Scene on the Road

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.