Scene on the Road

I'm driving "south" in Maryland, on US 40 - the east-west route between New Jersey and Utah. I probably confused some readers in my previous post. The classic transcontinental highway just runs parallel to north-south I-95 for a while before it heads west near Baltimore. US 40 itself doesn't go north-south.

But US 40 is one of those old cross country road trip routes - not unlike the much more famous Route 66, where Martin Milner and George Maharis' characters drove a shiny new Corvette convertible in the 1960's television show.

During its heyday, US 40 went from Atlantic City to San Francisco, and was one of the highways created in the 1920's when the U.S. government took over the numbering of federal roads. So in many sections of the country, US 40 replaced classic road names like "Lincoln Highway," "Victory Road" and "National Road." These couple dozen miles of US 40 in Maryland are NOT on the old Lincoln Highway, which is a road well documented by fellow Inquirer photographer Eric Mencher and his wife Kass Mencher. They have been shooting the Pennsylvania portion - US 30 - for years now and last year together retraced the entire route to the West Coast.

Not wanting to step on their toes, I am avoiding a Lincoln Highway road trip this summer, but this still gives me chance to drive on a piece of that particular American road history.

The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 diverted or killed off many of the rest of the cross country US highways.

As the stretch of I-95 in Delaware is the most-expensive toll road on the East Coast (and with an upcoming increase, is set to become one of the costliest in the nation) many drivers use US 40 to bypass the booths, where if they look hard, they can see remnants of the Golden Age of Automobiling.

On my drive south on US highway 40 in Maryland, I'm in my car, waiting out a sudden afternoon downpour. I'm sitting in front of the Concord Point Lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay in Havre de Grace. On a road trip I never "just" sit in my car, so I'm experimenting with different shutter speeds, apertures and planes of focus trying to combine these various elements to make an interesting picture of this oldest continuously operated lighthouse in the state. I always feel liberated when shooting a well known landmark, and enjoy this kind of photography the most, as I believe I have more latitude for creativity.

From their brochure: "...on the banks of the historic Susquehanna Flats, the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum houses one of the finest collections of working and decorative Chesapeake Bay decoys ever assembled."

Earlier, while stopped at a traffic light in Perryville, I begin to wonder (told you I never just sit) just what it is about a road trip that makes it so appealing. I figure it's not unlike other hobbies - collecting coins or stamps or refrigerator magnets. Visiting all fifty states or the presidential birthplaces is just another way of collecting - encounters, experiences, anecdotes - and snapshots. Speaking of sitting, America's two favorite pastimes, according to the Harris Poll, are reading (35%) and watching TV (21%).

Between raindrops, Nancy Schmidbauer of Joppa is leading a line of women walking along HdG's homes, downtown restaurants and dozen antique shops. They are the wives of the National Association of S Gaugers, having their convention at the Travel Plaza on I-95. As the local, with the host Baltimore American Flyer Model Railroad Club, she organized the tour. "This gives us a couple hours away from the guys. We don't want to spend all day looking at trains." The group collects 3/16" model trains.

I meet David Richman and his son Ray on Aberdeen Proving Ground's "Mile of Tanks." From Silver Spring, they're also on a road trip, with their nine year-old grandson/nephew. I recall every tank I've ever seen parked outside all the VFW halls and all the American Legion posts around the country, and figure there are probably that many - and more - here at the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum. They have hundreds of tanks and big-guns-on-wheels spread over 25 acres.

But all l think about is John Candy and Joe Flaherty doing the "Farm Film Report" on SCTV, where they explode things behind the barn. "That blowed up good. It blowed up real good." Or David Letterman dropping watermelons from his roof.

It's not all laughs though. I don't see anything about IED's in Iraq, but there is a Desert Storm memorial outside the museum, next to the 30 foot tall bomb, and inside are collections of all kinds of guns and displays of ammunition, chemical weapons and even non-explosive booby traps from Vietnam. I also learn that shrapnel was a person long before it was an ingredient of car bombs. British artillery officer Henry Shrapnel designed the new type of artillery shell two hundred years ago. They used it against Napoleon where the Duke of Wellington wrote of its effectiveness in the Battle of Waterloo.

I'm heading north back to Philadelphia, still on US 40 in Maryland, where my day-trip has turned into two because of the IronBirds night game in Aberdeen. I'm thinking of the golden age of motels and diners before the Interstates as I pass a small "postcards" sign.

Figuring they might have cards from the days when US 40 went from Atlantic City all the way to San Francisco, I meet Mary Martin, who took over "The World's Largest Postcard Store" - her mother's mail-order business in Perryville a few years ago.
"I didn't just put that there for fun," she tells me as we start looking for vintage US 40 cards. "It's not like all those 'World's Best Crabcake,' we really are." She has MILLIONS of cards. We talk about the "collecting gene." Her mom, dad, and she has it, but not her siblings. Her son does - "I could tell when he was three" - but not her daughters (that's seven year-old Anna running above). Her dad started a coin-stamp mail order business when he was still a teen, eventually opening a store in Baltimore. Her mom became interested in postcards while tagging along to stamp shows. "This is truly her hobby grown amok," Mary says. She thinks children should do more collecting - of anything - and encourages them through her work on the board of the local Boys & Girls Clubs.

