HISTORY ALONG THE ROAD - Of Potholes & Smashed Potatoes

Of Potholes & Smashed Potatoes

con’t from JAUNTING

Not paying very much attention to my route, I notice that the very high bridge, which I have been flanking, is now suddenly in front of me, with a sign pointing ‘thataway’, To U.S.A.  Uh-oh.

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HISTORY ALONG THE ROAD

Yikes!  I don’t want to go to the U.S. of A., especially since I don’t have my passport with me or Sofie’s papers.  Luckily, there’s a sharp right hand turn coming up and I crank the steering wheel, feeling very Dukes of Hazard(ish) – I can almost feel the car tilting onto two tires.  Just kidding but sometimes it’s fun to let my imagination go nuts.

Squinting into the sun, something glows brightly on the horizon.  Wonder of wonders, just ahead of me, salvation in the form of two Golden Arches.  Yippee!  Mickey D’s, 4 gazillion served. 

Finding a parking spot not too far from the door, I speed-walk inside and make a beeline for the bathroom.  Oh joy, no line-up.  I hit the stall and sigh with relief as I make room for coffee #2.  Coffee in, coffee out.  Kinda like beer – you don’t buy it, you rent it.  I make for the counter and sigh again as I spot the line-up there.  Oh well, at least I don’t have to pee anymore.  Finally, the fresh-faced, young girl (she looks all of 12) behind the counter asks, “And what may I get for you today, ma’am?”  The ‘ma’am’ grates, but I overlook the polite address. 

Asking for a medium-size Arabica roast to go into my travel mug, I succumb to the special of the day, two hot fruit pies for the price of one.  Can’t resist – one apple, one mixed fruit.  Inhaling the tantalizing aroma of fresh ground beans, mixed berries and cinnamony apples, I make my way back to the car, where Sofie’s on guard.  She leaps back to her side, as I settle in the driver’s seat.  Turning the GPS back on, I punch in the next leg of my backroads trip, and include a local park as a via point, then exit the parking lot, as directed by the electronic rendition of a female voice. 

Comfy, satiated and looking forward to my now-cooled hot fruit pies, I find that the park is really just a grassy knoll, with a solitary splintery bench, but convenient parking.  I perch gingerly on the rather wobbly bench, and enjoy my coffee and apple pie, while Sofie has her bathroom break and then a big slurp of water.  I keep a watchful eye on Sof, even though she’s not inclined to wander away.  Sudden noises tend to startle her into flight mode, no matter what the cause or proximity and I want to head her off at the pass if I have to.  Broiling a little in the late morning sun, I lean back against the bench, and Sofie, although very interested in a particular patch of grass, lays down, panting, pink tongue lolling.  It’s that hot.  We head back to the car and still with the windows down, start moving, creating our own zephyr.

Onward and westward, I tool along Highway #2, singing at the top of my lungs to one of my favourite songs.  Life is good.  

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A ways to go - I start seeing signs for Long Sault, which brings back happy memories from my childhood.  I recall the hot summer weekends, usually a Sunday morning, when my father would come home from his second job and pack up the car, the four of us and my mom, for a rare trip to the beach at Long Sault.  My mother always spent most the evening before, cooking, making sandwiches and baking cookies.  Then she would pack my dad’s ratty old army duffle bag with our underwear and extra socks and who knows what else, because, as she would always say, “Just in case”. 

My father, not the most patient of men (being of Irish descent and suffering from sleep deprivation after working all night), would sometimes glare at mom and growl, “Mother, why you packing so much?  Are we going for a week?  Do you have to pack the whole house?”  My mother usually had an answer, which at least mollified my dad, and away we would go after the hour or so that it would take him to pack everything, and us, in the car. 

I especially remember one summer when my dad had a convertible, a big, shiny red one, with huge tail fins.  Away down the highway we would zoom, with the top down, our long hair whipping into impossible knots and the odd tissue or paper flapping around before hitting the slip stream and taking off like a seagull.  What fun!

Upper Canada Village slips by the rear-view mirror, keeping me on memory lane and all the fun field-trips we had there with school.  That was the field-trip just before school let out for the summer – Vermont and sugaring off was the late winter trip, hopefully before all the snow melted.  One year, I ate so much maple syrup-covered- snow, I got sick and threw up all the way home.  To this day, maple is my least favourite of flavours!   Good Canadian girl am I, eh?

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Morrisburg, Iroquois and Cardinal conjure up different thoughts and images as I try to figure out where the names came from.  Hmm, Morrisburg after the man who founded the hamlet way back when? 

Iroquois is a bit easier, as I remember snippets from history class in school, about the proud warriors who were here first.  Cardinal, I think, hmm, either the bird or maybe a high-ranking church official who emigrated from England, bound and determined to civilize the heathen Iroquois?  It’s fun to turn my mind loose.

  

Johnstown is next and immediately, for some bizarre reason, saloons and barmaids spring to mind.  Big, flouncy, ruffled dresses and pinafores barely cover their ample bosoms.  

The rich, pine scent seeps from the sawdust spread with a liberal hand on the wide plank bar    floor.   A hard-bitten cowboy, shouts to the barmaid, “Bring us a round of sour mash and beer chasers and make it snappy!”  The red-headed barmaid flicks her hair and turns her back on the cowboy.  She ignores him now, but later, after all the other drunken rowdies stumble through the swinging doors, she’ll be heading up the back stairs with him, supplementing her pitiful saloon stipend with the ‘Johns’, engaging in the world’s oldest profession. 

As I draw closer to Wexford, the sun shimmers on the asphalt, creating undulating waves in the still air.  I slow as directed by the highway sign, 50 kph, and watch in empathy as I catch sight of a thin man, who’s encased in the de rigueur gear of serious bicyclists; skin-tight black unitard, with bright red and yellow accents, which stretches tautly from throat to ankles.  As I drive past, I watch in my rear-view mirror, and catch the gleam of his sweat covered face, and the shiny patina on his balding head, as he pushes his bicycle up the long, sloping hill. He’s got quite the convoy going - first his bike, with its bulging saddle bags, one on each side.  Hitched to that is an empty child trailer and hitched to that, is a great, big thick-coated furry, dog plodding along in perfect rhythm with the man.  Odd. 

I pass them and turn abruptly left, when I spot a sign for an historical site, The Battle of the Windmill.  Ah, I think, maybe a good place to stop and stretch our legs and Sofie could use a pee.  It’s not too far up ahead, but as I slowly advance down the road, I feel like I’m driving into a time warp in a long ago era.  Even the air seems cleaner and smells like freshly-washed laundry, drying on the line.  Suddenly though, a thin frisson of je ne sais quoi skitters across the back of my neck and down my spine.  Weird.


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