Category: Uncategorized

World’s Most Elusive Roadside Catfish – Alabama

I drove to Troy Alabama to see the world’s largest catfish, apparently some sort of stature or clunk of folk art, not really sure. Either way when I got into Troy I realized I did not have an address for the elusive big fish and Google was not being of any help, just teasing me with photos and leaving me to guess. Eventually I came across a forum post which told me which main road it was off of and that this same road had a giant metal cow and some other crazy things so off I went, finding the giant metal bull first. Damn thing was outside of a rodeo place and as anatomically correct as the artist could have done with his personal talent. Poor thing had a sweet doleful cow face and a set of giant tin balls to boot. Strange, I continued onward and somewhere down the road in front of a closed art gallery I found a giant metal rooster. Again it was constructed out of spare parts in a rather artful manner. Its face was cute and I stopped to take a photo. I continued on to find the catfish but had to leave that day without finding it, though I am sure I could make up another big fish story about it…

I drove on that night into Mobile where we decided to stop at a Cracker Barrel, as was suggested by someone I’d talked to before the trip. We just don’t have these places in the North and a name like Cracker Barrel, not to mention the appearance of the place is sure to make a great many of us Northerners a bit skittish. Still I walked in. A kid came up to me asking for money to buy baseball team uniforms. He was a black kid, acting very skittish himself, I am not entirely sure why. I gave him $4. I figured if he was skittish from social anxiety then I helped an awkward kid with his fundraiser, and if he was skittish because he was being put up to his first con (I was in a rather ghetto-ey area), I didn’t care either. It was only $4.

Mobile… what can I say about it… other than I learned of it so many times not in a positive light. I had only known anything about it because of all the atrocities committed in and around it in the turbulent 50’s and 60’s during the Civil Rights Movement. I expected the people here to be a little off because I know scars like that do not heal in an area overnight. Though the people here who could still remember these ungodly events are now getting old and dying off they still had children and grandchildren whom I am sure they told. Like I said, it takes time to heal. All this going through my head didn’t make me any more comfortable going into a place called Cracker Barrel. Oh well, so the black attendant was giving me the evil eye for a good five minutes as I waited, that was to be expected, right? Then again the clerk who I paid my restaurant bill to acted totally normal, maybe she just had personal issues. This place confused me and set me a bit on edge. It’s so much easier when you can just treat everyone as if they’re people and leave it at that. SIGH.

I went in and was served by a waiter with a sweet farm boy accent. He asked if I’d been to the local music festival. I told him I just got into town, pondering if this fraternizing with customers was a normal thing down here. In any event I ordered the catfish, I just had to… and I ate until I was stuffed to the gills. It was good! It was fried and another new southern food. I was happy when I left.

 

 

metalbullmetalchicken

0

Getting Out of Florida

Waking up in Key Largo I decided I should spend the day trying to get out of the state of Florida. I drove all day past palm trees, past glitz, past swamps. I saw short fat palm trees, casinos, tall thin palm trees, tourist beaches, coconut palm trees, tourists traps, palm tree nurseries, and in the end I was happy to drive out of there. Shortly before I reached the border I drove through this little town advertising a new store, opened only a few days, it was like a farmer’s market type deal. I had to stop though because over the front of it was a large sign reading, “hot boiled peanuts.”

What are hot boiled peanuts? Apparently they’re exactly that. I had to try some as that sounded ghastly terrible.

There was one middle aged woman sitting there looking a bit put off, perhaps due to a lack of customers or perhaps due to the intense heat and lack of air conditioning ability in a building with no walls.

“So what is this I hear about boiled peanuts?” I said, “I’m from NH, I wanted to try them…”

“Well they’re warm and salted. Here, I don’t want you to buy anything you don’t like.” She handed me two nuts. The shells were soggy, moist, and warm. I slipped out the little meaty nut part and took an adventurous bite.  It was like a tiny glob of mashed potatoes in a shell, with the hint of peanut taste. Maybe this was because aside from the meal I ate at Keren’s I was missing hot food, maybe it was because I was desperate for something different besides the PB&J’s I was sustaining myself with but either way, the boiled peanuts were amazing.

