Scene on the Road

I'm on one of the country's original numbered highways from the 1920's. Signs and most of the addresses along U.S. 322 call it the 28th Division Highway, in honor of the 28th Infantry, the oldest division in the U.S. armed forces. It remains in service today as part of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. The 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team based in Northeast Philadelphia is a part of it.





Heading toward Lancaster County, I first notice an unusual number of trash trucks on the highway, and before I can even wonder to myself, I see the sign for the Lanchester Sanitary Landfill, the Chester County Solid Waste Authority's 160 acres landfill. A smaller attached sign raises still another question, as it reads: "Scenic Overlook. Sundays 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., open to the public." It's not Sunday, but compliance officer Terry Devine says she'll take me up. I can never resist a scenic spot. The scenic overlook was opened six years ago and provides a panoramic view of the Conestoga and Brandywine valleys for both turkey vultures and visitors. That's Struble Lake 4.2 miles off in the distance.

The overlook area includes four picnic tables, a hitching post for horse drawn carriages and two binocular stations. It was used as a municipal waste before it was capped and closed. At 1100 feet above sea level, it's one of the highest points around. In a few years it'll close temporarily, and the valley between it and the current waste site will be filled to make one big mountain - 60 feet higher.

"Don't take a picture of that," Devine says, almost reading my mind as I break one of my Rules of the Road, again, and jump out of her truck to photograph - the sign. "It's really ugly," she says, "we're getting new ones." The site is very clean - they even have a station where recycled water washes the mud off departing trucks - before they return to Route 322. It doesn't even smell.

In my previous post I mentioned avoiding the Amish part of Lancaster County, because I had already photographed it last summer for the newspaper. That's only half of it. One of the most difficult things for photographers just starting out, and the question I am most often asked when I speak to camera clubs and student photographers - "how do you take pictures of people?" It's not always easy - that's why you see so much still life or landscape photography.

But as a newspaper photographer, it's one of the most important parts of my job, and over the years, I have become comfortable photographing people. Except for people who object to being photographed for personal reasons. Not like convicted felons walking out of the courthouse. I mean real reasons, like religion, like the Amish.

Here's the other half of it. Last summer's road trip wasn't my last time photographing here. I was part of the team of Inquirer photographers who covered the Amish school shooting. I also mentioned Susan Sontag in a previous post. She wrote in one of her On Photography essays: "..to photograph people is to violate them...it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed." I like people, and like photographing them. And except for the felons, I believe most people like being photographed.

I remember taking a cross country trip with my family to California in 1967 and visiting relatives in San Francisco. All of the cousins piled into the back of my uncle's station wagon so we could drive down to the Haight-Ashbury district to "look at all the hippies." I can't recall whether I compounded my teenage embarrassment by taking photos with my Kodak Instamatic 104.

I make a few stops at some of the busier farm stands, where I avoid taking photos of the (mostly) kids on duty to collect the money from the shoppers. I shoot them - the shoppers - and the fruit and vegetables, while stocking up on corn, cantaloupes and tomatoes for myself.

Just outside Blue Ball, I notice an Amish schoolhouse on Weaverland Road, and make a right, just to look. By the time I pass it, and find a safe place to turn around, I spot the wagon wheel farm-stand, where it appears the young worker is playing a Gameboy or other electronic game. He's actually reading a book - Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls. Is that for school? I ask him. "This," replies ten year-old Jonas Lee Nolt, "it's for fun."

Diana Keat with the Delaware County Camera Club sent me some photos of Lancaster County life she shot this past spring. Below is one she describes as her "favorite picture...it freezes all sorts of things in time, the weather, the plowing, the farmer." She continues, "This is an important shot to me because who knows how long into the future we will be able to witness something like. It's just a segue from the industrial revolution, I suppose. Very peaceful and tranquil, the exact reason for visiting this small part of our world."

I'm still looking for your photos and comments to share with readers and other photographers. I'll be driving up Route 309 past the Eagles training camp toward Bethlehem where Musikfest begins this weekend. Send me your photos from previous years - or even this year's - as email attachments to roadtrip@phillynews.com.

