The Other Syracuse

June 10-14

Joanna and I set out on Sunday for three weeks on the road. 

Joanna had received a call from her best friend, Pat, earlier in the week. Pat said she was making a visit to New Jersey and wanted to know if Joanna would be home. 

We were already planning the trip, which would put us somewhere in Quebec Province around the time Pat would be in Jersey. It was easier for us to leave a few days earlier to visit Pat and her husband, Bob, near Syracuse.

So that’s how the front end of the trip got started.

Joanna and I left Montclair on Sunday and took I-80 West. The first stop was in a place called Clark’s Summit, a few miles north of Scranton, so we had plenty of time to stop along the way.

It started to rain, though, just about the time we left in the morning—one of those spring rains ranging from drizzle to downpour and back again. Sometimes visibility was so bad we had to hang back and go slow. At other times, the wipers were doing fine set at that now-and-then swipe across the windshield.

It was still raining when we entered the Delaware Water Gap. We parked near a trail head and saw the forest was soaked. So we decided not to get out for a walk, but to stay in the car and have a snack for lunch.

We shared a smoothie we had made that contained fruit, yogurt, flax meal, soy (or maybe almond) milk, and maybe some things I forget. We also had some unsalted cashews and dried cranberries. 

In other words, it was disgustingly healthy-sounding food for a road trip, and I was determined not to do too much of that.

We sat watching the steam rise through the trees on the Pennsylvania bank. Smoky mountains majesty. It was gloriously spooky.

About an hour later we stopped at Archbald Pothole, east of Scranton on old U.S. 6. The pothole is a result of glacial activity in the last Ice Age. 

The theory is that a hole formed in the glacier and water, mixed with grit and stones, bored a wide hole about 40 feet into the ground.

The space filled with gravel and nobody knew it was there until the 1880s. Coal miners touched off a blast that broke through to the hole. When all that gravel and water started to flow into the mine, they thought they were goners.

There’s a platform built at the edge so you can look straight down into it. The walls aren’t smooth, but instead look almost helical. Imagine a giant corkscrew gouging out the rocks and dirt.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn on U.S. 11 in Clark’s Summit. It was easy to find—one of the first things we saw as we came from Interstate 81.

About a tenth of a mile up the highway is a bar and grill called Tully’s Good Times, part of a regional chain. The rain had quit, so we tried to walk. 

But it isn’t easy. We were waiting at the light to cross the highway when we saw a sign right across from us, a walking man in a red circle with a bar through it. That means “no walking here” or “no stick figures.”

So to be safe we took the car to a place we could see from the hotel parking lot.

Tully’s has an OK list of craft and imported brews on tap. None was new to me, but many—like Neshaminy Creek County Line IPA and New Belgium Fat Tire—are old stand-bys.

We were able to get surf and turf (steak and shrimp, that is) without the Cajun rub, or whatever it was supposed to be treated with, and so we stayed.

Monday we headed north on I-81 to Baldwinsville, near Syracuse.

We traveled over more hills, past more farms and forests. We paused at the New York State Welcome Center near Binghamton.

We missed a turn near the end of the ride, but stopped for directions at a Red Apple convenience store.

We made it on the second try. Joanna saw Pat and Bob on their balcony when we arrived shortly after one.

When we got out of the car, Pat came up to me and asked, “Do you remember me?”

I surely did. “You’re the star of one of my favorite travel stories.”

In the autumn of 2011, Joanna and Pat took a river tour through eastern Europe.

They would spend a couple of days in Prague at the start of the tour, so I decided to  fly over so I could take Joanna to dinner.

I was wandering around the city because I had a few hours to kill before I met Joanna at her hotel. I was crossing the crowded Charles Bridge, when I heard somebody call my name. 

That’s not unusual. With tinnitus and a shaky conscience, I hear that all the time, and nobody’s usually talking to me.

But this time it kept up. I turned and saw under the sun Pat and Joanna.

Pat had seen a guy in a suit and a pony tail and asked Joanna if it could be Harry.