“Oh I really like them!” I exclaimed. A surprised, “Really?!” came from the woman selling it to me. I bought a big saggy wet and warm bag of them. Delicious.

“Usually I can guess people’s reactions…” The woman said. I laughed. I bought a cup of the things. She explained they’re usually eaten with soft drinks and are made from raw immature peanuts, unlike the fully grown roasted ones I was used to. I sat in the car picking at them for quite awhile until the large foam cup was nearly empty. This was my second southern food and my second success. Good thing I wasn’t about to try any chitterlings.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

0

Exploring the Florida Keys

Key Largo was gorgeous. In the morning when I packed up I took my sweet time reorganizing the Jeep and then stopped at The Shell Store. This place had shells of every kind and color in enormous buckets as well as any kind of tourist memorabilia you could ask for. I ended up buying a little turtle made out of various tiny sea shells for a dollar. It’s cute.

I continued onward discussing whether or not to take a glass bottomed boat tour. I should probably mention that besides being afraid of large boney fish I have always said I wouldn’t get on a sea-going boat, not even if I were paid… but having continuously dipped my feet in the warm waters I somehow felt more relaxed about the idea… and besides there were wild corals here, I hadn’t gotten to see any of those. I decided to go for it, but first I’d drive to Key West, the farthest of the islands. I passed Duck Key and Cow Key and Ramrod Key and all the darn keys, stopping at two beaches. One was rocky and amazing, covered in fossilized coral rocks (far to big to pick up and drag off unfortunately) and another beach which smelled really bad and consisted of 50% seaweed and 50% trash and debris. This place was almost as bad as the Wristcutter’s [a Love Story] beach! It was really bad… I was quite put off by it and the rest of Key West. The island was so full of people and cramped, such a tourist trap. It advertised it was the birthplace of the Sloppy Joe and had pubs and bars every two buildings, hotels the rest. I only stopped when I came upon a strange site… what appeared to be a brick ruin. It was what I came for… and there, sitting snidely across from a horse-drawn hearse and in front of oodles of fan mail was Robert the Doll himself, three feet worth of plushie terror. He was ADORABLE. I probably should explain… You see Robert is probably the original haunted doll. He was said to be made by an angry servant of the Otto family who practiced voodoo. He was named after the little boy (later renowned artist) he was given to and apparently held such a powerful grip on the growing lad that he never abandoned the doll, claiming that “Robert did it!” whenever anything bad would happen. The doll was said to pace, to glower out the window at children, to make evil giggles, to throw around furniture and to haunt people… You name it this doll does it! I can’t say I know the work of his owner, Robert Eugene Otto, but I have been delighted by his doll since I was ten or so. As per custom I asked the doll if I could take a photo and did so, taking the chance we could be cursed… We bought a magnet at the gift shop and perused the place. They had a whole collection of Edward Gorey stuff including The Hapless Child, perhaps because of the child-terrorizing doll in it. They even had a book on his home, the Elephant House, bizarre considering he was a Massachusetts resident, not Florida… Then again they had a book on Hemmingway’s cats, yet another Massachusetts thing. Who knows! Still, anyone adoring Gorey has got my attention.

Sooo… after that I hit the next glass bottomed boat place I could find. It was 1:35 and I literally missed it by five minutes. I decided not to wait around, to find another. I didn’t find another until I was back in Key Largo, seventy something miles away, and I was fortunate enough to just get in on time to take the last boat tour of the day. I filed onto the boat annnnd… was told there’d be a delay…  The woman next to us looked on horrified, as if we’d just struck an ice burg here in the harbor. Our captain came up soon after and said she thought they’d fixed the problem. Then the motors started going and two seconds later we hear screaming from down under, two men yelling, “SHIT! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!” Our captain started to stamp violently on the deck, signaling ever-so-delicately to stop shouting, you’re freaking out the tourists. We were told something else was broke and we’d have to be refunded. I left… without seeing to corals and shipwreck promised, without being able to have the chance to glimpse a casual shark or dolphin. Sad, very sad. Could it be Robert?

