Scene on the Road

In downtown Wilmington, as my third weekly road trip continues south on Delaware Route 9 toward Dover, I see scaffolding and a row of painted American flags. Since I'm still asking for your flag photos, it gives me an excuse to shoot some of my own.

Artist Max Mason of Wynnewood is painting a "flag-centered tribute to the fallen firefighters of September 11," on the side of Fire Station #1 at West & 2nd Streets, within sight of the Amtrak station. When complete, it will show a procession of firefighters through time. Included will be historic Wilmington fire-stations and apparatus through the years. The mural's most prominent building, "Liberty S.F.E." is no longer around, and we both ponder the initials, coming up with many guesses, all of them wrong. It is the international airport code for San Fernando, in the Philippines, but on this building I learn later, S.F.E. stands for "Steam Fire Engine."

The mural is a community project as well, and we both look up as, "Hi Max," is shouted from a passing car. "Save the face for me," the driver yells. "That's Patrika," Mason tells me. "She lost a friend in 911," and wants to paint him as one of the firefighters. All their helmets will include "343" for the number of Fire Department of New York firefighters who died on September 11, 2001.

And here's a final reminder that time is running out send me YOUR American flags. Email a favorite roadside flag photo as a jpeg attachment to Roadtrip@phillynews.com. I will be posting them on Wednesday.

Wildlife sees me coming...and it goes...

Driving on Delaware highway 9, south of the C & D Canal - where the Delaware River turns into Delaware Bay - I find myself face to face with that most notorious coastal salt marsh resident - Tabanus nigrovittatus - the greenhead fly. I AM looking to photograph some wildlife in this teeming ecosystem, but pest close-ups aren't what I had in mind.

Other than roadkill, animal photography is difficult on road trips. Just as I can't spend the whole day in one place hoping the light will change, sitting in a blind waiting for wildlife doesn't work. I always count the encounters - like a rainbow suddenly appearing with nothing in front of it worth photographing - as an experience I can savor, even if I can't share it photographically. Already this day I've seen a fox, a turtle, a small deer, turtle, and lots of birds.

Getting back to the greenheads though, It's the birds - and some roadkill actually - that bring me to their doorstep. I spot a bunch of turkey vultures feasting on the side of the road. By the time I pull over, grab my 300mm lens, roll down and stick my head out the window - all but one of the big birds has already flown off. I manage to get off one frame as the straggler takes flight. I'm not as quick as I used to be. But the greenheads are. With my window open less than a minute, one of them has already found me and is inside my car. Which brings up another Rule of the Road: When life hands you lemons, take pictures that make it look like lemonade. So I missed the huge birds. I can take aim at a smaller target. Almost a half hour later, still parked on the side of the marsh, still inside my car, I achieve success with some macro-entomology photography.

Heading south, Delaware 9 ends near Dover Air Force Base. I learn they offer tours, but only on a limited basis. "Priority scheduling" is given to "youth groups serving high-school-age students with a recruitment potential." I find it a lot easier to visit the Air Mobility Command Museum, right off Route 9 in a restored World War II hangar that was once a Rocket Test Center. Now it houses a collection of historic military airlift and tanker aircraft. It's connected to the base so I am more interested in watching through the fence as huge cargo jets are taking off and landing on the airfield.

North of Dover is the small town of Leipsic, which is a lot quieter now than it must have been in 1814, when a booming muskrat fur market prompted residents to change the name of their town, naming it after Leipzig, Germany, a big fur-shipping port. Driving down a dead end I find Alan Pleasanton taking advantage of a slow crabbing season to replace the white oak planks on his dock with pressure treated pine. His boat (in the water behind him) is the "San," short for Sandra, named after his wife of 35 years. "I tell her every morning she's the luckiest woman in Leipsic." The painting at right is his dad's boat, the "Miss Ruth," named for HIS wife - Pleasanton's mother. It's full of oysters, he points out, back in the 1970's. Not able to count on a catch that size anymore, he opened a carryout seafood restaurant a few years ago so his daughters could make a living. But this summer, for the first time ever, this Delaware waterman has had to buy his crabs from Louisiana. Pleasanton's Seafood, is on Route 13 in Dover. He says it always gets the "Best Crabs" awards from magazines.

Earlier, near Odessa, another town named for a port in the old country - in this case grain shipping in Russia - I find someone actually catching crabs. Mike Gawronski of New Castle and his three kids and fiance are dropping nets baited with chicken drumsticks into the water off what he calls "the old wooden bridge" over Silver Run. It's not wood anymore, but it was when he fished and crabbed there as a kid. Gawronski thinks I'm a County Fish and Wildlife Agent when I walk up - just as he's showing a crab to his nine year old daughter Elizabeth. The minimum size for hard shell crabs is five inches. This one is six and a half, so he wasn't worried even if I were an agent.

Flags were invented to be noticed, and photographers have always made use of their symbolism. Like other representations of objects and concepts, flags serve as a shorthand for us, a part of our visual vocabulary.
We include them in our pictures not just because of what they say, but for aesthetic reasons as well, because they look good and usually add to the composition of our photographs (I'm more partial to hats and umbrellas).

This nation's flag flying fervor reaches a pitch today for the Independence Day holiday, when flags will be seen from barbecues to ball games to parades across America. So to both salute our country's birthday - and to celebrate this photographic element - I asked readers to submit their favorite flag photos. The one above is from Inquirer photographer David M Warren, who has over the years collected hundreds of images of flags. This one was attached to a car antenna. Enjoy.