My Week 7 Road Trip ends in Hershey in the dark. As it's evening, and I'm saving carnival rides for a future journey, I head instead to the "short term" parking lot. You can save the $8.00 daily parking fee - if you plan to stay less than two hours - by going to the Chocolate World parking lot. Mostly a shopping area, it's where park visitors have to pass before they can leave the grounds. I'm amazed at how much chocolate is being purchased, and how many people are posing for photos outside. That's eight year-old Michael Salva at left, from Groveland, Mass., visiting Sesame Place, Hershey and the Crayola Factory with his little sister and parents Jen and Orlando.

On Week 8's road trip, I'm driving north on Route 309, with a detour into Bethlehem, home of Musikfest - which after over twenty years is still one of the world's largest FREE music festivals. Joe Trani, at right pulling cable - a DT-12 audio snake - through the Polka tent, is one of many workers still setting up for Friday's opening. Tickets ($18-$49) are required for the big name performers like Ludacris, B.B. King, Meat Loaf, Deep Purple, Stone Sour and the Black Crowes. All the other - more than 500 - musical performances on 13 indoor and outdoor stages throughout Bethlehem’s historic downtown are free.

But I'm missing all the music, and photos. So I'm asking for YOUR photos (not your music). I'll post them before the festival ends in ten days. Send them as email attachments (with caption info: who and where) to me at roadtrip@phillynews.com

There's also lots of food, children’s activities, arts and crafts, closing-night fireworks, and tons of vendors, like Mike Ginsburg, who I met setting up his tent. He's originally from Cherry Hill, but now lives in NYC's East Village when he's not traveling to fairs around the country selling silver jewelry and Rock t-shirts.

Oh, and along the way, I also stopped by the Eagles training camp at Lehigh University to hang around with the fans.

Those photos will start showing up in this space on Saturday, so please check back tomorrow, and all week long.

I'm taking a detour off Route 309 to go into Bethlehem for the Eagles Training Camp, the 12th year the team has started the season at Lehigh University. Bill Watkins, from Tulsa, Oklahoma visiting family in Mays Landing, plays catch beside the bleachers before the players take the field.

The old coach's theory used to be that camp held in a remote location would develop a team chemistry, but only about half the NFL teams still travel to an out-of-the-way location for their training camp anymore, most deciding that unlike baseball's ritual spring training, it's not worth packing up everything for a such a short camp.

"We keep adding seats and they keep filling up," says Eagles President Joe Banner on the team website about crowds that are reaching into the double digit thousands each day.

Since home game seats are hard to come by, and regular season practice fields at the NovaCare Complex are closed to the public, these free twice-daily practices are the only way for most fans to experience the team.

Following morning practice, fans with selected lottery numbers have an opportunity to get autographs from a different group of pre-selected players and coaches each day. In the afternoon, the autograph tent is one of the few areas with shade...

...the team merchandise tent is another.

Camp closes before the first pre-season game Aug. 13 in Baltimore, so the last day to check out all the action will be Aug. 11. Click for directions.

Besides the shopping tent, there is a kid zone where young players can test their football skills, or get a free souvenir photo with a cardboard Donovan McNabb (without the knee brace). Fifteen year-old Alison Worthington, on the left, and her friend Alexa Parrila, 16, of Royersford posed for their photo...

...as did Helene Dempsey of Palmerton. She brought her grandkids Dustin, Madison and Hunter.

A day of field goals in the Kid Zone - even kicked with size 4 shoes - can take a toll.

Twenty year-old Doc Stacknick of La Plume fields the kicks. At the end of practice, as I leave Lehigh headed back toward 309, I pass three kids on the side of Mountain Road, behind their homes.

Twelve year-old Ryan Kern, rear, his brother Kevin, 7, and Paul Roth, 11, holding the sign, missed out on autographs when they attended camp yesterday, so they went swimming today. Then they came up with the idea of letting the players come to them. A couple Eagles honked horns as they drove by. My back was to the road, but Ryan says he saw Donovan smile and wave through the half-open window of his white SUV.

My week 8 road trip on Route 309 toward Allentown was cut short by a detour and a day spent at the Eagles training camp, along with a stop to see preparations for Musikfest in Bethlehem. I had to leave before the ten day music festival with hundreds of free performances even got underway.

