Road Trip Wrap-Up (Voices of America)

Steve Riddle and his dog Rerun move sheep trio at Cumberland Gap demonstration. (Photos by Bonnie Schupp)

Five-state ramble comes to end,
but fortunately the nation hasn't

Our two-week road trip touching five states in southern Appalachia confirmed to us a confused and troubled nation.

We found people who are living in the past because they haven’t adapted to change, or grown beyond cultural prejudices, hatred and fear. Others we met re-enact the past – the parts that are heroic and demonstrate the great strengths on which this nation was built.

There are folks who embrace dialogue, others who hear only the voices they agree with.

And there are clearly folks who are facing harder times.

The American economy is so bad that even shepherd Steve Riddle is facing a layoff.

A shepherd. That’s right – the guy to whom “crook” takes on a whole new meaning is a victim of downsizing.

Riddle, 44, from Worden, Illinois, was running some sheep with his talented sheepdogs for a re-enactment of the pioneer era held at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park in Kentucky. A little toot on Riddle’s cow-horn whistle, and his 9-year-old pooch partner Rerun was on the move turning the sheep toward a log pen.

An Illinois state employee for 19 years, and just a year before he might have been eligible for an early pension, Riddle said he’s been given notice that his job at Cahokia Mounds Historical Park is being eliminated at the end of November.

Except for anything related to Abraham Lincoln -- whose bicentennial is being celebrated in 2009 – the State of Illinois is cutting back on its parks and recreation staff to save money, lamented Riddle, who sadly doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the nation’s 16th president but makes a fantastic late 18th Century shepherd.

Riddle and his wife, who does spinning, have a small farm and three children, ages 21, 16 and 14, so he’ll be looking for work. Judging by his demonstrations at Cumberland Gap, he’s great with animals and kids, so give him a call.

The shepherd was among dozens of people we met across a road trip of nearly 2,000 miles. Stories about some of them made it into my two weeks of daily blogging, while those of others – like Steve Riddle – did not. So he and his picture, taken by Bonnie, lead the road trip wrap-up report as I turn through the pages of a couple of filled notebooks.

There were plenty of memorable words spoken by folks we talked with, some of which we recounted in earlier blog postings. Here’s a mix:

“You know the difference between a violin and a fiddle? A violin has strings; a fiddle has strangs.”

– Michael Delp of Elk Creek, Va., playing his fiddle at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

“If I breathe my last breath right now, I will be happy that I shared their story with you.”

– Kitty Wilson Evans, 69-year-old slave re-enactor and retired elementary school teacher who is the oldest of 14 living children in her family, telling an entirely white audience at Cumberland Gap of the hard lives endured by her ancestors who also were among the nation’s pioneers and how they dealt with adversity. No family’s story should ever be lost, she said, imploring the people around her to talk with parents and grandparents about their lives and experiences. “Know where you came from so you know how far you’ve come.”

“Right now, we are at least civil in our hated. We at least talk to each other.”

– “Deacon” Jones, a retired deputy police chief who portrayed a freed slave at the re-enactment and was expressing fear at the thin veneer separating racial harmony from violence in today’s America. It is a fear that tempers his joy at the possibility of Barack Obama becoming president.

“I just hope that this will be a healing process for the United States.”

– Richard Allison, white 72-year-old educator, sexologist and Florida-North Carolina Democrat, on the prospect of an African American president. He was out promoting the candidacies of several local Republicans in Bryson City, N.C. – clearly an involved citizen with friends on both sides of the aisle.

“Do you believe in Jesus Christ?”

– Breakfast hostess at a West Virginia motel, looking at my Annapolis Unitarian Universalist Church sweatshirt and trying to ascertain what it meant. My answer: “As the son of God, not really – but if there is a God, aren’t we all God’s children?” Her response: “You don’t believe in God?”

“I don’t know if Jesus could straighten this mess out.”

– Barry Strong, a 61-year-old retired juvenile prison educator, on the presidential debates.

Gasoline price conspiracy fails?

As we drove through Appalachia, we watched gasoline prices steadily decline. Our first fill-up, on the road in southwestern Virginia, cost $2.99.9 a gallon (you’d think we could dispense with that nine-tenths of a cent and just round it off!). Our last, on road back through middle-western Virginia, was $2.32.9.

