Still No Snakes

June 13-15

We took it easy on Tuesday, our last day at Patriots’ Place. We walked down to the lake (or pond, to be more accurate). 

The main reason was to get a picture of the warning sign: Watch out for snakes.

t could be about copperheads, water moccasins, or garter snakes. Anyhow, it was fun.

Joanna, who is deathly afraid of snakes, got up the chutzpah to stand next to the sign for the photo of the day.

There is a salamander who lives by our porch steps. Joanna was grossed out by that, too, even though it has legs. 

“It’s OK, it isn’t even a reptile. It’s an amphibian.” 

“But it looks like a snake.”

Harry went to look but didn’t see a snake. Just like all those times scanning the ground for rattlesnakes in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and elsewhere, he has yet to see one in the wild.

Maybe people just put up those signs to tease the outlanders: Who can we get to look for the snakes this time?

Sometimes the warning is a two-for-one bonus, mixing rattlesnakes and scorpions.

Harry did see a scorpion once, a glowing silhouette under UV light, when Patrick uncovered one in his yard several years ago.

Speaking of reptiles, here’s a curious bit of business from last Friday that we forgot to include in the recap of events:

We had just stepped off the footbridge that crosses the marsh between the visitor center and the site of the original Jamestown.  

Several people were focused on the grass under a fallen limb next to the beaten path. A boy, maybe 10 or 12 years old, explained what was going on.

A turtle was using its back legs to dig in the grass. The boy said it was making a nest where it could lay its eggs. It looked like a painted turtle, the dark green kind with colorful spots as if it had been spattered by a crazed cartoonist.

This tiny creature was really working at it and making some headway. It had created quite a divot in the green.

A few steps farther on, after we passed some wildflowers, the boy stopped and exclaimed: “These are turtle eggs.”

A second and more focused glance proved him out. 

Harry had been deceived by my ancient eyes. They weren’t white flowers, at all. They were broken shells, some with a bit of the albumen (or the turtle equivalent) still evident.

Harry felt like a dope, of course, but that’s not unusual. He was glad to have his error pointed out. Gosh, turtle eggs—well, more properly, egg shells—lying by the way.

That’s unusual and happy. Like palm trees or medieval walls, it means we’re someplace else

We went back to Fat Tuna on Tuesday night so Harry could have raw oysters with dinner. They were not as briny as the best, but were still good. 

He also wanted to try the crab ravioli, served in a pink sauce. That flavor of crab with the slightly sweet gravy was an interesting combination. It’s on the “I’d have it again” list, next time we come this way. 

Joanna doesn’t eat much raw food. She takes very little salad and certainly no carpaccio, sashimi, or anything on the half shell. This time, she enjoyed grilled salmon. 

We checked out of Club Wyndham before 10 a.m. and drove about four hours to Aberdeen, Md. 

Not much happened on the way, and when you’re going 70 mph, that’s a good thing.

When we have followed I-95 to or from New Jersey, we usually stop at North East, Md. We do that often and had stopped there on the seventh, on our way to Virginia.

So let’s try something different.

Harry had been lost in Aberdeen for a while a few months earlier and knew it wasn’t the most picturesque place. It is home to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a large military base.

As far as Harry has seen so far, it’s like most cities that host populations of enlisted personnel. There’s a sprawl made up mostly of franchises of national chains for everything from lunch to auto care.

Harry found, however, two reliable choices for dinner in the town, and so decided to stop at Aberdeen for the hell of it. After all, we weren’t going to be here long.

One choice for good food is Prost, an interesting German restaurant, but we weren’t in the mood for heavy dumplings and schnitzel. We went to the Olive Tree instead.

This is a small regional chain—just a few locations in the area—that is often confused with Olive Garden, which is a national operation owned by the same company that runs Red Lobster.

We don’t care for Red Lobster. We can’t comment on the quality of Olive Garden because we’re from New Jersey and never needed to eat there.

Anyhow, the Olive Tree is roughly on the level of the new Mario’s on Van Houten Ave. in Clifton. The old Mario’s, when the grandparents were still alive, was superb. Now with a pared-down menu and maybe a few shortcuts in the kitchen, it’s just OK. So is Olive tree.

But OK Italian is still a lot of fun.

We shared a caprese salad to start. It had balsamic instead of red wine vinegar, but even so, was terrific. Maybe made more so because we hadn’t had it for months.