I left and decided I should at the very least get a good piece of pie out of this trip, Key Lime Pie… I was dubious. Except for one occasion all the lemon meringue pies I ever had were ghastly terrible, I figured lime pie would be the same… I ordered the prettiest piece of pie I’ve ever seen, decorated with swirls of whipped cream and sauce. It was actually really good! And the ice cold water that went with it was a luxury I hadn’t realized I’d missed quite so much. I drank like a camel in an oasis.

The only other memorable part of the drive was when I saw some deer aside the road, four does grazing. I didn’t realize until later they were endangered Key Deer. How cool is that? I saw something endangered alive and running around… like the feral chickens roaming the streets of Key West I couldn’t explain.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

0

Tuba City – Arizona

So I woke up in the morning in the only travel station in Tuba City, which was swamped with unseemly people since I drove in the night before, mostly rebellious and randy teenagers, probably sick of their podunk little town. The night before a wild mustang wandered into the city and walked right by the Jeep without a care in the world. Stray dogs were everywhere.

I had quite a few hours to kill so I decided to drive and see the petroglyphs that my Navajo dinosaur guide recommended the day before. I ended up driving a looong way down a road that looked like it was used mainly by horse travel. The Jeep bounced and groaned and I wove my way deeper into a little village I probably shouldn’t have been in. I passed two people and asked for directions but they spoke little English and didn’t seem to know the word petroglyph or why two lost white people would be wandering around which to be fair, is a good question.

Finally I came to the fence with the little opening I had been told was there, watched by two video cameras I’d also been warned about. I walked in, and low and behold there was indeed a rock sitting at the front absolutely covered with intricate little designs. I was taken a bit aback, not expecting that much. And then something odd happened… out of nowhere a man appeared from behind a rock and asked, “Do you have a permit to be here?”
“Permit? No?”
“Well you need a permit to be here…”
“I was told by a Navajo up at the Dinosaur Tracks place we could just see the petroglyphs…”
“Well he was wrong!”
“But… why would he say that?”
“Because he was probably intoxicated!”
“…So who are you?”
“I’m a Hopi. We take care of the land here. The Navajos weren’t protecting it so we took over.”
“…Soooo how do you get a permit?”
“Well, you can pay $150 for two to see the petroglyphs. The fee would be for me as a guide.”
“…Well I don’t have that sooo… guess I’ll be going…”

There was another hiker behind me who came out when I did. He muttered to me, “I guess that was that!” I replied, “mmmhmmm.”

I was confused for awhile about the whole incidence. I wondered why two tribes would be fighting over a set of petroglyphs from a completely different (and extinct) tribe. Later I learned that the Hopi claim to be the desendants of the Anasazi, who I had always thought were wiped out centuries ago by migrating Aztecs. This was a bitter and bloody time period, from before the time of written records. I guess that’s why it’s all still a bit hazy… In any event the Hopi currently hate the Navajo as they are favored by the US government, who have granted then Navijo Nation, a large swath of land they can do whatever they want on. (“Here, have a token piece of land while us white people take the rest. THANKS!”) The Hopi have only recently received any land, and coincidentally it was a little block right in the middle of Navajo territory, surrounded on all sides. I might be a bit cranky too. I’m not sure why the Navajo have gotten away with so much out of our stingy “oops-didn’t-mean-to-do-that” government, but I think it probably has something to do with how they helped greatly in World War II, giving us code talkers (based on the Navajos unwritten language) who the Nazis were never able to decipher.