A week before the Nov. 4 election, the price of gasoline had vanished as an issue – almost as if it were planned that way, to help the Republican cause.

Unfortunately for the John McCain cause, the economy plunged right along with it.

Say it ain't so, Joe

And after two weeks in the hinterlands, Joe the Plumber is still being invoked. Except he’s become Joe the Political Scientist, saying Barack Obama’s plans “sound like Socialism to me.”

But remember – he’s not even Joe the Plumber. He’s Joe the Plumber’s Helper. And his kind of thinking is taking people right down the political toilet.

Coming attractions: A visit to Great Falls of the Potomac, and comments from Real Muck readers.

Road Trip, The Bizarre Part 4

Virginia is
for wackos

Elephants, dinosaurs and Bibles, oh my!

The craziness and wonder are unmistakable along Virginia Route 11, approaching tourism-rich Natural Bridge.

On the west side of the road, there’s a menacing green dinosaur standing on a broken-open shipping crate atop an old red pickup truck. It’s a promotion for the Dinosaur Kingdom attraction a few miles further south.

But strangely, it’s sitting on the small gravel parking lot for what seems another sort of kingdom, hinted at by the Ten Commandments posted on one door of the padlocked double-gate entrance. The other door has an ironically similar message: “No Trespassing.”

Well, forgive us this little trespass – we peeked through a hole and saw a sight that would positively enrage a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Fake Animals: Life-size replica denizens of Noah’s Ark littering the ground of the enclosed yard like so much junk. There’s a damaged elephant, a giraffe, animals as far as the eye could peek, all doubtless in need of a flood outta there.

Glancing at the giant plastic pharaohs lining the outside of the fence in this ersatz Valley of Kings, we headed off the parking lot and saw a billboard looming over the east side of Route 11 proclaiming the Dinosaur Kingdom and yet another wonder ahead – FOAMHENGE.

Little more than a mile south, there it was on a plateau up a small hill, looking very much like another “henge” we’d visited years ago in England. Not stone, but foam – a life-size rendering of Stonehenge, free for the visiting but with signs warning against vandalism.

Unlike the real thing in England, which is surrounded by a fence to keep people outside the great circle, Foamhenge (shown in wife Bonnie Schupp's photo, top, as is the roadside dinosaur in silhouette) is fully accessible. You can stand under it and pose for photos, but please don’t chip the paint or team the foam material. It’s already chipping away.

The creator of Foamhenge (and Dinosaur Kingdom, which we hadn’t the time to seek out) is Mark Cline. And after encountering Foamhenge by the chance of getting off Interstate 81 for the “blue highway” joys of Route 11, I did a Google search and found plenty about him – including a marvelous 2006 Washington Post story on his creations headlined “Jurassic Lark.”

Check it out at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301192.html.

From the story, I gather that the fenced enclosure that so Biblically mystified us is the Enchanted Castle headquarters of the artist, who had crafted critters for all manner of theme parks. So it was a shame he wasn’t around since, as fans and members of the American Visionary Art Museum, Cline is our kind of artist.

A sign at the foot of the path leading up to Foamhenge (which the Post story says was unveiled on April Fool’s Day 2004) offers comparisons between it and the English inspiration:

“Stonehenge took 1500 years to complete... using stones weighing as much as 50 tons. An estimated 600-1000 men dragged the stones from Marlborough Downs 20 miles north. Perhaps used as a temple, observatory, or tomb.

“Foamhenge was completed in six weeks using beaded Styrofoam blocks weighing up to 420 pounds. Delivered on 4 tractor trailer trips from Winchester, Va. 100 miles north. It took 4-5 Mexicans and one crazy white man to construct. It’s main purpose is to educate & entertain.”

Bless you, M. Cline – it did just that! (Though I thought Stonehenge was completed a few centuries quicker.)

Joe the Plumber’s Helper

As it turns out, the story keeps growing – Barack Obama knocked on the guy’s door, John McCain made that encounter a big deal in the debate, the media surrounded Joe, and all the suggestions and assumptions that had arisen took on the wispy quality of smoke in a variable breeze.

