WILL and I rode back here to the humble manse, I switched bikes and we rode a little west of the Berkshires through a pretty terrific rain and wind storm, camped that night in Taconic State Park, New York.
Finishing up breakfast the next morning, oatmeal in the lid of the 1-liter pressure cooker, my main on-the-road kitchen utensil.
Saw these little guys everywhere, the rain had drawn them out.
My socks were wringing wet from the day before. I dried them about halfway on my gasoline stove, got my boots on, packed up the iron piggy and we were off. Rode together about 100 miles that morning before I cut east for Connecticut and Will kept riding south for his home in southeastern Pennsylvania.
That was a Sunday, the 8th. Monday was a day off, and on Tuesday the bride and I enjoyed a day with friends from Pennsylvania who were traveling through to Cape Cod and Maine. That was Thanh, Thuy and their son Charlie. The next morning we headed out for Pennsylvania in the camper van, camped at French Creek State Park that night and spent the next day with Marc, an old friend from 64th Street in West Philly. We met his wife for the first time, Bronwyn, from Australia, and Marc gave us a box of bourbon cookies he had made from his late mother’s recipe.
Josephine Golaszewski. I loved her. She had the gift of hospitality. She’d see you walking down 64th Street and order you to come sit at her dining room table to sample whatever she was whipping up in the kitchen.
Fifty years later, I think about Josephine and Mr. G. all the time.
Holy moley but these things are serious. They’re full of 100-proof Jim Beam. Hard to stop eating them unless it’s for a nap.
As a bonus, Marc gave us a photocopy of the recipe, in Josephine’s handwriting.
Our visit with Marc and Bronwyn was a pleasure that sped by all too quickly. Pam liked Bronwyn instantly, they hit it off.
Before we knew it we were off to Caledonia State Park near Gettysburg. Beautiful park. We camped there for two nights.
The great man himself. Now he belongs to the ages, that eternal line by Edwin Stanton.
Hats off to the Union Army, for preserving institutions that so many Americans, in our own time, seem eager to burn down.
I wanted to see Culp’s Hill, hardly a major draw at Gettysburg. Everybody’s all about Little Round Top, the Devil’s Den, Cemetery Ridge, where Pickett aimed Lee’s ill-fated Charge of doomed men who would never get there.
I wanted to see Culp’s Hill for the Rhode Island connection: General George Sears Greene, a native of the town just south of us, Warwick. He denied Culp’s Hill to Confederate forces that were bloody eager to get up to the high ground, fell the trees and set up artillery to rain down on the Union.
There’s not much scholarship about General Greene, in part because he didn’t leave a written record, not even a cache of personal letters. He had no one to write to. He had retired from the Army years before the war started. His wife was deceased, his sons were off fighting somewhere. Green was 62 years old at Gettysburg and pretty much alone in the world.
Some amateur historians will tell you the South might have won not just the Battle of Gettysburg—but the war—if Greene had failed at Culp’s Hill. If he had lost the high ground to the attacking force that so greatly outnumbered the New York volunteers he commanded.
I was surprised to see a statue of Greene on the hill. I had been under the impression he had mostly faded from memory, all but unrecognized for his leadership.
That said, you can easily miss the statue placed there in 1909. There he is off to the left. He not only faces the woods but is just about in the woods.
This is a bearded General Greene in bronze. I read somewhere once, long ago, that he was clean shaven through his military career and most of the war, bucking the trend of the day, all those beardy generals who looked like they were posing for a cough drop box. If I recall the story correctly, he retired his razor on the day a Confederate marksman shot him through the jaw. He grew his beard after that to help conceal his disfigurement.
Well anyway, that’s the thumbnail on George Sears Greene, who survived the war and lived to be an old man of 97. What a life.
Here are the woods his statue faces…
Having bucked up oaks that size and counted the rings, I’ll take a guess and say it likely sprouted a generation after the fight for Culp’s Hill. Helluva thing to think about trees nourished on the blood meal of a slaughterhouse, but there it is. Life goes on. Everything keeps trying to live.
Our second night camped at Caledonia…
In the morning we were up early and headed west again.
Every day, in passing, apropos of nothing, I give her that Mac Davis line: Baby baby don’t get hooked on me.
Depending on the day, she comes back with one of two retorts: She might say Too late. She might say Okay.
Before we left, a fellow named Phil, the camp host, urged us to see the Flight 93 National Memorial. It’s about an hour west of the park. We were headed to Pittsburgh to see Jim and Patty, friends from Kansas who were in town for a convention. Shanksville was pretty much on our way. We were both glad we went.
The Tower of Voices. The wind wasn’t strong enough to ring the chimes when we were there, one for every passenger aboard the flight. Quite a thing to see nonetheless.
A National Park Service ranger told the story of the flight for about 100 listeners, maybe 150 of us, I didn’t count heads. He did a good job. He had the emotional power of the story at his command without becoming melodramatic or maudlin, the easy default of a lesser storyteller. Should have snapped his picture but I hadn’t been thinking ahead to the neglected Nickels in recent weeks… sorry about that…
Pittsburgh was a whirlwind. Great food, fine companionship, interesting conversation. Jim, Patty, Pam and I toured the Phipps Conservatory together and took a happy-hour cruise on the rivers at sunset.
Jim and Patty have traveled the world, most often the remote places of the world. They know their flora and fauna by the Latin names.
Here they are in the lobby of a lodge near Torres del Paine National Park, in southern Chile. They were there on a puma-spotting expedition. The fiberglass or plaster or whatever-he-is man in the middle is decked out in traditional sheepherder’s garb and pouring a cup of yerba mate.
On the morning after the river cruise, we headed east to Rhode Island as Jim and Patty headed west for the Shawnee National Forest, on the Mississippi River in southern Illinois. I’m sure I’ve been there, or right by there, on one of the iron piggy river rides of yesteryear.
We ran it home to RI that day, 560 miles. A long day on four wheels for me but just about right on two. We probably should have camped somewhere around the halfway mark. We talked about Lackawanna State Park just north of Scranton, but we were so quickly by it we just kept going. We got to Rhode Island with the setting sun behind us and a harvest moon up ahead.
It felt good to squeeze in the last of the summer of ’24 with a couple of weeks of nonstop running around.
If I have time next week I’ll see if I can scribble up something worth saying for Phantom fans.
Cheers to all, and thanks for reading.
Tony DePaul, September 21, 2024, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