These are two of MY photos from LAST year, but I'm still looking for YOUR Musikfest photos this week so I can post them here. Send them as email attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com

I also didn't make it north of Allentown, but Ann Spaeth of Miquon did. She and her husband have a Christmas tree farm in Berks County and she sent me some photos of old covered bridges in Lehigh County, not far off Route 309. Below is her photo of Rex's Bridge (1858) on Jordan Road, over Jordan Creek.

Ann has always loved old barns. She tells me when she was younger, her grandparents had a "very old" farm in Chester County, where she and her brother spent hours playing in the barn. Later, she had a friend who lived on Harts Lane in Lafayette Hill, where she recalls, "there was a big barn on the corner of Ridge Pike, where Ace Conference Center (formerly Eagle Lodge) and golf course are located." She would go there "to climb up the high, built in ladders and jump in the hay."

Ann sees covered bridges as specimens of the same period in time as those old barns, with "the same elegance and sturdiness." She wanted to take these pictures "for the future to remind family members of their grandeur." Below is Schlicher's Bridge (1882) on Trexler Game Preserve Road, also over Jordan Creek.

I got the dates and descriptions from the website of Drexel economics professor Roger A. McCain, who tells me the it was the bridge's "pictorial appeal" that first hooked him, along with "and a general interest in local history/historic archeology." Below is Ann's photo of Geiger's Bridge (1860) on Orchard Road, also over Jordan Creek.

They're not as famous as the ones in Madison County, Iowa but the "Bridges of Pennsylvania" have provided Spaeth, McCain and many others a "fun reason for a drive in the country." The professor says on his web site that "covered bridges symbolize small-town America. Something from the nineteenth century, a little archaic and strange to nineteen-nineties eyes (his site's been around a while), picturesque and sentimental, 'kissing bridges' recall a time when life was simpler and closer to the land -- if only in our dreams."

Bedsides the visiting of baseball parks I've discussed previously, there are many subjects photographers "collect" with cameras. Sound like another invitation to send me your photos? How about Mail Pouch Barns? These are chewing tobacco advertisements which were painted on the sides of barns in Pennsylvania, Appalachia and the Midwest, starting in the late 1890's as billboards. Many of the ads, which are now National Historic Landmarks, are fading slowly into roadside history.

This is one of my photos of a Mail Pouch Tobacco barn outside of Kane in McKean County, from a road trip I took along Pennsylvania's Route 6 a few years ago.

I have a newspaper assignment that will take me to Wyoming County this week. After taking the Northeast Extension up past Scranton and shooting the assignment, I plan to drive home on Route 309 for a Part II Road Trip. So Week 9's Road Trip will be whatever I discover between the coal region and Allentown.

I'm on assignment for the newspaper in Wyoming and Wayne Counties photographing Arlen Specter's own annual road trip during the U.S. Senate’s August recess. He's visiting constituents all over Pennsylvania. After staying overnight, I decide (because I didn't get very far on Route 309 last week) to skip the upper Northeast Extension, and drive back south to Philadelphia on 309 toward Allentown.

I remember my first drive through the coal region of Pennsylvania when I arrived at the Inquirer in the early 80's - think Billy Joel's "Allentown" or Bruce Springsteen's anything to get in the right mindset. I was coming here after living in Kansas City and Dallas - think J.R. Ewing and Southfork Ranch - so it really was like I was entering a parallel universe. I was especially amazed at how close to the road all the houses were in the small towns.

Twenty years later, driving along the mountains of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, I marvel at how, like almost everywhere else in America now, the interstate passes shopping complexes and malls with the same Starbucks, Borders, Target, Panera Bread, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Williams Sonoma you see in the big cities.

But many of the smaller town sights that first intrigued me - the huge culm banks of waste coal, rusted machinery and old breakers along the roadways - are still around as I head south toward the Eckley Miners' Village, one of the hundreds of company mining towns or "patches" built in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania during the nineteenth century.

So I've got "ghost town" on my mind when, just outside Hazleton, I see an old overgrown parking lot, with three street light poles.

I spend the next half hour wandering the site, shooting close-ups of the weeds winning their battle with the concrete, trying to figure out what this place might have been. There is no large foundation next the lot, so I guess it wasn't a factory or business.