So the media finds he doesn’t have a plumber’s license, isn’t about to buy the company from his boss, has a lien on his house for state tax delinquency in Ohio, and is just the kind of not-poor, not-rich white guy who would be better off with Obama as president but will vote for McCain.

Just another meaningless distraction along America’s Road to Ruin.

Coming tomorrow: The art of political postering

Road Trip Report, Part 2

Cemetery dust-off

trumps debate for this blogger

Something you didn’t know: There’s folks who travel around the country spending their valuable free time cleaning up old tombstones.

We met two of them Wednesday in the bury patch high above historic Harpers Ferry, W.Va. – women ignoring a late run of biting flying insects to get down on their knees, gently brush dirt off and rub a length of chalk across time-weathered names and inscriptions.

Their T-shirts bore the name of their organization, Cemetery Surveys Inc., which is endeavoring to document online the names and histories gleaned from this painstaking work. The chalk makes the names and at least some of the old inscriptions a little more visible, enabling the women to record them with a digital photograph.

The Harper Cemetery had plenty of work for them, with burials dating back two centuries.

Nema Mobley (shown in Bonnie’s photo above) was one of the volunteers, a retired middle school teacher from Cherokee County, Georgia, who probably got no more appreciation from most of her students than she received from those long dust in the ground beneath her aging knees.

You can check out the organization’s Web site at http://cemeterysurveysinc.org. It has information on thousands of the documented departed, but talk about an uphill struggle – they’ve probably got millions to go before they sleep.

Other sights along the way

As I noted, the cemetery is high above the town – and climbing the many steps up the hillside was the biggest ordeal of the day aside from swatting away the gnats and biting bugs awakened by a warm October.

I hadn’t been in the streets of Harpers Ferry for 40 years, and was impressed by restoration work that has kept the nucleus of the waterfront town alive and the friendly and informative National Park Service staff.

I asked, in the old general store, about one of the items in a display case labeled as a piece of the rope used to hang John Brown – the leader of an anti-slavery band that staged the ill-fated raid for which Harpers Ferry draws its most lasting fame.

A young Park Service guide on duty there noted an old history of the event written by a resident from that era, which pointed out that if all the purported pieces of the rope sold as souvenirs were authentic, it would have been long enough to hang John Brown from the moon. (The author, it was also said, was also a bit of an Irish drunk whose accounts may have been... well, embellished is a kind word.)

After nearly four hours in Harpers Ferry, we headed south through Front Royal and along about 75 miles of Skyline Drive – which on weekends is packed with visitors gawking at views of fall foliage. There was little traffic on a Wednesday, however, but foliage at the lower elevations had not yet peaked.

Still, it was a nice drive that got us within a 150-haul of our next destination in Blacksburg, Va., and to a decent Comfort Inn at Harrisonburg well in time for the Great (Last) Debate of the presidential campaign. So, it’s on to....

McCain v. Obama, Opus Three

Cut the crap, you Republicans. McCain got clobbered again.

For one thing, maybe I missed it somewhere, but I thought Palin had an infant with Down syndrome, and McCain kept talking about her expertise with autism. A little forgetful? I'd hope that Palin is expert in all manner of developmental disablities, particularly Down syndrome, and that she and her family do a great job in raising their newborn to achieve all that is possible.

And I hope she does it without ever having to leave Alaska.

Obama, meanwhile, missed a great opportunity when McCain told him if he were running against George Bush, Obama should have run against the president four years ago.

McCain’s comment was facetious. And Obama should have retorted: “Why didn’t you run, John?”

Speaking of John, let’s talk about Joe – the poor plumber guy from Ohio.

I don’t feel a whit sorry for Joe if he can’t get a loan to expand the business where he puts in 12-hour days of labor. Plumbers bill 100 to 200 bucks an hour, and I’m sure Old Joe is making a tidy sum off hapless homeowners like me. He's doing just fine compared to many Americans, and will get all the money he needs once the Bush administration's banking meltdown ends.

He’s Joe the Plumber in my book, not Average Joe Sixpack.

(I know, I shouldn’t have said that. Next time the toilet goes blooooey, I’m gonna pay bigtime.)

Which reminds me, it’s time to get the septic tank pumped out.

Politics has filled it to overflowing.