Scene on the Road

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