#39 WEST VIRGINIA

“Almost heaven”…  West Virginia certainly is beautiful.  The infamous Hatfields and McCoys hail from the Mountain State.    The feud started in the Tug River Valley in Aug. 1882 when Ellison Hatfield was killed by three McCoy brothers.  Supposedly there was a stolen hog involved but court records indicate a long standing dislike between the families as early as the Civil War. 

 

West Virginia was originally a part of Virginia.  Residents were isolated by the terrain causing conflicts between the highland pioneers and the tidewater easterners which became difficult to overcome.  By the time the Civil War broke out the divide escalated.  When Virginia seceded from the Union, West Virginia seceded from it.  President Lincoln declared West Virginia the 35^th state in 1863.

I couldn’t help humming John Denver’s Country Roads as I entered the state from Maryland and wound my way along narrow curvy roads to Clarksburg.  While gritting my teeth with overloaded trucks passing me and biding my time to do some passing of my own I suddenly felt very American.  Not really a patriotic politician type of American but these were my people too, even if they were trying to run me off the road.  West Virginia is not my home but even if I leave the USA next week and never return I will be an American and all of the millions of other American are my people whether I want them of not.  I didn’t want to die on the road amongst “my people” but it definitely gave me something to ponder.

My WV book (see below) yielded a quote that spoke to me:  “…now I know people not from here probably don’t understand our feeling for these hills.  Our love for land was not spectacular.  Our mountains are not like Western ones, those jagged awesome ones, your eyes pulled to their tops.  But that is the difference, I decided.  In the West, mountains are mostly horizontal.  We live in our mountains.  It’s not just the tops, but the sides that hold us.”173     I come from the world of big, Western mountains but understand the way these mountains envelope you must be a sensation you always crave if this is home.

 

The Clarksburg / Bridgeport area was my home for the night.  I selected the destination rather randomly based upon geographic location rather than any specific points of interest.  The town of Clarks burg was pleasant to stroll through but offered little culture.  I should have been there a few weeks earlier when they were hosting the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival.  There were a few very promising looking Italian restaurants.  Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was born in Clarksburg in 1824

 

The next day I made my way north through the home of West Virginia State University, Morganville.  West Virginia forms a peninsula at the top squeezing between Ohio and Pennsylvania.  The intriguing community of Moundsville sits along the banks of the Ohio River. The Adena Indians created artificial hillocks 2,000 years ago near Moundsville as vertical graveyards.  In the mid 20^th century Moundsville was home to the Marx Toy. Co., at one time the largest toy manufacturer in the world.  Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Robots and other toy classics are on display at the museum. 

 

West Virginia rates dead last in the League of America Bicyclists rating.  I had no problem believing that statistic based on my impression of the roads, though there are several good mountain biking trails.

 

West Virginia produces 15% of all the coal in the US.  Much of the troubled history of the state involves the coal industry.  In 1920 the Matewan Massacre lead to widespread clashes between unionizing coal miners, coal operators and law enforcement.  In 1972 the Buffalo Creek mining dam collapsed, killing 118 and leaving thousands homeless.

My West Virginia book recommendation came from 50 States of Literature:  Strange as this Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake.  I received a crash course in the consequences some mining practices have brought upon the area.  From the back cover:  “In a West Virginian town, people live with the constant threat of a black flood that could wash out their world without notice.  The latest coal boom, is upon them and mountaintop removal is turning the mountains to dust and wastewater.  Workers struggle with layoffs, families fight to stay together, and children seek escape from the blasted moonscape craters.  This is the world of Ann Pancake’s lyrical and passionate debut novel, based on interviews and real events, which explodes into a harrowing – yet life-affirming – conclusion.”I know that there is so much more to this state but my strongest impression is what the pursuit of energy sources has wrought. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8nDdPM_Qk 

www.wvihf.com 

www.marxtoymuseum.com 

http://www.bikeleague.org/news/090508bfs.php

Oh No! Not the World Series AGAIN!

