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 3

"I don’t know

if Jesus

could straighten

this mess out."

--Barry Strong,

retired educator

Searching for the

reel America:

pay dirt at the drive-in

Not every day do you meet an educator who can laugh about slapping handcuffs on his students.

That’s Barry Strong, a retired teacher and principal we found Thursday in about the unlikeliest place – a drive-in movie theater, in broad daylight.

We’d been driving south on Interstate 81 from Harrisonburg, Va., and turned off on what you might call a blue highway in search of some real America. We found it a bit past noon along Route 11, on the outskirts of the town of Lexington.

The marquee said it was closed, the season ended, but there was a pickup truck parked inside the fence and no barricade at the entrance lane, so we rode in hoping for my wife Bonnie to get some pictures of the empty place that might be symbolic of a dying but of Americana.

The truck belonged to the 61-year-old Strong, who was methodically waving a fancy metal detector over the dirt and grass in a back parking row searching for stray coins. Not that he needed the money for gasoline or anything; it was just a little pastime that sometimes turns up an old silver dime or half-dollar, but more often worthless debris.

“It’s been metal-detected before, but nobody gets it all,” he noted. “The trouble with metal detecting in a place like this is there’s so much junk in the ground, like pop tops. But it’s like fishing – you never know what you’re going to catch.”

Strong said he’s a Hull’s Angel – a member of a group of supporters and helpers at the drive-in, which remains a popular place around Lexington on warm summer nights. “They bring their blankets and get out on the grass. It’s a family-oriented place.”

The conversation quickly turned to politics, as I asked his views on the campaign. He says he expects to vote for John McCain, despite -- not because of -- his selection of Sarah Palin as his running-mate. For Strong, the choice is because he sees McCain as the most experienced candidate for president.

“I watched most of the debate last night,” he said. “I think McCain did a little better.”

But he acknowledged that “I got tired of hearing Joe’s name,” a reference to now-politically ubiquitous Ohioan Joe the Plumber, and lamented of that profession that “they won’t come out to see you for less than a hundred.”

“I read the Roanoke Times – I read the editorials every morning. They said they ought to vote all the incumbents out and start over. They couldn’t do worse than that. I don’t know if Jesus could straighten this mess out.”

Now about those handcuffs:

Strong said he started his career in 1970 as a sixth-grade teacher at Hartman Elementary School in Clarksburg, W.Va., at a salary of $6,000 and a classroom of 46 children. (Bonnie noted she had started her career in Baltimore in 1967, at then-Ben Franklin Junior High, making all of $5,800.)

Strong had some wonderful tales of those early days, like teaching the twin brothers Neil and Don, and the hot day in the un-air-conditioned school when Neil fell asleep at his desk and was directed out into the hall for the then-customary punishment: a paddling.

“He was crying and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Strong. It was hot, and we just ate....’ And he was right. So we went back in the classroom and I apologized to him in front of all the other children. And I handed him the paddle and told him to paddle me.”

Did he? You betcha.

“He reddened my ass,” Strong chuckled.

Later in his career, Strong said he became a teacher and administrator in juvenile detention facilities, including an assignment as assistant principal at the juvenile correctional prison in Beaumont, Va., where some of the students “were murderers.”

And that part of his career pretty much explains why “you could handcuff the students.”

Coming tomorrow: Outrageous roadside attractions

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.