American Pie: Heading South
As the leaves begin to fall in Connecticut, accompanied by a nip in the morning and evening air, John Merchant and his wife join the Monarch butterflies and the "snowbirds'' - retirees - who are heading south to winter in warmer climes.
Whether he's in the north or the south John continues to produce sparkling words. To enjoy more of his columns click on American Pie in the menu on this page.
Around here in Connecticut, the leaves are starting to turn, and although the days are sunny and warm, the mornings and evenings have an autumnal nip in the air. The other morning I saw steam coming from a car’s exhaust for the first time since spring. Yet it is only mid-September, and seems too early for these signs that winter is just around the corner. Nowadays the geese don’t head south anymore; they have found it more to their advantage to hang around the village ponds, the golf courses and airports, but the Monarch butterflies still make the trip, and I have seen a number of them this week, presumably on their way to Michoacan, Mexico, where they winter.
September is normally a great sailing month with clear, bright days, warm enough to stay comfortable in a sweater. Sailors love it for the less crowded harbors and steady winds that are more manageable and less work than the turbulent conditions of high summer. But for all its attractions, this is the month when many of the “snowbirds,” retirees who are lucky enough to be able to winter in one of the Sunbelt states, head south. Cars with Florida, North and South Carolina registration plates will be seen in increasing numbers on the main highways between now and November, though some hardier souls tough it out until after Christmas. This month my wife and I will be joining them for the first time, on our way to our home in Florida.
We have enjoyed the summer on our boat, but we’re ready for some home comforts and the space to spread out, and will leave before the end of the month. The drive to our home, some 1300 plus miles away, will take us through nine states, each of them with their own distinct personality. There’s the bustle and hyper-activity of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington D.C., collectively called “Megalopolis,” followed by history-steeped and government laden Virginia, neat-as-a-pin North Carolina, laid back South Carolina, and sleepy Georgia, with its moss covered oak trees and genteel colonial properties. We enter Florida through bright and modern Jacksonville, but the urban scene rapidly gives way to the “real” Florida. Miles upon miles of saw grass wilderness interspersed with cattle ranches and fields of citrus orchards.
The conduit that will carry us most of the way to our destination is Interstate Highway 95. It starts its journey in the very north of the country at the Canadian border of New Brunswick, and traverses the eastern United States all the way to Miami, some 3518 miles of six, and sometimes twelve lane highway. At Miami, I95 hands over to its predecessor, the old Route 1, and swings out over the ocean to travel another 164 miles through the Florida Keys to Key West, the southern-most habitable point of the USA in the east. The Dry Tortugas Islands, another 70 miles further on are a tad further south, but are not inhabited, except by the US Coastguard.
Rout 1 was the original north-south highway, and is one of the oldest, if not the oldest interstate trunk route in America. Many sections of it date back to the days of the stagecoach, and here in New England it is still referred to as the “Boston Post Road.” It has never gained the same cachet as the much written and sung about, east-west Route 66, possibly because of it’s age. Whereas Route 66 came of age at time when long-distance automobile travel was exciting and novel, and was accessible to all, Route 1 had been around since the horse drawn vehicle days.
With many interstate highways in America, the price one pays for theoretically uninterrupted, high speed convenience is a lack of variation in the scenery one passes through. Drive from say Philadelphia to western Kentucky and you would be hard put to it to distinguish one state from another. Interstate 95 is different, partly because it is a north-south route and therefore passes through a wide variety of climatic conditions. But also its path takes it through some of the major urban regions of America and also through some of the most rural.
On our journey south we make two overnight stops, which vary in location according to our state of fatigue at the time, but are always well south of “Megalopolis,” so we never know what we will encounter. On occasion the “ruralness” is so extreme that it seems oppressive. It’s not a matter of the countryside, which is almost always beautiful, but the way people live in these one-horse towns. The hotel is usually one of the low-end franchised chains, and the restaurant, if there is one, is either a privately owned “greasy spoon,” or one of the fast-food chains. The contrast between the busy, bustling highway and these hillbilly back waters that are often less than a mile away comes as quite a shock.
Each trip we have made has involved an encounter with at least two such places, try as we might to break our journey at more uplifting locations, though our experiences do occasionally have a moment of humor. Like the “greasy spoon” where we had breakfast one time. It was the first day on the job for the young girl who served us, and who asked whether we would like milk or cream for our coffee. “Cream please” we replied. With a broad, beaming smile lighting up her black face she said “We don’t have none.” We laughed about it for the next ten miles, and even now when we remember it.
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