While confirming arrangements for my next trip I found that hotel reservations were not as simple as I expected.  It finally dawned on me that for the third year in a row I find myself travelling shoulder to shoulder with baseball fans and media flocking to the World Series.  This is particularly ironic because while I enjoy going to an occasional game every few years, I really don’t care about baseball and certainly don’t follow the standings. 

 

Two years ago I booked a terrific fare months in advance and planned a trip to Detroit.  Yes, I was there when the Detroit Tigers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in St. Louis.  My return travel even routed me through St. Louis.  Last year I visited family Denver at a conference scheduled years ahead.  I was there when the Denver Rockies lost to the Boston Red Sox.

 

This year I will be flying into Philadelphia on Oct. 25.  The Philadelphia Phillies will be there that night playing Game 3 of the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.  That night I plan to stay in Delaware, the next night (Game 4 at PHL) I will stay in New Jersey.  Oct. 27 I will stay in Philadelphia to catch an early flight the next morning.  Now, if the pattern holds don’t be surprised if the Phillies lose the series with Game 5. 

 

Spooky, isn’t it?  Better place your bets now.

#40 INDIANA

The Indiana quarter features an Indy car.  The 2.5 mile oval Indianapolis Motor Speedway is could accommodate Vatican City, the Roman Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, Churchill Downs and Wimbledon’s Centre Court.  It’s the world’s largest spectator sporting facility with more than 250,000 permanent seats.  Today the Indy 500 is billed at the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”.  You can check it out and actually take of a bus tour of the track when it’s not otherwise occupied and visit the Hall of Fame Museum.

 

Indianapolis is 13^th largest city in the nation, with a greater population than San Francisco, Boston, Seattle or Las Vegas.  Somehow it seems much smaller.  I was here visiting family in Oct. 2007 and really like Indianapolis.  Carolyn and Marilyn were terrific tours guide and justly proud of their city.  

This time around my sister & I agreed to meet at the Indianapolis airport and planned to get to know the Hoosier State a bit better before dipping up into Michigan on our way to Chicago.  She drove from Chicago and I flew in.  We had a plethora of Road Food options in the Indianapolis area and were weighing the pros and cons of our selection for a Saturday night dinner.  The best laid of plans…  for once it was not the fault of the airlines but the highways.  Crissa was delayed about two hours so I set up camp in the TGI Fridays at IND to wait.  When she finally arrived instead of making her drive another 45 minutes to a different restaurant she joined me in my booth and we had dinner there.  There’s a distinct difference between “road food” and food on the road.  Sometimes this is the best option all around.  Rested, relaxed and fed we continued out journey to our home of the night in Carmel (pronounced like the candy, not like the coastal California home of Clint Eastwood), just north of Indianapolis.  The first automatic traffic signal in the county was manufactured and installed here.  It also was the scene of the only crime mentioned on the 11 o’clock news that evening.  I suspect that Carmel is normally a quiet, safe community, as is most of Indiana but felt it was ironic that here we were tonight. 

We left the next morning driving past cornfields and smiley-face festooned barns towards Kokomo, home of Old Ben, a taxidermied 4,700 pound steer.  Gotta love the taxidermist! 

We continued our way north along highway 31 stopping just north of Rochester at the  Fulton County museum.  The joint was jumping because this weekend was the Annual Trail of Courage Living History Festival. A  “Pre-1840 event held on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, shows frontier life with historic encampments.  Foods cooked over wood fires, 2 stages with music & dance, canoe rides, traditional crafts, cannon demo, frontier blab school (????), post office, muzzleloader shooting, storytellers, Indian dancing and FREE PARKING.”  How could we resist?  Truthfully, we did resist.  We toured the museum and the adjacent Round Barn Museum but left the muzzleloaders and frontiers-people to their own devices.  Did you know that Fulton County, Indiana is the Round Barn Capitol of the world? 