About a hundred yards away, there is an old baseball backstop and a former basketball court, so the best I can surmise is that it might have been a recreation center. But the parking lot seems too large for that, and the field is too far away. The light poles also seem wrong.

As I leave, I find utility worker Don Lynn, of Berwick parked under the shade next to my car, eating his lunch. I ask him, and he certainly remembers the place. It was Angela Park, he tells me, and he was there many times. If you're from Northeast Pennsylvania, you remember it as well. If not, check out Joel W. Styer's website defunctparks.com

Photographers seem to be drawn to abandoned industrial sites, deserted areas and places where other people once - but no longer - worked, lived, or played. The ghost towns are not just in the American West, and photographers all over wander old power plants, railroad yards, factories, hospitals and schools.

I am not encouraging anyone to go anywhere they shouldn't - but if you have any abandoned site photos, please send them to me - as jpeg attachments to roadtrip@phillynews.com - so I can post some here. And be careful. According to the Department of Environmental Protection, twenty-nine people have died while trespassing on Pennsylvania mine sites alone in the past six years.

I was intrigued enough to look around the Web, and these are some of the photographers' sites I liked:

Just up the street from our newspaper, fellow Inquirer photographer Michael S. Wirtz photographed the Divine Lorraine Hotel in North Philadeldphia. It opened in 1894 and was later occupied by Father Divine and the Peace Mission Movement. It will soon be condominiums. Click here for his slide show.

One of many local photographers to shoot inside Eastern State Penitentiary, Dennis W. Felty, says it's "...a very powerful and moving experience. More than any other institution I have visited, you can feel the presence of the individuals who lived their lives in the 8x12 foot cells." His website is: northstargallery.com

Shawn Dufour photographs abandoned sites around Boston and says it's an adolescent compulsion he never grew out of, "like the urge to check out a purportedly haunted house at the end of the block." Photos at: www.abandonedsubwaytunnels.com

Also in New England, photographer Rob Dobi says, "I find as a photographer I am able to give these abandoned structures a second life of sorts, preserving them in a picture for others to see and interpret their history for themselves." Go to photos.dobi.nu/

Driving in the deserts out west at night, Troy Paiva says he "watched with fascination as the countless abandoned and bypassed roadside buildings and towns unreeled in the windshield, dead and forgotten." His Website: www.lostamerica.com/

And finally, Uryevich, in Russia writes, "from my really happy childhood I developed a liking for any rusty metal constructions, cement blocks and for the silence of the wind which walks through this. I like them because there is an infinite life that stays there throughout the years..." www.abandoned.ru/

Now back to the village of Eckley. In 1854, a mining firm leased land from a Philadelphia estate and and began mining Council Ridge. The company built a village for the miners and their families with stores, schools, and churches, exercising enormous control over the lives of their workers as they supplied the economic, educational, and religious needs of the villagers.

Over the years, English, Welsh, and German miners were supplanted by the Irish immigrants and then by southern and eastern Europeans, like everywhere in anthracite region.

Strip mining gradually replaced underground mining. Steam shovels stripped away the land around Eckley as well as part of the village.

The work force and the population of Eckley gradually declined, different mining companies bought and sold the town until 1969 when a group of Hazleton area businessmen purchased it and deeded it to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

It's now part of the Anthracite Museum Complex, which includes the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum and Scranton Iron Furnaces and the Ashland Museum of Anthracite Mining, all administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. is now a museum devoted to the everyday lives of the anthracite miners and their families, preserving a way of life which dominated the anthracite region for over 140 years.

In the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region that large structure above is called a breaker. This was where the coal was of separated from the rock and slate. It was then crushed into usable pieces and sorted by size. Everywhere else in the world it's called a tipple. You can still see breakers all around the area. This one though, is just a movie prop. It was built - at 1/3 scale - for the 1970 movie, The Molly Maguires, starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris. It has concrete columns inside the facade, but it's an accurate depiction of a 19th century breaker, so the museum kept it.

Albert and Donna Tyson, visiting from Waymart were more impressed by the mine owners' homes. Or rather by the contrast. They lived in the largest, most fashionable houses, located away from the miners' cottages and the village's buildings. Albert, a retired twenty year U.S.Navy veteran told me about one of the Gothic Revival houses as they walked up toward me along the row of worker's house. "The boss lived in a mansion. It's a shame how the people lived, he had three maids and a gardener."