The mozzarella was good, the tomatoes, even out of season, were tasty. We could have used more basil, but that’s always the case. When we make caprese at Joanna’s house, we treat basil like a salad green. We cover the plate with it.

Basil loves Joanna’s backyard. All summer long it grows in abundance. She doesn’t raise basil plants; Joanna’s basil plants grow up to be shrubs.

In the traditional Italian manner, Olive Tree serves meat balls as an appetizer in marinara sauce. We have eaten dinner in Italy from Tuscany to Sicily and never saw a menu that offered spaghetti and meatballs as a combination.

So in traditional American fashion, we shared a dish of meatballs joined by an order of spaghetti marinara.

We had that with a couple of glasses of Bolla Pinot Noir. We both enjoy most Pinot Noirs, and are especially fond of many we have tasted that come from Italy.

As much as Harry loves Chianti and we both love Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, whenever we go to one of Calandra’s restaurants back home, the house Pinot Noir, which comes from Sicily, is the top choice.

All in all, it was fun, and also the first Italian-style meal we had since leaving New Jersey. Wow, more than a week without red sauce, oregano, or pasta. That’s a stretch.

It’s a short run home from northern Maryland. Traffic was bit heavier than usual on the southern end of the New Jersey Turnpike because six miles of I-95 running past Philadelphia were closed by a bridge collapse.

At least some of that traffic was being diverted to the Turnpike, which is the I-95 alternative.

The Philadelphia bit is the roughest section of the Interstate Highway system to begin with. Potholed and patched, the road surface can rattle your teeth.

Then a gasoline tanker exploded under a bridge and burned for hours, until the supports weakened and the bridge fell.  

News photos showed one half of the bridge sunken to the ground and the other half mostly reduced to bare steel girders spanning the gap.

There were a few traffic backups so we spent a bit of time crawling bumper to bumper. Even so, the trip home took maybe three hours or so.

Be happy and stay well, everyone. And watch out for the turtles.

Love to all.

Joanna and Harry

Comes the Revolution

June 11-12

We had walked up Colonial Williamsburg's main street, named for the Duke of Gloucester, on Friday to the King’s Arms, so Saturday we started at the other end, with the Capitol.

As with many of the buildings, you join a tour that leads you through it.

Williamsburg was the capital city of Virginia for much of the 18th century. Jamestown pretty much went out of business in the 1690s. 

The colony had a bicameral legislature. There was an upper house consisting of the royal governor and his council. 

The lower house, the House of Burgesses, is the famous one in American lore. Its members included Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. 

When the British cracked down on Boston after the tea party, the burgesses expressed solidarity with the people of the city and criticized Parliament for abusing fundamental rights.

The governor responded by dissolving the house. Kicked out of the Capitol, most of the burgesses reconvened at Raleigh’s Tavern, a short walk down Duke of Gloucester Street.

There they drafted a letter of protest and sent it to King George.

The tour through the building stopped in the council chamber where the guide read from a list of articles that described the freedoms of citizens of the colony. The first article mentions the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The inspiration for the Constitution of The United States came from a Virginian, too, James Madison.

Small wonder, then, that the structure of Congress and the argument for independence should be derived from Virginia.

The current building is a reconstruction. Like many reconstructions in 

Williamsburg, it stands on the foundation of the original.

The Upper house was literally upper. It met on the second floor. The burgesses had much simpler quarters on one side of the first floor. The other side was the courthouse.

A man named Charlton operated a coffee house near the Capitol. It too is a reconstruction based on early documents.

As we walked past the coffee house, we learned that a tour was just about to start. The guide was familiar. We had met him at the gate to the Wythe House the day before.

Charlton served coffee and chocolate at a time when both drinks were still novel. It was Williamsburg’s only coffee house. At the same time, the town supported a dozen taverns or more.

People gathered there to share news and gossip. There was an elegantly appointed room—fine tables, wall-to-wall carpeting, for instance—for big shots and big spenders on one side, and space for the general riff-raff on the other.

Each had its own entrance from the porch.

The elegant room would have been a gathering spot for burgesses, councilors, merchants, and other big-wigs. I don’t know if the governor ever came here himself.

Just before the Stamp Act took effect, the governor was at least near the coffee house.

A licensed stamp seller newly arrived from England was roughed up by a mob in the street outside Charlton’s. The governor was a witness and rescued the man. He took him to the palace. 