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore lies between Gary and Michigan City, IN on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.  The surrounding communities are reportedly desirable vacation property for Chicagoans.  I find it hard to image cottage on the lake nirvana when one is tucked in-between the smelly steel mills and industry of Gary and the power-plant of Michigan City but I’ve not been to any of the gated communities with private beaches so I could just be misinformed and excluded.  We did visit the Lighthouse Outlet Mall in Michigan City and had a great sisterly shopping spree.  Sales tax here is considerably less than that in neighboring Chicago making this a shopping destination.  Incidentally, the steam-spewing cooling tower that dominates the Michigan City skyline looks nuclear but it’s actually a fossil-fuel power plant.  The Michigan City Generating Station natural draft, hyperbolic cooling tower is enormous (361 feet high,  252 feet in diameter.) The tower cools and re-circulates water pumped from Lake Michigan for reuse like a car radiator.  It’s ugly.  Carlson’s Drive-in is supposed to be good stop for hot dogs and homemade root beer, Bubbles Ice Cream Parlor for a sundae but we opted for a diet coke out of the machine at the mall.

For the proverbial next time I am interested in visiting Nappanee’s Amish Acres, a 19-century Amish town with hotels, live theater, and family-style dinners and farm wagon rides.  Sounds fun doesn’t it?  Columbus is an architectural mecca with building designed by Alexander Girard, Robert Trent Jones, I.M.Pei, Eero and Eliel Saarinen and Henry Weese.  I’d like to go there too.

 

The 9^th U.S. President, William Henry Harrison was governor of the Indiana Territory before making it to the White House.  His grandson, Benjamin Harrison was a local Indy attorney who became the 23^rd U.S. President.

 

Santa Claus, IN postmarks over 500,000 holiday cards each year between Nov, 15 and Dec. 20.

 

One of the largest Amish communities in the world is Shipshewana, IN

 

One can’t forget the 70’s sitcom One Day at a Time set in Indianapolis.  Wonder what Schneider is doing today?

 

David Letterman, Jane Pauley, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, architect Michael Graves, Red Skelton, author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. came from the Crossroads of America.  As do outlaw John Dillinger, novelist Booth Tarkington, poet James Whitcomb Riley and vice presidents Charles Fairbanks, Thomas Hendricks, Thomas Marshall and Dan Quayle.

 

James Dean hails from Grant County, Indiana “Where Cool Was Born”.  So, too, does Garfield the Cat creator Jim Davis.

 

 

 

Of course there’s the Indy Wine Trail comprised of seven Indianapolis area wineries.  The oldest and largest winery in the state is Oliver Winery in Bloomington.  Again, I sample no local winery but I am considering collecting as many state samples as possible and having a 50 States in ’08 tasting.  Beware family and friends!

 

On May 4, 1871, the first professional baseball game took place in Fort Wayne.

 

Of all the 50 states, Indiana contains the most miles of interstate highway per square mile.

 

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their expedition from Fort Vincennes.

 

Indiana is listed 24^th out of 50 as a bicycle friendly state by the League of American Bicyclists.  Interestingly Carmel and Bloomington were listed as the most bike-friendly communities. The rest of the state must score quite poorly to bring them down to 24^th.  I did enjoy the 10.5 mile Monon trail in Indianapolis which connects to Carmel.  I’m surprised that Indianapolis wasn’t rated bike friendly.

 

The Indiana song just HAD to be John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s Small Town.  The Bloomington resident has Indiana in his blood and sings proudly of his heritage.  Crissa & I listened to Mellencamp’s Greatest Hits all the way through the state.

 

I’ve struggled with a book for Indiana.  The Omnivoracious Books of the State Indiana post (thank you G!)  listed several of which I’ve selected three:  Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, The Magnificient Ambersons by Booth Tarkington and A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. All authors are products of the state and all three promise to be diversely good reads.  I plan to read all and will report back.

 

The Academy Award nominated Hoosiers is my movie choice, even though I still need to view it.