North of Allentown on Route 309, I am drawn to a town on my Pennsylvania road map. There are many reasons why I stop while on the road. Sometimes it's a sign on the side of the highway, sometimes a recommendation, other times just a feeling. This time, it's the name. Hometown.

Whenever anybody every asks me where I'm from, I have a lot of different answers. What I don't have is a hometown.

I have a birthplace, Mt. Clemens, Michigan. I also lived in Duluth, Minnesota, but I left before I can remember anything. By the time I entered kindergarten we were living in D'Iberville, Mississippi, where my family stayed until I was in junior high. During those years we lived in Japan. Then, it was three different high schools: in South Carolina, the Philippines and Nevada.

So, looking at the map, I realize that's something I've always wanted. My own Hometown. Maybe I could claim a part of this one. All I have to do is buy some officially licensed merchandise.

I figure I can find a bumper sticker, or coffee mug, or refrigerator magnet with "My Hometown" on it. Even settle for an "I went to my Hometown and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt," t-shirt.

Turning into what I guess might be a Main street, I stop in at a few businesses. Nothing even close. How is it, I wonder, in this shop 'til you drop country of ours, can there be a consumer demand that isn't being met. Isn't this the most capitalist country in the world? But I'm a photographer, so I can make my own souvenir - a self portrait standing in front of the big, bright, smiling "Welcome to Our Hometown" sign. If I can find one.

Maybe I missed it coming into town, so I drive back out. Maybe, going for inclusiveness, the city mothers and fathers even have a huge "Welcome to YOUR Hometown" sign. More disappointment. There isn't even a "Hometown City Limits."

There is a brand new shopping center with a Wal-Mart. Is it the Hometown Center? Nope, the sign reads" "H.T. Commons." City Hall and/or Police Department? Turns out the municipal building is for something called Rush Township. There is a Hometown Farmers Market on the road out of town, across the road from the Hometown Tavern, but that's it. Finally, after almost giving up, and starting to head back down Route 309, I spot the Pepsi / Hometown Fire Company sign.

Sitting inside the open garage door are firefighters Jim Stewart and Bill Arner.
Not finding any Hometown logo product or worthwhile signage, I'm still looking for at least a good hometown story to take with me. Stewart tells me about "a guy who stopped by, kinda like you, and he said, 'hey, I'm from Hometown too. Hometown, Illinois.'" Was he a firefighter? I ask. Did he want to trade fire patches? "No, he just wanted to say hi." So I turn to Arner. What do people say when you tell them where you're from? "I live in Tamaqua," he answers.

Stewart's grandfather Oscar was the first fire chief, and his garage was the first firehouse, chartered in 1941. They're now the Rush Township Hometown Volunteer Fire Company #1. The old surplus Army Jeep they use for brush fires still has a Hometown sign on the door, but everything else is Rush Township, Stewart tells me. The new trucks sport a frog logo because they are painted with green trim on white - "Kermit on steroids" - Arner jokes,

Behind the trucks, on a bench in the back of the garage, I spot an old bronze World War II memorial plaque, "In honor of the men and women of Hometown..." Stewart takes me outside to show me the brand new replacement plaque, for Rush Township heroes, erected just this year. "They wanted to include everybody, from all the wars, and from all over the township." he tells me.

For many, the end of August means a last chance to get down to the shore. It also means this blog is winding down, and since I've only made one road trip in New Jersey all summer, I decide to go out with a two week jaunt along all the shore routes.

So I'm zigzagging across the state, trying to take as many of the back roads to the shore as I can. U.S. Routes 9, 40, 30 and 322; NJ Routes 47, 49, 50 and 72; along with County Roads 542, 559, and 561. The ones I missed, including those routes ending up on the northern side of the AC Expressway, I'll hit next week.

I'd also like to wrap up the summer with some of YOUR road trip photos. Send me your jpegs as email attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com. I'll post them here over the Labor Day weekend and run some in the newspaper with my final column.

Just north of downtown Woodstown, I miss a turn and end up facing a compound of warehouses along Woodstown-Mullica Hill Road. They're painted with aphorisms, platitudes, maxims, proverbs, folk sayings, and half-truths, all older than this Ford pickup parked outside.

