Family Tree

I've been digging around my files, trying to find photos I took in 2004. Or maybe it was 2003. See? I don't even know what year I'm hunting for. No wonder I can't find the photos. I also don't know if they were digital or print.

I was looking for some photos I took in the town of Briery Branch, Virginia. Those of you who have been reading a while know that I'm half-educated-classy-liberal and half-ornery-hillbilly. Half-Yankee and half-Confederate in historical terms. Half-vegetarian-Hemingway-artsy liberals and half-hunting-guitar-playing-bulldozer-operators. Which explains a lot if you know me. But I pass in mixed company. Meeting me for the first time, no one knows I'm not from an Ivy League school except those co-conspirators that attended wacky Antioch with me.

To complicate my heritage further, I grew up in a mostly black, dense urban neighborhood, though we were unlucky enough to live next door to the trashiest of redneck white trash.

But we're looking at my hillbilly side today. Not the immediate relatives but the people we know nothing about.

Hillbillies sometimes don't keep the best records, so one half of my heritage was the stuff of vague rumor. One of those rumors was that we were from this town I'd stopped in. My mother had heard somewhere that there were a lot of Javinses in the cemetery there, so I'd thought I'd take a look.

There were. Lots of Javinses. I took a photo of one headstone labeled "Edward Snowden Javins" who had served in the Confederate Army.

But this was disconcertingly meaningless. Who had these people been?

I filed it away under "Who the hell knows?" and continued on to view the nearest campground.

My mother has long had a website about my last name. She sometimes gets e-mails from people looking for info on Javins geneology.

A few weeks ago, she got the Rosetta Stone of my dad's half of the family. An e-mail from a stranger laid out my heritage on my dad's side. And the guy with the tombstone that I'd taken a photo of?

My great-great grandfather.

That same e-mail traced the family tree all the way back to a German who came over in the 1700s.

I'm part-Bavarian. Like the worthless ex who vanished after I landed in the Namibian hospital in 2005.

Oh hell.

Weekend Loaner Dog

This is Gypsy. We hung out this weekend. She was a very good dog, almost not trouble at all. Plus she made me run up and down four flights of stairs 3-4 more times a day than normal.

Yay Gypsy!

A Note from Kampala

I've just read about this book on Anne-Marie's blog, and I must have it. It's not on any US sites yet, so I just ordered it from Amazon.co.uk.

And if you didn't just click on the link to Anne-Marie's blog, please do so. She is living in Kampala, Uganda, and her current blog post has a bit of fascinating information about the "whopper."

Doo-Wop by the Shore

When I went to Wildwood last week, some people said "Why? Why go to a beach town when you hate the beach?"

True, I do hate the beach. I hate heat. I hate excessive sun. I don't like to wear a bathing suit. I don't like sand. I do like to swim but it's hard to do laps with all those waves smacking you all the time.

But I like quirky culture. And Wildwood has plenty of that.

It's billed as the "Doo Wop Capital of the World." What that means is that plenty of old-fifties-era buildings still exist. Wildwood was a major center of pop culture fifty years ago, when the Garden State Parkway and the modern era of car culture was new and exciting. Think Happy Days. Think the Twist, tail-finned cars, Route 66-style, neon signs, and angular designs. Think a beach town in the vein of Disney's Tomorrowland, cutting-edge at the time. Kind of quaint and quirky now.

Gentrification has taken its toll on Wildwood as it has all over the US, but the crashing economy seems to have put a stop to that.

Bus tours of Wildwood's unique leftover architecture happen on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I've been meaning to get down there for a few years but it's tough to get out of work mid-week. I finally went last Thursday to check out Wildwood.

Here are some photos.

Glad It's Not My Car

Roberta and I went across the park for a late-night snack at the Hamilton Park Ale House.

We were just hurrying home to get back to work when a furious, unexpected thunderstorm kicked in. Wind belted the trees. Rain fell sideways. Thunder and lightning cracked and flashed right on top of each other.

We huddled in the restaurant's vestibule, waiting for a break in the storm, then hurried home.

In front of my apartment, we found a huge tree branch had fallen across a cable, tearing it down and leaving it in the street, the tree crushing the top of a compact car's rear hatch.

I walked over to the police station to report the downed tree-and-wire, where the desk clerk—with all the enthusiasm of a man who has seen it all—said "Yeah, we have that one already."