Later the stamp seller issued a statement saying that he would not sell stamps until he received further instructions.

We got to sample a bit of the spiced hot chocolate from an urn under a black shroud. The ingredients included cinnamon and red pepper. Very pleasant.

There is a stage behind the coffee house. We got there just as a James Madison impersonator was wrapping up his program.

He was taking questions from the audience. How do you expect to die? That was followed by: Where will you be buried?

He said he hoped never to see any of this crowd again.

We walked a little more but the heat started to wear us out. Well, to wear Harry out, anyway.

We sat at a shuttle bus stop across the street from a windmill, and then made our way home.

We took dinner at Fat Tuna Grill and Oysterhouse, about a mile from Club Wyndham.

We shared oysters Chesapeake, which are baked in the shell and topped by a thin layer of crab imperial. Next we had another appetizer, grilled octopus.

We followed that with cioppino—a soup consisting of a variety of seafood cooked in a red broth and served over a bed of linguine.

Harry had beer for the first time in a while. He hasn’t had anything alcoholic for a couple of days, so he started with Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA. Like most ales that are great from the bottle, it was even better on draft.

The photo of the day is Harry reacquainting himself with one of the world’s great brews.

The second ale was El Guapo, an IPA from O’Connor Brewing Co. in Norfolk, Va. It was full-flavored, with the right amount of bitterness, and nothing watery about it. At 7.5 percent, it was a little stronger than the Sierra Nevada.

Maybe too strong,

After only two pints, Harry had met his limit.

He turned in before 9 p.m. and didn’t wake up till eight in the morning.

Joanna likes Pinot Noir. The menu listed one from the Russian River in California, so she had a glass of that. It wasn’t a long pour, but even so, it was unusual that she finished the entire glass. 

The wine seems to have acted as a stimulant rather than a sedative. While Harry was conked out, first on the sofa and then in bed, Joanna was busy playing with the computer until 11 or so.

Harry isn’t sure about when. He was unconscious at the time.

Having visited the Capitol on Sunday, there was one more place that we had to see on Monday, our last day in Colonial Williamsburg, the Raleigh Tavern. 

The tour started in the room where the burgesses met after the governor turned them out. According to our guide, it was the second-largest room in the city, after the ballroom at the Governor’s Palace.

Many of the burgesses, perhaps most of them, had their body servants—enslaved valets—with them.

They drafted the letter of protest to the king. According to the guide, the letter accused Parliament of treating them like slaves. 

To a man, they were slave owners. Yet they never made a connection between an encroachment on their rights and the much greater encroachment they perpetrated against the people they had disenfranchised and turned into property.

Next to the large room was another for very discreet meetings. The room could be entered directly from an alley, without passing through the tavern. No one uninvited needed know who was there.

It was often used for various treasonable activities that led to the American Revolution. The plan for Committees of Safety, essentially the outline for seizing control of the colonial governments, was hatched there by Thomas Jefferson and a few other firebrands.

We strolled to the corner with a tree that Joanna loved. I’m not sure what it is, maybe a live oak. The second photo of the day is Joanna and the tree.

Then we made our way to a bus stop, not far from the powder magazine.

We found another interesting place, not half a mile up the street from Fat Tuna. This was Food for Thought. Its emblem is a picture of Ben Franklin in a chef’s toque. He’s winking.

The walls are decorated with quips from thinkers like Ronald Reagan and Yoda, as well as George Washington Carver and others too far away to read.

We sat at the bar, which had plenty of open seats, rather than wait half an hour for a table.

Harry has been feeling a little peaked for the past few days. He suspected it’s from too much seafood and not enough red meat. Food For Thought has both pot roast and meat loaf on the menu. For a couple of bucks extra, you can have a serving of both.

We both opted for the pot roast. And a lucky choice it was. Without a doubt in his voice, Harry said it’s the best pot roast he has ever tasted. It was indeed, as advertised, fork tender. 

It was savory. Sometimes there is a bitterness in the meat, but not in this. It was braised till it fell apart. It was like eating another of Harry’s favorite comfort foods, Cuban ropa vieja.

Food for Thought had some interesting taps, but Harry passed. He wanted to stay alert long enough to finish this report.

Be well, gang, and don’t forget to stop and smell the live oaks.

Love to all.

Joanna and Harry