Bob Moore, on the right below, the manager of Helena Chemicals' Woodstown warehouses, has worked in the leased space for fifteen years. He tells me the writing on the walls hasn't been re-painted or re-touched for over 30 years. The warehouses were built by Earl L. Erdner, starting in the late 1940s and expanded and were painted through the 1960s.

He's walking with Bob Tull, who's making an insurance site visit for the Chubb Group in Philadelphia, and, as an engineer, is even more impressed with the wooden trusses inside the buildings.

Everyone I meet here has a favorite quotation. Bob Pedrick, who's unloading trucks, likes this one. I chose the photo with his forklift blocking part of it, so you can fill in the age yourself.

"A quotation at the right moment is like bread in a famine."
the Talmud (not on the wall)

In front of the Cowtown Rodeo, on the other side of Woodstown - the WESTERN side.

A week before they head back home to Chelyabinsk, Russia, university students Daria Makushina, left, and Alena Tuckmacheva play solitaire on their laptops along Route 9, at end of a day working at a campground in the U.S. Department of State's Summer Work and Travel Program.

Day campers arrive at the Cape May County Park & Zoo.

A shuttered WaWa, on Route 9 outside Avalon, near Exit 13 on the Garden State Parkway. There is a new Super Wawa near exit 17 in Ocean View.

Paul Sweson cleans the door glass at the Ocean View Service Area on the Garden State Parkway.

Marvin Katzer of South Hampton stops to look at the history display in the service area's Visitors Center on his way home. He first came to the shore to work as a busboy between his junior and senior years in high school. He worked summers in Atlantic City all through college and met his wife Arlene there, eventually buying a house in Ventnor.

Stewart Segin, with the Upper Township Public Works Department, catches up on his reading while he takes a lunch break along Route 50. He's always been a reader, since the days of the Bulletin.

As August is the biggest time for vacations to the Jersey Shore, and I've only taken one other road trip in New Jersey all summer, I'm avoiding the Atlantic City Expressway and taking two weeks this time to hit as many of the back roads as I can.

I'd seen crabbers on previous road trips in Delaware and Maryland, but the activity didn't compare to the action on the Route 50 bridge over Cedar Swamp Creek. Pete Joslin and Grace Dolan of Williamstown are each pulling up a trap with two or three crabs as I drive by, and when I pull over and walk up, they're hauling in another. "They're riding the top of the tide," Dolan tells me. "Outgoing," Joslin adds when I wonder if it's coming in or going out.

Crabbers marks - measuring the minimum 4-1/2 inches from tip to tip of the longest spikes on the shell - are carved into the top of the railing all along the bridge.

Most of those Joslin and Dolan pull up are wide enough and legal. "I only had enough rope on him to drop three pots," Joslin says as I admire all the crabs in his bucket.

While I'm there, the tide changes, just as I start to photograph the cool reflections in the water below us. The surface is no longer smooth by the time I figure out how I want to compose the photo, and all I have to show are photos that include me, before the ripples have completely taken over.

I try not to do too much research before I head out on a road trip, as I don't want to prejudice myself too much. So I don't know anything about the "Historic Train Station," until I see the sign on Route 50 in Tuckahoe.

I turn off to find the closed station and empty parking lot with some old locomotives and passenger cars on the rails nearby. I am shooting close-ups (what I tend to do when there are no other people around).

Just as I'm ready to leave, debating whether or not to walk farther down the tracks where more trains are parked, I notice the old locomotive doesn't have a single speck of rust, and there's a guy in a greasy t-shirt carrying a huge wrench. Hey, this is a real working railroad, I realize.

He's Mike Schreiber, a locomotive electrician and air brake technician from Ohio, making one of his monthly stops at another of his railroad or grain elevator clients around the country. His '99 Ford pick up has 459,000 miles on it. While not the Short Line in Monopoly, it is a short line railroad, one of more than 400 around the country, 13 in NJ alone, according their trade group, the ASLRRA. Schreiber tells me I need "to talk to the boss," who just happens to be walking out of the old switch tower.

