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."