We took it easy at the house for the rest of the day and set off the next morning, Tuesday, for Alexandria Bay, a town on the New York side of the  St. Lawrence River at the Thousand Islands.

Of course, the thing to do here is to ride on a boat for a couple of hours looking at the islands large and small and the structures large and small on them.

We took a two-hour boat tour through the islands, in the area called Millionaire’s Row. Some of these imposing castles are real Gilded Age veterans that have sat on their islands for more than a hundred years.

We also passed  the statue of St. Lawrence on a bluff overlooking his river. The Thousand Islands is also the site of the world’s shortest international bridge, which links two small islands, one in the U.S. and the other in Canada.

We stopped to share a few appetizers at Riley’s by the River, a bar across the street from the pier where our boat came in.

One of the selections on tap was an Empire Brewing pale ale. It was bitter and fragrant enough to qualify as an IPA, and probably would have been perfect with bread pudding.

Wednesday’s plans ran into rain. Instead of going to Cooperstown, we detoured to the local history museum and the Eberson art museum in Syracuse.

The history museum was filled with curious artifacts and stories. Smith-Corona typewriters made in Syracuse accounted for something like 40 percent (or was it 60 percent) of the world’s typewriters at one point.

There were salt mines nearby at the shore of Lake Onandaga. 

Champlain led an expedition against the Iroquois near the lake. He had maybe 2,000 men, and there was one battle which the French won decisively. After that, the Indians withdrew as the army advanced, and the French mostly destroyed villages and crops. 

According to one account, Champlain was nearly 70 and had to be carried in a chair.

The art museum is fun. Most of them are. A local artist named 

Darryl Hughto is the subject of the major exhibition right now. 

His work is a little abstract for my taste, but still fun. Early paintings use the diamond as a recurring theme. Then there are later abstractions of sailboats, which continue the angles and hard lines of the diamond paintings.

There is also a gallery showing some of his portraits. 

We stopped for lunch between museum visits at Dinosaur BBQ in downtown Syracuse. I had some very good pulled pork with a side of collards. I sampled a bit of Bob’s rack of ribs and Joanna’s Dixie-fried catfish. 

It was like being back in the Carolinas. Maybe better. I was able to have all this with a Saranac root beer, one of the best.

Thursday we traced the route to Alexandria Bay, but bypassed that and continued across the international bridge to Brockville, Ontario.

We went to the historic district for a walk. I showed Joanna the courthouse and the monument to Gen. Isaac Brock, “the Savior of Canada,” for whom the town is named. 

Brock had successfully driven off U.S. invaders during the War of 1812 and was trying to drive off more at a place called Queenstown. He was “targeted by a sharpshooter stationed among the enemy.” 

Brock has a marble monument in St. Paul’s London. It is distinguished because in addition to the dying Brock being comforted by a British officer, the group includes an American Indian, whom I have heard may be Tecumseh.

Joanna and I saw that monument in London only a matter of a week or two before my first visit to Brockville during Memorial Day weekend in 2012.

We stopped for some OK Chinese at a place in Brockville called the New York Cafe.

Mine was a mild Singapore mei fun and Joanna had beef with bok choi. She has been missing vegetables because they are hard to get when you’re on the road.

The plates were huge but we polished everything off. That was lunch and dinner combined.

Right now we are in Days Inn just outside Brockville. Joanna has just woken up from a nap, and so we are going to a bar where we will have dessert.

I had four beers Sunday night, none Monday, and only one on Tuesday afternoon. I think the beer-drinking is about to commence.

Good night, gang. May you keep your whistle wet and your feet dry. Be well. 

Harry

June 15

Dear Harry,

Fast backward: When Bob first took me to Syracuse to meet his family—this was shortly after we’d married—he instructed me that when his mother asked if I’d seen the statue of the family patriot in downtown Syracuse I was to say yes. 

Otherwise we’d have to spend the whole day on it. I followed Bob’s order. The upshot is that I’ve never seen it.

It’s a statue of David Williams, who captured Major Andre thus averting West Point’s falling into British hands.

You might well see it on your Syracuse excursion. If you do, please let me know.

Beatrice