I left. And continued on to a market to have breakfast, or lunch, o whatever it is I normally eat. Entering the store a smiling middle-aged Navaho man stopped someone ahead of me and asked, “Where you escaping to?!” He was thoroughly confused. “Your shirt looks like a prison outfit.” I couldn’t help but interject. “Ohhhhhhhhh… I don’t know…” I did my shopping and ended up in the cashier line with the same man who smiled cheerfully and said, “You have a good day sir!”

Then when I was out in the parking lot  an old man approached and tapped weakly at the window. He wheezed, “Where you headed to?” He needed a ride to Seattle. I weren’t going in that direction anyway. I gave him $3 for a Gatorade so he’d at least be comfortable waiting for another ride. I was on the phone with my mother when another knock at the window came from my side. It was from another Navajo man, grinning like a Cheshire Cat he greeted me with the strangest statement ever, “I LOVE white people! Just wanted you to know that.” I nearly started to laugh wondering where the hell this was going. “I’ve done prayers for the health of some white people before. I gave them arrowheads for their prayers. I wish I could give you two an arrow head I’ve made…” “Awe?” I couldn’t resist saying awe even though I got the vibrant feeling this guy was a flimflam man, possibly the best. He continued his story. “Anyways, I live down on a farm down that way. We grow corn and beans and a bunch of other things but 25% of our crop just got washed away.” (Indeed there were forest fires and flooding washing a great deal away in this vague area.) He went on with his story adding all sorts of useless details, eventually ending with, “And I need to bring my daughter to the hospital. She’s five, has chicken pox, and we don’t have the money for gas…” I gave him three dollars as well and he left, saying, “God bless you! God bless!” I pondered which god that was… and felt $3 was worth the long, rambling, crazy story. I’ve given a few bucks to beggars who have done much less. At least this time I was thoroughly entertained. Surely that must be worth something.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

 

0

Staying with Friends in Miami

I ended up in Miami to meet a new friend, Keren. I was told she had an autistic four year old son and just to expect that. I didn’t mind, of course, I’ve dealt with plenty enough children and special needs people to know how to behave around them comfortably.

Miami was… exactly how I thought it’d be… It was big, city-like, sunny, boiling hot, and there was loud Cuban music playing everywhere. I don’t mean there was loud music playing out of clubs and whatnot… I mean you could hear people’s cars a mile or more down the block and private residences? She had the misfortune to have a neighbor who cranked his music so loud that we could not hear each other talk. We were literally yelling at each other at the top of our voices, “HI! SORRY ABOUT THE NEIGHBORS! THEY’RE A BIT OBNOXIOUS!”

Keren was a funny woman, vibrantly opinionated, full of piss and vinegar. Her son was sweet and took a liking to me. He chatted up a storm and I played games with him and exchanged corny little knock knock jokes. We ate pizza and stayed up into the wee morning hours talking to her father, a rabbi, telling us about the state of Israel, which was oddly enlightening to a gentile such as myself.

I think Keren was just as amused by me as I was of her. She kept calling me adorable and polite because I waited to be invited to sit at her dinner table. She says Miami is full of brash mannerless people and I was just… different. I slept over at her house and took the most amazing hot shower there before I left. I’m a bit embarrassed to say it was the first shower I had taken since I left and I was getting tired of the baby wipe sponge baths and my hair being so greasy I could hear my brush squicking through it. In the morning she fed me grits. I’d yet to get around to trying any southern foods so this was actually something I was up for. They were awesome! Buttery and delicious and I just don’t know why I haven’t had them before… I’m so getting some when I go home. I left a half a bag of S’more marshmallows, apparently something they don’t sell down there. “Why are these marshmallows so huge?!” Funny how much discussion those marshmallows have been giving me lately.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

0

Savannah Squares – Georgia

Savannah Georgia was another one of those ill-planned out things. Unlike most of the destinations on the list I knew absolutely nothing of Savannah other than the fact it had squares. I had no idea what this meant but I was up for enjoying some geometric wonders.

