a small traffic-circle looking park. Since I'm still soliciting YOUR flag photos, it's the American flag I notice first in front of the Trenton Battle Monument. Atop the memorial, George Washington is pointing toward the site of his victory at the Christmas 1776 Battle of Trenton. But I'm still focused on photographing the flag, and just as I park, a huge dark cloud moves across the bright blue sky.

Waiting for the sun to return, I walk over to the bench where Carl Bailey, a US Postal Service letter carrier from Williamstown is taking a break on his route. He takes the NJ Transit bus into Camden, then the River LINE light rail to Trenton every morning, so we end up talking about public transit, when Henry Williams approaches. He is is 75 and works as the guide/ elevator operator at the site. He is there every Thursday through Sunday. "It's my place," he tells me. " I'm here, it's open. I'm not here, it's closed."

Williams has just received a cell phone from the city, and walked over to ask Bailey's help to make a call. After introductions, I'm intrigued by the elevator. The column is tall, but not very wide. I noticed the railing at the base of George's feet, but it never occurred to me I could go to the top. "It's a small elevator, probably the oldest in the state," he says of my pleasant surprise.

Inside the four-passenger elevator, Williams promises we won't get stuck. But if we did, he reassures me, it wouldn't be for long. "You can go underneath and crank the cables by hand." That's why he got the phone, he says. "I just call, and the police, fire department and everyone will be here in minutes." The monument, dedicated in 1893 originally had steps. They installed the elevator in 1920.

Just as we come down, Paul Gianakon from Hockessin, Delaware and his eighteen year-old daughter walk up. Majoring in history and the classics, Julie Gianakon is starting at Princeton University in the fall and had to drop off some paperwork. They visited the battle site in Princeton, and plan to see Washington's Crossing on the way home. At the top, dad asks Williams if you can see where Washington crossed the Delawarem and about the house where Col. Johann Rall, the commander of the Hessians, was taken after he was mortally wounded (during the battle, 22 of Rall's men died, 92 were wounded, and 948 were captured. Only four of Washington's men were wounded in this first American victory of the war). The humidity is low and the sky is clear. We can see for miles, but none of us knows where the house was.

As we all leave, I ask Gianakon's recommendation for a Delaware road trip. I know US 13 is the longest signed highway in the state, but that, he says is all four lane all the way. So he suggests Delaware State Route 9, not as long, but mostly all two lanes. So that's where I'll be for Week 3.

Week 3's road trip, driving south on Delaware Hwy 9 from Wilmington to Dover, started with me reading that New Jersey is home to nation's worst overall road system. The news was from a report, by the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank in California, and it put NJ in last place in its annual highway performance report for the eighth straight year. Who knew? Maybe we just get accustomed to traffic and congestion and road repairs. Route 206 in NJ, last week anyway, was in great condition. I'll see how the mostly two lane highway 9 stands up this week (Delaware ranked 40th out of the 50 states, Pennsylvania was 36th) .

At the northern end of 9, on the edge of Wilmington's "Little Italy" neighborhood, I find city Parks and Recreation Dept. worker Juan Santiago grooming the well-kept John Hickman Field. We get to talking baseball. Asked to name his favorite major league player, "Sammy Sosa," comes out of his mouth immediately, before he quickly adds, almost apologetically, "of course, Roberto Clemente." About Sosa, he continues, "First thing, he's Spanish. And he's got a good swing." Sosa hit his 600th home run last week and could be the only Texas Ranger in next month's All Star Game.

South of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the 500 foot cooling tower at the Hope Creek Nuclear Power Plant (which shares an island with the Salem plant) dominates the water landscape. I can see it across the Delaware Bay in NJ as I pull into the deserted parking lot at Augustine Beach, just as Melissa Todd and her kids are shaking off the sand. She tells me she asked her kids, Shawn Todd, 12, and Jacky Matics, 8, to make a choice between the beach and going out to buy a pool. They chose the beach, which in the late 19th century was a favorite retreat for Philadelphia day trippers like me (Melissa's from nearby St. Georges). Big city pleasure-seekers, according to the state's Coastal Heritage Greenway Auto Tour driving guide, would cruise down the Delaware River aboard the steamboat Thomas Clyde, "crowding the pier and amusement buildings which have long since gone the way of steamboats themselves."

Continuing south on Delaware Route 9 from Wilmington to Dover the two-lane blacktop winds through marsh meadows and wildlife refuges. I pass a half dozen tiny parking "lots" designated for numbered hunting stands (they're assigned by an on-site lottery during the season). On the bridges over the tidal rivers and runs flowing into Delaware Bay are dozens of snagged fishing lines and tackle hanging from power lines.

But at midday, on a weekday, with temperatures in the low 90's, there isn't anyone out fishing. Until just south of Port Penn I find Gabe Santana, Onesimo Godinez, and Marcos Tiaseca along St. Augustine Road.

They are all from Newark, co-workers at the steel-mill in Claymont, and with no work this week, decided to fish. "Sometimes we just grill right here, says Santana, "It's just a way to relax, hang out together." He's casting a net for bait.

When they first arrived earlier in the morning, the minnows were jumping, so they got back in the car and drove to buy a net. By the time they returned, Godinez says, the tide switched. It's quiet while I'm
there. I hear stories of previous catches, stripers and even huge catfish. "A big old ugly face," says Santana. As proof they're not just telling fish stories, Godinez produces a photo in his cell phone from last October. That's him holding two big stripers - striped bass - in a photo he then sends to MY cell phone. That's also Godinez holding the bait, and in the photo below, not ready to give up yet, up to his knees, way out toward the cooling tower.