 

Things to do, books to read, movies to see, travel to book…

 

http://www.indywinetrail.com/

http://www.bikeleague.org/news/090508bfs.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eDkAG3R0h8

http://www.amazon.com/Breakfast-Champions-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385334206

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnificient_Ambersons

http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Named-Zippy-Growing-Mooreland/dp/0767915054

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091217/

#38 MARYLAND

Of Maryland’s 23 counties, 16 border the tidal shore. So, to, do the state’s largest city, Baltimore and its capital, Annapolis. The Atlantic shoreline is only 31 miles. When you include the shoreline along the rivers and bays you get a whooping 3,190 miles. Every the contrary one, I opted to visited Maryland’s mountainous western arm. Cumberland, an industrial city sitting on the North branch of the Potomac is surrounded by steep mountains, was the second largest city in the state at the time of the Civil War. Washington crossed the Potomac and so did I. The river makes up the state line between West Virginia and Maryland creating an unlikely peninsula of WV. Cumberland was the terminus of the C&O Canal and the heart of the B&O Railroad (Monopoly anyone?).

From Cumberland, Centre Street (Alt Hwy 40) follows the roadbed of the first federally funded highway, the National Road, constructed in the early 1800’s. The National Road was built along an Indian footpath. The town of Frostburg, a few miles to the west, was developed around the site of a National Road Inn built by Meshach Frost. The town was a center of western Maryland’s coal mining industry and is now the home of Frostburg State University. My home du jour, the Frostburg Hampton Inn, sits just off the freeway on the edge of town. I went for a run through the very small and somewhat dilapidated heart of Frostburg and skirted the university. I’m sure it’s a wonderful place to many but I was not charmed. Perhaps I missed something?

The Appalachian Trail passes through a narrow section of the state. The trail meanders through Gathland State Park, Washington Monument State Park and South Mountain State Park. 20.47 miles of The Great Allegheny Passage run between the Mason Dixon Line and Cumberland.

You want trivia? I’ve got it…

“Maryland is for crabs” is the response to the southern neighbor, Virginia. Literally speaking, the state is for crabs. The Maryland blue variety is the state crustacean. In addition to a state crustacean, they also pays homage to local maritime history with a designated state boat: the skipjack. Don’t forget the state dog, the Chesapeake Bay retriever.

Maryland was the first state in the union to adopt an income tax in 1938.

The Chincoteague ponies on Assateague Island caught my girlhood horse crazy imagination. The horses descend from a 16th century herd that swam ashore from a sinking Spanish galleon. At least that’s the rumor.

From 1763 to 1767 Charles Mason and Jeremiah surveyed Maryland’s border with Pennsylvania, charted a line over 200 miles long known as the Mason-Dixon line.

The first successful manned balloon launch in the U.S. took place in Baltimore on June 24, 1784.

The 50 States of Literature choice for Maryland gave me what I enjoy most about a “state book:” a good read that’s relevant to my trip. Here’s the recommendation:

Exploring in Maryland By Melanie Jones
Barnaby Gaitlin is the focus of Ann Tyler’s fourteenth and perhaps most endearing book, A Patchwork Planet. As a teenager, Barnaby’s need to connect with others led to his arrest for breaking and entering to snoop into neighbors’ photo albums. Now thirty and divorced, his work at Rent-A-Back, an assistance service for the elderly, provides him with the appreciation and understanding which his well-to-do family is unable to do. His work is the one bright point in his life until Sophia, his new girlfriend and possible “guardian angel,” enters the scene and revitalizes his burnout existence. Like all Tyler’s novels, Planet is set in Maryland. The quiet neighborhood outside of Baltimore serves to nestle Barnaby with its “big, tall spruce trees” and “damp, chilly feel” that leaves a permanent mist on car windows. More so than the land itself, however, the northeast crispness of Baltimore attitude, which leaves characters like Barnaby’s clients more satisfyingly prickly than cuddly, serves as the perfect setting for the struggles of a promising loser. “What I wanted to know was,” Barnaby asks, “couldn’t people change? Did they have to settle for just being who they were forever, from cradle to grave?” In the end, the grace he has been searching for reveals itself like the quilt of the earth which a patient has made: “makeshift and haphazard, clumsily crowded together, overlapping,” but “pretty in an offbeat unexpected way.”

http://www.chincoteague.com/pony/ponies.html
http://www.ahtmtrail.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason-on_Linehttp://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/30545