What can I say? I headed for the original square first, or at least I headed for the one my smart phone claimed was the original. Upon nearing the city I could see this place was a lot different than all the other cities I’d been to. It was green, really green, and no buildings seemed to be taller than six or so stories, except for a few church steeples. I waltzed into town, taking no time at all to find the squares. There were big arching trees going over the streets and in the square. People were playing chess out in the humid air, and there were so many dogs getting brought out for walks! The traffic was slim to nil, at 5:30PM, and everyone seemed relaxed going about their business. There were horse carriages everywhere with people on the front giving historical tours.

I got to reaffirm my inability to answer trivia questions about this city. Why was it flat, why were there squares everywhere? Why did it seem so wealthy? And most importantly, where are all the ghosts? I have no idea – this was something I’d neglected to memorize from all the crime and paranormal documentaries I grew up with. Shame, I didn’t see a single one. Perhaps next time I shall take a ghost tour and hope for the best.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

0

Atlantic City – Putting Class into Perspective

Atlantic city isn’t my scene, never was, and never will be but it was suggested soooo many times I felt negligent in not stopping by. It wasn’t as if I had the money to gamble and if I did I’d rather spend it on some other food source than the PB&J’s that were becoming the bane of my existence than a few shiny casino chips. I mean don’t get me wrong – if someone else wants to gamble go ahead, I couldn’t care less. I just think if I were to waste money I’d at least light it on fire or do something cool with it.

I drove in and saw the most garish, sparkly, gaudy buildings I have ever seen in my life. In letters probably bigger than the damn Hollywood sign read TRUMP everywhere. Holy crap… There’s having an over-inflated ego and then there’s that…. This must be the human equivalent of a Tom cat’s pissing contest. To make the whole thing all the better there were ghetto houses and derelicts smattered in between these glittery shiny casinos. There seemed to be no middle class at all…. Just the obscenely rich and the desperately poor. There were condemned homes, buildings that were more or less just ruins, fences everywhere… It was depressing thinking anyone even lived in this squalid manner in a ghetto that was so disparaging it looked like it was from a third world country. There is just no reason for it, but to make it even worse were the casinos right next to it all… a real smack to the face. We left feeling very melancholy. And since taking this trip we have learned Atlantic City wants to build a pedestrian bridge between the casinos so that their patrons will not have to look at the eye sore that is the poverty stricken ghetto outside. Such an American reaction, rather than redistribute the wealth in a socially beneficial way we’d rather just hide the poor people from sight and pretend there’s not a problem to begin with.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

0

Pointsette State Park – South Carolina

Initially I only meant to stop here as a camping site to sleep but this place is absolutely gorgeous! Even the welcome center looks like some sort of rich fancy lodge or something. Right from the start I saw a tiny weird little lizard and walking around I found two five foot long alligators basking out on a little rafty thing. There was only one other camper here and the rest were RVs. This place looks like an enchanted forest! I took all sorts of photos of the weeping trees, the alligators, lizards, deer, and weird bugs I saw, and I even took a night walk. Unlike the Pine Barons of New Jersey this place got DARK. Pitch black. A deer stalked our tent at night. And I must say the bathrooms here… absolutely spotless, though the showers were cold than ice water. The only complaint would be that there are frogs EVERYWHERE. I thought I was witnessing a mass mudslide when I walked up to the embankment of the lake. Only on closer inspection did I find out this wave wasn’t made of mud it was made from thousands upon thousands of frogs all leaping desperately away form me into the water, about three feet from there!

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

 

0

Farewell Feast with Family

I was invited to go to a farewell feast at my father’s shortly before I was to leave so I decided to do this a few days beforehand. They thought it would be amusing to come up with an outrageous set of dinner courses that I may not have ever tried before. These were classic New England dishes, seafood to be exact, and although I was aware of this I still didn’t really prepare for what was coming.

