October 2
Razelle and I woke up early this morning. We had planned an ambitiously long drive to leap-frog over several states to reach her brother Ralph by the end of the day, over 500 miles to the north and at least 9 hours of driving time away (I expected it to take us as much as 12 hours with stops). We set our alarm for 6:21 AM, that magic hour our talking alarm clock once got stuck on at home in Beer Sheva and which we have continued to use as our wake-up time during all the years Razelle needed to get up for work.
Belle was up and dressed when I passed her door on the way to the bathroom for the morning routine. We got to talking about family history and some of the events her sisters had related to me while we were in Arizona. She told me how our family made the transition from Ukraine to US, based on all the stories she had listened to and absorbed as a child at family gatherings. We were involved in this conversation when Fred and Irene reminded me that we had planned to get an early start.
Razelle and I put our stuff in the van and shivered in the morning cold until the van warmed up. The sun had just risen and was slanting into our eyes; it hadn't had time yet to chase away the cold. It hasn't felt this cold in the van since Butte, Montana. We followed Fred, Irene and Belle to an IHOP out by the highway. We passed the same synagogues again and I pointed them out to Razelle. I wondered aloud what the congregation that meets at the conservative synagogue might be like. It was intriguing to think about it.
We were seated for breakfast at the IHOP near a table full of policemen. Apparently Columbia's finest appreciate the fine cuisine here, too. Seeing the policemen reminded Fred to tell me that in South and North Carolina the highway patrol allows some leeway with driving speed, but he warned me that speed limits in Virginia are strictly enforced. I told him I'd keep that in mind while in Virginia. Fred and Irene were annoyed that our waiter was not getting our order out to us, and he and Belle let the waiter know that Razelle and I had a lot of traveling ahead of us and he was delaying us. Their indignation got results. I had my usual bowl of grits. What better meal than grits could there be to start a Carolina morning?
I shared my information about aid to Israel with Fred this morning. He thanked me for looking it up and said he would read the websites I'd gone to. We talked some more about economic philosophy at the table and I was pleased by how politely this went. We hadn't met all the family members in Columbia, SC that I had anticipated meeting, but we certainly spent wonderful "quality-time" with Belle, Fred and Irene.
Fred showed me that I-20 was just up the street and after a few group pictures in the IHOP parking lot we were on our way again – pointed east, to go north. When I-20 crossed I-95, we made the switch in cardinal directions (and interstates) and drove the van on a heading that pointed us toward Maryland (and ultimately to New Jersey in just 12 more days). Upon entering this major artery (I told Razelle that from our perspective it was actually the inferior vena cava of the east coast because it was taking us toward the heart – meaning Manhattan – of the US) I saw license plates from Florida to Maine traveling with us. The license-plate game I started out west only ended here in South Carolina on I-95 when we finally, after more than 2 months and more than 10,000 miles, finally saw our first Delaware and District of Columbia plates.
We cruised along on cruise control, watching place names pass in accord with the GPS display until we reached the frontier between the Carolinas. Large billboards enticed us with witty advertising, directing us to stop "South of the Border." I had intended to. I wanted to give Razelle the opportunity to see it and compare it to our experience at Wall Drugs in Wall, SD. I'd been to this place before at night on a trip to Florida with my mother in 1981. It rivaled Las Vegas at night then, in terms of the brightness of its flashy signs and floodlights. This time Razelle and I arrived before noon on a weekday after Labor Day, and the place was practically empty. It was still a sight to see, with a towering figure of Pedro wearing his sombrero and with a lot of other brightly painted kitschy themed buildings. South of the Border was a success because in the 1950s it sold cold beer to travelers on the South Carolina side of the border who couldn't legally buy it on the North Carolina side (Wall Drug, by comparison, gave away free ice water). South of the Border also did a big business selling fireworks.
We spent over an hour here at this "schlock market," as Razelle called it, without realizing that that much time had passed. Inside the large gift shop we saw a lot of really cheap merchandise, but still, we found things we deemed worth purchasing. I bought some backscratchers, and we bought a canvas tote bag that looks like it will last. We also bought a souvenir refrigerator magnet. They had coffee mugs that have "SOB" (South of the Border) on them, but I couldn't bring myself to get one. Razelle chatted with the cashiers, whose southern accents were the thickest we'd encountered during our entire time in the South. They were required to stand the entire time they were on duty. If they sat they would be fired. We really felt sorry for them.