We find three vintage motel cards from places Mary thinks might still be along my route and I head out trying to find one.

It's not easy among McDonald's, Home Depots and RiteAids, but right next to a construction site in Elkton - for still one more drugstore - I see an old motel sign, or rather an M***L sign. I would have never seen it from the road, but here it is. Behind a drive-thru coffee hut, totally hidden from the highway behind HUGE overgrown trees is the 1950's Ciampoli Motel from one Mary's postcards! Dennis Prince (that's him in the photo above) is sitting on a lawn chair and knocks on a door to wake fellow residents. Dennis Mitchell (below, on the left) and Jack Patrick step into the daylight and check out the post card - sent by someone from the motel to a relative in St. Louis in 1954. Mitchell says he first stayed here, "when I got back from 'Nam," and entertains me and the others with his stories from "before the Democrats took over in Baltimore," when "dignitaries and aristocrats" stayed here all the time. I'm introduced to Nubbs, one of the community cats, "honest to God, it was born without a tail," and I leave declining an offer for dinner on their grill, but promising to mail them all copies of the card.

After five weeks of two lane back roads, I was afraid I might be sounding too sanctimonious about avoiding Interstate highways. I realize sometimes you have to get someplace freeway-fast. So, I get off my high horse long enough to decide this week I'm taking the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

I begin at Exit 356 (old Exit #30) - the Delaware River Bridge connector to the New Jersey Turnpike. If I were to keep driving west to Ohio, I'd cover 357.6 miles and pay a $19.75 toll. In looking into tolls, I learned this bridge is the only one that charges a toll to enter South Jersey (you pay here BOTH ways - on the others the toll comes as you leave the state).

Because of its limited access, my plan is to spend time at each of the turnpike's three westbound rest stops, get off at Exit 286 (old #21, Reading) then drive back east hitting two more. Oh yeah, and I'm starting this at 3 am because I'm curious who's on the road then, or more importantly, who's gotten off the highway. Plus, the night might add some visual variety to my road trip photos.

Pulling into the North Neshaminy Service Plaza (milepost 351) it's mostly empty. The three cars parked in the lot appear to have sleeping drivers. Just outside the door, Rahsan Allen, left, and Brian Cost are on a smoke break. They make up two thirds of the third shift - 11 pm to 7 am - at the rest stop. Both say they prefer the night duty (it pays one dollar per hour more) and both were initially hired to work days at the Burger King. They were switched to the Travel Mart counter (Allen) and the Starbucks kiosk (Cost) when BK stopped being a 24 operation.

The rest area is only four miles from the Bensalem entrance, so I don't expect to see many people pulling in so soon. One who does is long haul trucker Bob Hooper of Roberta, Georgia. I'm shooting outside as he walks up and asking how far away Ft. Washington is, then goes inside to check the rest stop's "You Are Here" map. He left Raleigh, NC yesterday, in the afternoon, but bad cell phone reception kept him from calling his consignee for directions, until they'd already clocked out for the day. "I usually know where I'm going," he says. But this time, "it was Plan B: get close and figure it out when you get there."

Hooper drives "anything and everything - whatever fits in a dry box." That, he explains is what his truck is. There are also flat beds and reefers - refrigerated trucks. He and Worf, his 100 lb boxer (named after the Klingon character in Star Trek) travel some 140,000 miles per year. He sleeps well at night, not worried about being bothered. "(if) you try to do something to my truck and see him look DOWN at you...you think there's gotta be something easier to do." They drove through the night, avoiding rush hours in Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

The other third of the overnight shift is Tanya Krekmanova from Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, who talks with Allen when it's slow. Her English is great.

A university student in Sofia, she's here for four months with the U.S. Department of State's Summer Work and Travel Program as a barista at the Starbucks.

She wants to travel to "New York, for sure," and to Niagara Falls before she returns home. "My cousin was there and she said it's so beautiful." So far she's been to Franklin Mills Mall and "the Old Town in Philadelphia." She'd also like to go to Las Vegas.

She's one of twenty-four International students working at the rest stop. The others come from Russia, Turkey and the Ukraine.

The sun is coming up as I merge back onto the freeway, joining mostly it appears, morning commuters. It's 23 miles to next Service Area - King of Prussia.

In the light of morning, I can now see the eastbound South Neshaminy Service Plaza right across the barriers on the other side of the turnpike. It is empty because it closed on June 30 for construction of a new E-ZPass-Only Bensalem exit. This side will be demolished as well in the next few years for construction of the long awaited interchange with I-95.