Tony Macrie, on the left, is President and General Manager of the Cape May Seashore Lines. He's always been a railroad man. "I've done other things in my life, but it's all reverted to this," he tells me as the men take a break. He offers two excursion services, both running on the old "Steel Speedway to the Shore" once belonging to the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (those ARE in Monopoly). There is a 30 mile round trip between Tuckahoe and Richland, and a 22 mile round trip between Cape May Court House and Cape May City.

Right out of high school, Macrie worked at Philadelphia radio station, "Famous 56," - WFIL-AM, in the early 70's and at the end of his shift would rush down to 30th Street Station to watch the big Silver Meteor - with its huge GG1 electric locomotive. "In those days you could just wander around the station," he recalls, talking to the railroad workers. "There was real railroad camaraderie. You don't see that anymore." Unable to land a government job with Conrail, Macrie took the advice of one of those old timers and went up Bucks County, learning the railroad "from the ground up," working on the tracks for the New Hope & Ivyland Railroad. He created the Cape May Seashore Lines in 1996, "but it was conceptualized in 1986, when I started talking to the state."

At least once a month, he says, "Somebody comes up and says 'my kid loves trains.' Now you heard that in 1940, even in the 50's and 60's, but not in 2007. It's Thomas the Tank Engine. A whole new generation is appreciating trains."

The words are barely out of his mouth when teenagers Tom Rinck and Max Gandolfo, ride up on their bikes. Rinck, who lives right across the street, greets Schreiber with a "you here again?" and I get to see that railroad camaraderie up close. They catch up, Rinck telling the mechanic he's working on the rides on the Ocean City Boardwalk. "Oh, you're a Carney now," Schreiber chides, "when do you start losing your teeth?"

Rinck says he has always been into trains, at least since he was two. "I used to wake my mom and dad up, choo choo."

The teasing continues until Schreiber, carrying the worn slip ring he just changed on the 1955 Pennsylvania Railroad GP9 7000 locomotive, asks the sixteen year-old to help carry an empty box - then slaps his face with a greasy palm as Rinck extends a hand.

"Aarggh, I saw that coming," Rinck yells as he jumps back. "That's locomotive grease," Schreiber deadpans. "The real thing. Clears up the skin, Smells good too."

Don't forget I'm looking for some of YOUR road trip photos. Send me your jpegs as email attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com. I'll post them here over the Labor Day weekend and run some in the newspaper with my final column.

I make one of my favorite pictures of the summer as I'm on my last road-trip, zigzagging across South Jersey on back roads to the Shore. I'm doing this - for a second week - on a last chance to get away, like many of you, before the unofficial end of summer.

t’s early evening on Route 542, just past Green Bank and Lower Bank, when, after a rainy week, the clouds suddenly blow out, promising a beautiful sunset. So I’m looking for something to put in front of it. As I drive over the Wading River, I glance toward the water and see that same purple-blue sky reflected on the placid surface.

Only after I pull over and start walking back toward the middle of the bridge do I notice the bicycles. Then I look down and see the boys fishing. Standing on some pilings are 14-year-old Nathan Hagaman and his 12-year-old friend Jake Adar of nearby Washington. It's hard to imagine a more carefree life.

I like the picture because the scene epitomizes everything my road trips have tried to capture. The drives have been about the freedom to do something you enjoy, with all the time you need to do it - without any self-imposed pressure telling you should be somewhere else already. I never would have seen the boys if I hadn’t gotten out of my car to walk. And would never have noticed the water and sky in the first place if I’d been focused only on getting someplace.

As I said in my first posting here, it's about the journey, not the destination. And that's a perch Jake's pulling in.

I'll be posting more photos this week from my day trip on routes that are an alternative to the AC Expressway, but looking ahead, I'd like to wrap up the summer with some of YOUR road-trip photos. I've gotten a great response from readers like Steve Smith of Burlington, N.J. who shot these sailboats there, racing on the Delaware River.

There is still time to send me your jpegs as e-mail attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com. Include info about the photo, including when and where you shot it, along with any of your thoughts about photography along the road.

For more inspiration, click on their names to see photos (like the one at right) by my colleague Eric Mencher, and the essay by Inquirer writer Alfred Lubrano on the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. Kerouac also wrote the introduction for the U.S. version of Robert Frank's seminal photographic book, The Americans.