There before me in a bowl was a set of “steamers” or little necked clams as the stores called them. I must have given off quite an expression of repulsion although I was trying desperately to do the opposite. I don’t make a habit of offending the cook. Wendy must have picked up on this as she started to immediately tell me I didn’t have to eat them. Well, they were cooked, who cares if I was plucking the remains of their cousins off the beaches of Maine just a few weeks ago.

I opened up the little shell and there was this gelatinous completely alien-looking piece of flesh staring up at me. It had a rubber band like “body” a bulging soft “stomach” and a hard brown “neck.” None of these labels struck me as being particularly anatomically correct but who am to say? This creature was utterly strange and seemed to be composed entirely of just a digestive system in a shell. I bit into the belly, it was delicate in flavor and texture and honestly wasn’t that bad. Texturewise it was most like a scallop but a lot smoother and softer. A pile of green goo that must have been its last meal spilled out onto my plate. Oh, look at that, the stomach might actually be a stomach. I couldn’t eat the fibrous ribbon-like body, just touching a piece of it with my teeth almost resulted in me ralphing all over the table but hey look! At least I can say I tried!

The next course was rice and shrimp. I have always loved shrimp, but currently I was keeping one as a pet. I mentioned this and Wendy immediately spat out an apology, but it wasn’t necessary, I thoroughly enjoyed the dish.

The next dish was lobster. This I expected.  I snapped mine’s tail off with a loud crack and pulled out its meat with a fondue fork. I devoured the tasty morsels in butter and moved on to its claws were it soon lost a thumb with another loud crack and then to add insult to injury we took a nutcracker after the lower claw. I was told all the legs come right off in a clump if we wanted to eat the guts in the main body… I didn’t… I still ripped mine off… more green goo… I sucked on the little ant-like legs with a morbid sort of glee, maintaining this was the most amusing part of eating lobster.

I was past full but there was more. Now it was two slices of seedless watermelon which was so good. Then I was given fresh raspberries on top of a canned pear, everything swimming under home-made whip cream. Now that is a dessert I can appreciate, simple and delicious! More watermelon. Then marshmallows, the big ones, toasted on the fire in the drizzly rain.

I showed Wendy that you could peel and eat the big marshmallows numerous times. I also dropped a marshmallow on the coal and watched it turn into a giant blob of white lava ooze. Wendy was horrified and fascinated, guess she’s never done that with a marshmallow. Her reaction amused me.

I also visited the horses while I was there and checked up on their three wee poodles, all so much better behaved than my mothers. SIGH. All and all we had a fantastic dinner, good conversation, and nothing was too awkward as it sometimes can be.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


0

Washington DC – A Total Bust!

Off to DC! I couldn’t wait! I wanted to return to the Museum of Natural History, as I only began to sink my teeth into it as a twelve year old and now still thought about going back to see the fossils with glassy eyes. Admission to any of the Smithsonian museums is free, including the Museum of Natural History, however they have no parking. Parking can be found in nearby garages… however these garages are not tall enough to accommodate a Jeep with a storage container on its roof… I tried two garages and was sent immediately out. I drove by others and read their clearance heights which only got lower and lower, to the point I fund one as small as six feet. I attempted to look for parking but everywhere I looked was only for two hours at the risk of being towed and if I had to walk half an hour to the car and half an hour back that left me with one measly hour to run through an enormous museum I could probably spend a solid week in. Frustrated I eventually left, but not before passing the usual monuments and snapping photos. I stopped when my camera battery died…. Its been doing that a lot lately and never used to. Seems Murphy might be following me again. SIGH.

I decided that someday I might return to DC without a filled roof rack and just spend a week or so looking at all the Smithsonian museums… and perhaps the new American Justice museum I spied from the street. It looked neat. Isn’t there also a spy museum somewhere? Shame DC… I was a day ahead of schedule passing you. You could have held my attention so much longer if you only had a place to park!

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


 

0

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