Larry Browne is a volunteer firefighter in Doylestown and the company photographer, originally from Long Island. He photographed a memorial service there for firefighter Capt. Thomas Moody, who was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. There were 26 ladder trucks forming 13 arches with flags. Browne asked a few of the firefighters about the tribute, and they told him that they planned on doing the same thing at the services for all of the members of the FDNY who lived in Suffolk County.

Matthew E. Jones took this photo at the 2007 Phillies home opener. The soldiers are from the 56th Stryker Brigade of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

Mary B. Harris came up with a flag photo of herself and daughter Mary Louise made thirty one years ago. Harris was a big fan of the celebration for the American Bicentennial in 1976. At that time, she recalled, there wasn't a huge groundswell towards an organized celebration, so she took a longer view. She made plans for a personal celebration for herself, her family, and friends. Among other things, she designed and hand sewed a new flag for this special birthday. The seamstress is now seventy-seven years old! In the interests of family harmony, she didn't want to disclose Mary Lou's age...

Harry M. Roth said his wife thought this would be an interesting flag candidate.

Theodore Lang made this photo of the flag near the Cape May lighthouse. The white streak is a jet airplane, not a scratch.

The Church and cemetery is on Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, photographed by Jim McWilliams, a member of the Delaware County Camera Club.

David M Warren captured a reflection in the fluid drippings in the parking lot of a Cherry Hill Post Office.

I have been seeing the big hand-painted roadside billboards with the Birds of Paradise hex signs on some of my previous road trips - there were even brochures at a Delaware truck stop. So I had to detour slightly to visit while driving west on Pennsylvania Route 73 in Berks County this week. The Kutztown Folk Festival, which runs through July 8 at the Kutztown Fairgrounds, celebrates German - "Pennsylvania Dutch" - and other early American folk art - and of course funnel cakes.

I figure it's a big deal when bright yellow temporary "no parking" signs line the residential streets for blocks before the grounds. But it's the hand-lettered $3 parking signs - or could it be the lady with the Amish brimmed straw hat on the motorized scooter holding them and pointing right at me - that gets me to pull over.

Kathy Gilmore (in the hat) and Fern Kulp are "working" the parking lot right up against the festival's perimeter fence. It's actually the side yard of Mabel Kunkel's house. "We thought with the rain we'd be slow today, so we sent her away to play bingo," Gilmore says of "Mom." Technically, that would be mother-in-law. Or ex-mother-in-law. She married one of Kunkel's sons in 1969. "That's when I came into the parking picture," she says. They are now divorced, "but I still call her Mom." Kulp has been his current girlfriend for fourteen years now.

Both women work the lot together during the festival's two week run, and get along famously, along with "Mom" and the rest of f her kids, grandkids and great grandchildren.
Mother Mabel bought the house in 1950, a year before the festival began, and has been parking cars in her yard ever since, her daughters-in-law relate. "It started with friends asking if they could park here." That first year they charged 50 cents per car. They had three "quick kids" who were soon selling lemonade (5 cents a cup) alongside mom and dad. A son earned enough one summer to pay for college --at least for one semester. "College was cheaper then too," Gilmore points out, telling me her own grandson (the fourth generation of car parkers) was selling bottled water on Sunday - consumer tastes have changed as well - for 50 cents.

The festival's $12 admission includes parking, but it is in huge remote lots. Their customers, many regulars, "want to be able to find their car at the end," Gilmore says. "And to able to support the local people," adds Kulp.

As I come back from the festival to retrieve my car, Mabel Kunkel, back from bingo, comes out on the porch to say hi, and repeats many of the parking stories I've already heard. Except hers come out in a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent. "I'm Dutch-a-fied," she laughs. "This is what they come to hear. I'm the real thing."

I'll be posting more later from inside the festival, and along Route 73. When the festival is over, you can go to the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at nearby Kutztown University. They have a museum, and a year-round program dedicated to the preservation of "Pennsylvania Dutch" history, folkore, and traditions.

I'm still on my slight detour off Pennsylvania Route 73 in Berks County (the same 73 that crosses the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and becomes New Jersey Route 73) to visit the Kutztown Folk Festival (through July 8 at the Kutztown fairgrounds). As any fair-goer knows, the real purpose of a festival is good eating. And at a Pennsylvania Dutch festival, you can count on the chicken pot pie, corn fritters, funnel cakes, shoo-fly pie, strawberry shortcake, and apple dumplings. But my guilty pleasure would be ice cream (remember the exception to the "Don't eat anything that's served out a window" Road Trip Rule?). So I end up in front of the "4th Day Homemade Ice Cream" counter, where a wooden display stand is filled with cups of sundaes looking just-scooped.

Wondering if they're the plastic replica food you see at sushi bars, noodle shops or even trendier izakayas, I ask seventeen year-old Kristy Angstadt (although her name tag says "Roberta Lee") who directs me to owner Laurie Davis (name tag "Sassy') of Valdosta, Georgia. "Oh, it's real alright," she tells me. "Real mashed potatoes."

At first Davis used Crisco, but while the shortening lasted longer than a scoop of real ice cream in the summer heat, she hit on the old food photographer/food stylist's trick. She mixes up a bowl of instant mashed every morning, and dribbles each sample scoop with REAL carmel, hot fudge, strawberries and peaches.

But where did the name come from I ask. "Well, Christ rose after three days. The fourth day..." He ate ice cream! I interrupt. "No," Davis continued, "the fourth day is the rest of our lives to serve him. We plant the seeds."

So she and husband Alan visit fairs and festivals in the northeast, on a sort of "Ice Cream Ministry." They hire a crew of local young ladies at each stop to pedal the bicycle-powered ice cream maker and scoop the vanilla (one flavor only) into cups or waffle cones.