We crossed into North Carolina right here and entered our 30th state. There must be a lot of good reasons to take one's time seeing things in this marvelous state … but we didn't. We fixed our eyes on the road ahead and drove. Well, I did, anyway; Razelle had her eyes closed in slumber most of the time. We eventually did stop to fill the tank and take care of our needs at a "Travel Center" truck stop in Kenley, NC (you'll need an atlas to find it). I tried out my credit card at the pump, but when asked to enter my zip code it didn't recognize it. I know the drill by now. I went to the cashier and waited for verification. The cashier on duty didn't know what she was doing and messed up. She had to wait for a manager to push the right buttons and undo what she had done. This was a tense moment, because I didn't want to go through what I'd gone through in Florida all over again. The problem was solved and I bought my gas. Razelle and I toured this truck stop; we looked at a display devoted to Edward Teach, AKA Blackbeard the Pirate; we looked at merchandise that catered to professional truckers and, of course, we used the bathrooms. This place also had hot showers and a lounge and game room with a TV in it. Sunday football was on and I could hear the men roaring their reaction to a play on the football field all the way from the bathroom.
In the parking lot, we ate in the van before we drove off. Razelle watched a lower-class family of several adults and several children interacting among themselves. One of the kids pretended to use a payphone and his father squelched the child's imagination by telling him it was a foolish thing to do. This cultural vignette gave Razelle, herself an educator, a pique of sadness to observe. She said that this father had no idea what kind of damage this does when he mocks his son's imagination.
Driving ever-northward we next entered Virginia, our 31st state. I felt the need to pull off the highway at the tourist information rest stop we came to just inside of Virginia. While we were here, we saw some other interesting characters using this place for the same purposes. The one that caught Razelle's eye was a young man in a grey jumpsuit bound with ankle and wrist chains being escorted by a pair of female officers. We watched him shuffle out of a prison van, past our van and disappear with his guards into the building.
We were not making good time today, and the widest part of Virginia lay between us and Ralph. I remembered what Fred had said about speed enforcement (and I remembered the convict in chains) so I set my cruise control for exactly the posted speed and watched other motorists pass me for a while. Eventually, though, I bumped up the speed on my cruise control a bit more until all of us were traveling north at about the same pace.
Not long after the first pit-stop in Virginia I had the need for another. I wondered what I'd eaten or drunk that made this next stop so urgent. We found an exit and a place to go and I took care of it. However, the farther north we went, the more often and more urgently I needed to go again; and again and again. I wasn't able to last more than 20 minutes to half an hour. I was getting very worried. This was beginning to look like a major health crisis and I didn't know if it was going to get worse or finally go away. To make matters worse, we went through Petersburg and Richmond on I-95 in very heavy traffic that at times slowed to a crawl. And, with a light rain and dusk becoming darkness, the lights were distracting. I was not a happy camper. One of our stops was at a rest area between Richmond, VA and Washington DC, where a large tour bus also stopped. The men's room was free, but the women's room had a line out the door, so Razelle had to be patient. By the time we left this rest stop I must have finally drained my kidneys. The rest of the way into the District of Columbia was a lot easier to cope with, and the traffic had thinned out.
I had programmed the GPS to take us right into Washington, DC, past the Washington Monument and Capitol Building and out again toward Baltimore. The idea was to reach these national landmarks during daylight. But alas, it was after 9:00 PM by the time we saw these. Everyone had gone home, and the streets were conveniently empty; but we didn't see much. We recognized the Pentagon, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building as we passed by them. But we didn't stop to admire the view. Our day wasn't over until we could turn off the van in front of Ralph's home in Baltimore. So we pressed on.
We entered Maryland, our 32nd state, and drove on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (Razelle said it reminded her of the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut), past Columbia, MD to the Baltimore Beltway around the west side of the city. Eventually, we reached our exit and I urgently needed to go again, but at least I'd lasted close to an hour, which meant my problem was subsiding.
We reached Ralph and Anita's home by 11:00 PM. It had taken us 15 hours to get here. It was an ordeal, I must admit. We traveled from Columbia, SC, through the District of Columbia, past Columbia, MD, to get here. The grass was wet outside Ralph's home. We dragged a minimum number of items across their wet tree-lawn and into their house and called it a day. I was too exhausted for much of a visit with my in-laws, but Razelle had slept enough during the day to do the visiting for both of us.
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