Scene on the Road

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.