I'm still crisscrossing South Jersey on back roads leading from all the Delaware River bridges to the Shore as the summer, and this blog, winds down.

The hand-painted fruit and vegetable signs recall the old white on red signs for a brushless shaving cream that once lined two-lane roads before the Interstates: "He's the boy...The gals forgot...His line...Was smooth...His chin was not...Burma-Shave"

Besides WaWas and abandoned motels, farm stands and ice cream shops are the most common sights along the road. On the Black Horse Pike - U.S. Route 322 - Gene's (those are their signs on the left, above) and Carmen's markets are a couple miles apart, and each has its own devoted customers. Located near Hamilton, the farm stands have long answered the beach-bound question, “Are we there yet?” (Yeah, about two-thirds the way.)

The paint on the sign (at left) for the Pleasant Valley Farm & Market is not quite as fresh as the fruit will be, when it re-opens soon with pumpkins, apples, cider, honey, jams & jellies and other fall harvest fare. The family started farming in the 1920's and the stand has been on Route 40 outside Mays Landing since the 1960's.

Millville's Jeannett Springsteadah has been selling strawberries from a table on Route 347 near Leesburg Belleplain Road for years, but this is the first summer she's sold produce.

Bob Block, from Cape May Courthouse pulls over while I'm picking out some vegetables. "You need better signs," he tells Springsteadah. " I saw you the other day, but I was going too fast to stop."

"Yeah," she says, "You gotta keep up with the traffic or you get killed."

"Don't mind the smell, it's vanilla," she tells me as she packs my dozen ears into a white plastic bag. "It's not the corn, it's a kitchen bag. I get them because they're cheaper. I buy a hundred. You wouldn't believe how many I go through."

Those aren't "Before and After" paint jobs. The two oversize Renault Winery bottles are on the White Horse Pike - U.S. Route 30 - in Egg Harbor City (left) and U.S. Route 9 in New Gretna. The 143-year-old winery and resort in Egg Harbor City offers tours, wine tastings and, on Oct. 14, grape stomping.

I am amazed by the resolution of satellite photos on the web. That's the unpainted bottle (its shadow anyway) seen from space. I remember as a kid the arrival of dozens of folded gasoline company maps in our mailbox signaled the approach of my family's annual summer driving vacation, so I am still partial to paper maps. But I have used the internet maps a number of times to find out where I was when I made a particular picture and my note-taking wasn't so hot. It has also helped Inquirer graphic artist Alan Baseden create the great map with clickable links (see it atop the bar at right). Instead of having to use a GPS device to get my latitude and longitude, I can tell him exactly where I stood using Google Maps or Yahoo! Local Maps. If you click on a street, it tries to give you an address, but by right-clicking on an empty space, or in the middle of the road, the co-ordinates appear instead.

...back to that other most popular roadside attraction, ice cream (and water ice).
On a hot day, I don't need more than one of those ubiquitous cutout signs of a twist cone. But the big banner announcing the return of Mango called to me. All I could do was think of the hot-pants wearing Chris Kattan character on Saturday Night Live. At the window of the Custard Hut outside Greenfield on Route 50 is another, even better sign, photoshop'd by Stephen DeScioli's uncle. He gives me my milkshake, but even more importantly, answers the question that was begging to be asked: Why did the mango leave? DeScioli, who's family owns the shop, says the distributor was having trouble supplying the demand, so they substituted tangerine. Mango had been gone for a year, but customers kept coming in every day asking for it. "We took the hint," he says, so they worked with the distributor to bring it back.

At Richman's on Route 40, just outside Woodstown, I find more ice cream calling my name.

The full service restaurant opened as a salesman training facility in the 1950's, back when Richman's was a real dairy. They've been bought a sold a few times since first selling homemade ice cream in 1894, but the current ice cream, made in Philadelphia, still uses the original recipes. I sit under a tree eating my cone (strawberry) with Nathan Gray (chocolate), who's here with his daughter Pamela (butter pecan) and her three year-old son Skyler (vanilla and chocolate, in a cup). They live just up the road, and Nathan brought both his girls here as they were growing up. Pamela even worked at Richman's through high school. Skyler couldn't finish his ice cream, so grand dad stepped up.