I found yesterday's entry into my travelogue a delight to write. For 30 or 45 minutes I slipped into a writing-only mental state. In addition, I sent brief emails to two people on Facebook whom I thought might be old friends of mine. One contacted me back right away— Tonya, a woman I worked with at Fedco many years ago, and whom I briefly made a re-connection with about 10 years ago after we ran into each other at the Virgin store in Ontario. It was wonderful to hear from her again, and I look forward to re-starting our friendship yet again. The second person has yet to respond to my email, but I remain hopeful that she will.
Finally, I finished reading an entire novel on my Kindle— my first! It was Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I am nothing if not sentimental about the weirdest things, and I decided that I needed to read the 'right' book to christen my Kindle. First and foremost, it was a pleasure to revisit this book, one which I previously read about 1978 or '79. Secondly, I have to admit that reading the book on my Kindle was a delight as well. I feel like something of a traitor when I say this, but it may have been *easier* to read on my Kindle than in a paperback. Paperbacks require two hands (unless one is willing to do horrible things to the spine of the book!), whereas I could read the Kindle with two, one, or no hands at all, depending on how comfortable I felt at any given moment. I can't tell you how nice it was to set the Kindle down at times and merely click the button for a page turn. At one point, while I was sitting in my car in a nice park, I even propped the Kindle on my steering wheel and read hands free.
On the down side, however, the conversion to a digital edition was not kind to this particular book. All trailing double quote marks were shifted one space to the right, making them appear to begin to speeches, rather than mark the end of a speech. This was frequently disconcerting, making me re-read many sentences to get them back into the right context, and throwing me out of the narrative briefly. Also negative, but at a much different level, I am a lover of the physicality of books, and the Kindle cannot replace this. I have spent too much of my life gripping books and riffling through their pages. This level of addiction will never fade.
Yet, a short time after finishing the book, I found myself at Barnes and Noble, killing time more than anything else. While there I found a few volumes that I'd like to read. Rather than buy, them, I went out to my car and there in the parking lot I went online with my Kindle and searched the Amazon store. I found one of the books I wanted and downloaded it immediately. When I got home later I flagged another volume in Amazon's store as one I'd like to see in a Kindle edition.
I suspect that the next several years are going to be like those five years after CD's debuted and we early adopters had to make many compromises until our tastes could be entirely satisfied by the catalog of CD titles.
Anyway, back on the east coast, only a few hours after landing in Philadelphia and driving into New Jersey, Russell and I have gotten the car restarted after a battery incident. We drove straight home from here— 'straight' being a relative word since the rural roads of New Jersey run all over the place. We continued to pass through many small towns, and I heard many interesting facts from Russell about these places of his youth. (His youth, not really mine, even though I lived in the area from the age of 8 to the age of 15. Except to shop or dine out, we never really wandered the back roads enough to know them well. We stuck mainly to the base or the near-by surroundings.)
20 minutes later we arrived in Crosswicks, a small town, and the center of Russell's youth. As near as I could tell, there are approximately three streets that define the town. I'm sure there are more when you expand the definition of the town a bit, but I'm going to stick to three. Before getting to his house, we circled the town once, in a lap of a few minutes, Russell pointing out significant buildings as we passed by. It's an understatement to say that Crosswicks is an enchanting town. The houses are nearly all Colonial in style. Russell calls them 'saltboxes,' a term which I'd never heard before. A few of the later-built houses are in the Victorian style. FYI: 'newer' in Crosswicks refers to a house that may only be 150 years old.
As I said, Crosswicks is enchanting in appearance, but not mockingly so or ironic in any way. If Hollywood tried to re-create Crosswicks, it would be cloying and sentimental, whereas the real town is very matter of fact. Coming from California as I had, Crosswicks was a step backwards in time. In California nothing is seemingly older than 20 years. Our fast and shallow life style ensure this— as do the fires that sweep through every year now! Not so Crosswicks. In addition, the other big difference when compared to my home is the complete lack of crass commercialism. There is not a single strip mall in the town. In fact, Russell informed me that most of the rural towns were actively fighting off this form of progress, and areas of commercial interest were small and segregated from the actual towns.
So, after a shirt loop of the town, we arrived at Russell's parents' house in downtown Crosswicks. ('Downtown' as defined by central placement, rather than commercial hub.) From this point forward in my narrative, you may want to refer to my pictures on Flickr. (The later ones appear at top.)
I couldn't tell you if my first impression was to be delighted by Russell's parents or by their house. I was immediately charmed by both. Russell's mother is a southern-raised woman who has retained her southern grace and propriety even after 45 years in New Jersey. His father is a jazz musician by trade and dry witted. I found them both to be engaging and the best hosts one could hope for. Every meal we shared was rich in food and conversation.
Their house was an additional mute host, as important to the gathering as anyone else present. Though there is some discussion of its age within the family, Russell is confident that it was originally built about 1757. If you're doing math, that's just over 250 years ago and two full decades before the American Revolution! It has more personality than many people I've met. (I know, what a horribly sarcastic thing for me to say) When you're walking through the house, you know there is not another one like it with the same history or the same absorbed personality anywhere else on the globe. What a change from the land of tract houses!
My room was to be in the attic, two floors up. Russell's family built out the attic a few decades ago, and my room was his room a long time ago. Up two narrow and steep staircases and across one creaking hallway floor, the attic was comfy and warm. There was a worry that I might be cold at night so we moved a heater up the first evening, but, in fact, I had to turn off the heater after a few minutes, and I never turned it on again. My only concern was that the nearest bathroom was on the second floor, across that creaking floor. I don't mean to say that the floor moaned or other wise made a slight noise. No, it made very sharp and loud creaks and cracks, making it impossible to sneak across. I was alarmed every night when i had to walk back and forth across it in order to get to the bathroom, but I was assured that they were all accustomed to the noise.
After throwing my bags upstairs, we all reconvened on the first floor, in the living room, where Russell's mother had prepared a tray of crackers and cheeses and fruits. We shared these treats with an initial round of conversation, wherein Russell narrated our progress from the airport. This turned out to be the pattern at most meals— one or more narratives of the day, always including one from Russell, were shared. From there we moved to the dining room table to enjoy a meal of carrot and potato soup, followed by chicken curry. It was delicious! Russell continued our adventure up to the point where the battery died, at which point both of his parents pointed out the battery device in the trunk, which I also had spotted. Apparently the car was given to these events and they were prepared to deal with it.
Dinner was late and my day had been long so shortly afterwards I retired upstairs for the night. I went to sleep quickly, drifting off to thoughts of how fascinating it was to be in a different bed 3000 miles from home, almost in a different decade or century from the one I had started in.
And that will be enough for today. Please join me again tomorrow for part five and the onset of my first full day in New Jersey.
Until next time!
"A small town is a place where there's no place to go where you shouldn't."— Burt Bacharach
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