Jan. 31-Feb. 2
We’ve been enjoying a mild winter in New Jersey, but after two months of it, I need a change.
Joanna had business to attend to at home. So on the last day of January, I lit out solo for the Low Country.
That means following the I-95 corridor, which is familiar territory. But even so, there’s plenty I haven’t seen that’s sitting close to the road.
As often as I’ve passed it, I have never visited the Maryland Welcome Center. It was time for a pit stop, anyway.
Parked tractor-trailers lined both sides of the approach to the center. More lined the way out. Long-haul drivers are permitted to drive a certain number of hours and then they have to pull over and rest.
I guess that’s was these drivers were doing.
There was a patch of thin snow on the ground in the shade. So putting that all together told me a few things: It had snowed here last night; that car hadn’t moved since last night at least; I was heading south at the right time.
A sign on one door said the Maryland travel center was “open for any journey.” A sign on other, however, said the place was closed.
It was probably just for a little while, maybe lunch or a quick trip to the restroom. Even so, I still love mixed messages.
Instead of stopping as usual in North East, Md., this time I went a few miles farther to a Comfort Suites in Aberdeen for my first layover. That’s how I found out about Prost, a terrific German restaurant.
I had roast pork, schweinebraten, with red cabbage and a bread dumpling, something new to me.
I looked it up later. Apparently, it is a recipe for using old bread, which gets soaked in milk and mixed with flour and eggs, along with a few other things, before it is molded into a ball and simmered in water for half an hour.
It was actually quite pleasant.
The pork was excellent, served with brown gravy that pulled everything together.
Prost has an extensive list of German beers on draft and in the bottle.
I had a couple with dinner. One was a marzen, which is a Bavarian Oktoberfest favorite. So far, it is also my favorite among German beers.
As a drinker of ales—English bitters, IPAs, American pale ales, for instance,—I find lagers, even when they are strong, a little light and often too sweet. There’s another flavor in there, too, that I don’t care for.
The marzen had less of that than the others.
I also went for a schwartzbier to see if it was like a stout. It’s close, but far sweeter than the Irish stouts.
Next time I go to Prost, I’ll have the marzen again and will try one of the Pilsners.
I took a couple of bottled dunkels back to the room. They were too sweet for my taste.
Next stop was one of my favorite places on this route, Fredericksburg, Va. The city has an extensive old town that is remarkably well preserved, especially considering that it was a major battlefield during the Civil War.
The center of Richmond, by contrast, was destroyed by Rebel troops. As they were retreating from the city, they set fire to some tobacco warehouses and that spread so fast the locals couldn’t contain it. The city burned for a couple of days until the Union Army arrived and helped put out the fires.
The rebels won at Fredericksburg, so they didn’t burn the city down.
One of my big draws in town is the Capital Ale House on Caroline Street.
It is part of a Virginia chain of bars not unlike Taco Mac in Atlanta. It specializes in craft and imported beers. It has dozens of brews on draft and more in the bottle. Way more than Prost.
On the way to dinner, I left the car in a public lot and strolled a few blocks to the Ale House.
I passed the FXBG Baptist Church.
The what? We’ve all seen INRI, IHS, WWJD. I can’t figure this new one out. Does the X stand for Christ?
Then a few steps down the street there was a municipal sign of some kind for the City of Fredericksburg. On it, there’s that elusive tetragram again: FXBG.
What a relief for an inquiring mind.
Prost may have put me in the mood for this. I don’t know. At the ale house I ordered jagerschnitzel—pork cutlets breaded and pan fried. The schnitzel came with more cabbage—sauerkraut with caraway seeds, to be exact—mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy. This too was comfort food.
First beer was Falcon Smash, an American IPA from Triple Crossing Brewing in Richmond. It runs about 7 percent ABV. It has a citrus aroma. The hops are sharp, with a little bite. That’s rounded out by a nice malt underneath it all.
The taps for other Virginia ales were out of commission, so I went for Western Mutant from Oskar Blues in Longmont, Colo. It’s also an American IPA at 7 percent. It doesn’t have a lot of fragrance, but does offer a good dose of bitterness and an OK malt flavor.
When it first came out, the packaging of the ale was the subject of a lawsuit.
Oskar Blues had put the silhouette of a jackalope, a giant rabbit with elk antlers, on the label. The jackalope is a running gag out West. There’s a giant construction of one on Indian School Road in Scottsdale, Ariz. You can still buy postcards showing a cowboy riding a jackalope.
It’s also the name of a brewery that uses the silhouette. Jackalope Brewing Co. filed a patent infringement claim against Oskar Blues. Oskar agreed to change the image to something based on a monkey and also promised to sell off its remaining inventory of jackalope-labeled ale only in markets where Jackalope Brewing doesn’t distribute its products.
On the road Thursday, I detoured to another favorite spot. It used to be called the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. I’ve written about it before. And yeah, I’m not kidding. It was called “shrine”—and dedicated to my favorite traitor.
I guess it means, at least in Jim Crow terms, that he’s right up there with the Virgin Mary and St. Rocco.
The Army’s changing the names of bases that glorify Rebel leaders. I guess the U.S. Park Service is cleaning up its act, too. The shrine is now called the Stonewall Jackson Death Site.
Jackson was returning from a night-time scouting mission when he was shot by his own troops in the dark. After his arm was amputated at a field hospital, he was taken on a two-day trip by wagon to a plantation called Fairfield, owned by the Chandler family.
The plan was to put him on a train to Richmond, but that didn’t work out. The Union Army had already destroyed the tracks down the line.
They put Jackson in a makeshift sickroom in the plantation office building, where he lingered with pneumonia a few days and then died.
The Chandlers sold the plantation a year later, and it fell into decline.
Now the only things standing are the restored plantation office and a restored well.
I also stopped at the North Carolina Welcome Center. It’s the one with the whirligigs.
Right now, I’m at a Days Inn in Weldon, N.C.
I often stop in Weldon to visit Ralph’s Barbecue, which is practically across the highway from the motel.
There seems to be something going on with large-mouth bass sculptures at both places. There’s one mounted in front of the Days Inn. It’s wildly colored and supplemented with a fishing rod with bait on the line.
Ralph’s bass is towing a line of pigs on a rope through what appears to be whitewater. It’s the photo of the day.
I usually get Ralph’s North Carolina pulled pork, made with a vinegar-based sauce. Tonight, though, I opted for Brunswick stew, which I hadn’t tasted for years. It was historically made with rabbit, but now it’s chicken. There are also yellow corn, potatoes and a few other things in it. It’s a little bit sweet, but not cloyingly so. It’s great with the hush puppies.
Collards are always good, especially with the addition of Texas Pete hot sauce.
A new thing for me was dish of field peas—little brown beans cooked with bits of stringbean. Also good with a touch of hot sauce.
No beer or wine at Ralph’s. But there is a box where you can drop in a card and someone will say a prayer for you.
Good night, gang.
Stay well, and don’t forget to eat your vegetables.
Love to all.
Harry and (in absentia) Joanna
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