Firefighters showed up a short while later. With a chainsaw. They sawed up the branch and force-fed the remains to a garbage truck.

Never a dull moment in J.C.

Whirlwind Road Trip

I had to get Henry the Ford Taurus his yearly car inspection. Which happens in Virginia since my sister actually owns him.

I know, I know... he's my car. But when I left town for an extended period of time once, I gave my car to my sister. I keep meaning to legally take him back, but I'm kind of superstitious when it comes to my car. I secretly believe that he'll break as soon as I pay all the fees to make him my own again.

Last year, I whizzed down and back in a day, straggling into town on fumes and running out of gas just past the Turnpike gate. This time, I left work early on Thursday, hitting the Turnpike in the rain.

Cleared out of town so I clear my head.

My iPod chose Kathleen Edwards on "Random," playing it through the car stereo as I praised the E-Z Pass and whipped off of the Turnpike and onto the Garden State Parkway. I'd decided to take a look at Wildwood on the way.

I was feeling paranoid about driving. This must be because I drive so infrequently. Or maybe it's that tiny little voice in my head that keeps reminding me of the fortune teller in Bangkok. Two years in a row—I'd gone back to him to see if he said the same things twice and he had, based on some complex equations he worked out on paper—the fortune teller had warned me that at age 43, I'd be in a horrible car accident and would be okay, but recovery would take a long time. I laughed at myself for thinking about this.

And then thought, maybe he was off. Maybe the car accident was metaphorical, and was actually the unfortunate events in late 2005, blogged with obscurity right here. Recovery sure had taken a long time. Sitting still and letting myself hit bottom while trying to regain the life I'd gleefully abandoned in 2000 in favor of the open road had not been the hardest single thing I'd ever done, but it had been the most relentlessly unrewarding.

Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down.

The rain let up as Lucinda Williams sang Gram Parsons. Then the evening cleared for a perfect trip to Wildwood. I parked and took the bus tour of the "Doo-Wop" 1950s motels.

Afterwards, I drove up the road to Vineland to stay the night. Henry and I had driven these routes before once, in 2004 when researching Best in Tent Camping: New Jersey. But it was dark now and I fretted. I hate driving unfamiliar rural roads at night in deer country.

I checked into a tired Days Inn. The bed jumped when the person in the next room rolled over. Ewww, I thought. The whole room was eww. A homeless woman slept in the outdoor stairwell, her shoes on her lap.

I'd been to over 70 countries, most of them alone, sparring with touts and con artists while dragging around a 40-pound backpack. Why was I bothered by a grimy Days Inn and a relatively short drive in my own (sort of) car?

I must be getting soft. How can enduring my "normal" life until it was indeed normal make me weak and paranoid? I charged the iPod overnight for tomorrow's trip.

And you and me are in way over our heads with this one.

On Friday morning—suspecting that Liz Phair was onto something—I drove to Virginia, got Henry's new inspection sticker, visited Home Depot with my mother, then drove as far north as Delaware before collapsing into another grimy hotel, this time a Howard Johnson's.

I checked out their free breakfast on Saturday morning. Froot Loops and corn flakes. I got back in my car and picked up an Egg McMuffin at a drive-through.

I'd gotten started too late and the heat of the day was already bearing down as Henry and I, feeling braver now, tore up I-95. I was singing along to the iPod, spacing out a bit instead of gripping the steering wheel. Trucks no longer terrified me. I'd just needed to get used to being behind the wheel again, here in Henry the Ford, who had driven 10,000 miles in 2002, shuttling Turbo and me from L.A. to mid-America to Virginia to New York. Turbo had even driven him on the left a few times before I'd calmly said "You're driving Australian again."

The Delaware Memorial Bridge shimmered into view, slightly blurry through the haze. Just over the bridge was New Jersey.

Home. For now.

What are you doing in a place like this, girl? Anyone could see you're the queen of the world.

Blaring the Bottle Rockets with the windows down, I flipped the gear shifter into overdrive and revved Henry a bit, to go faster up the ramp to the bridge.

"Yalla. Let's go."

Is That Legal?

I went to the Italian street festival last night. These nuns were both carrying stuffed animals. They'd been racking up wins at the horse races!

My Craftsy Secret Identity

Craftsy-Marie made this thing last week:



It's on its way to a certain JC-in-California baby right now. Actually, it's already arrived but maybe Mom and Dad need to go to the post office or something to pick it up.

I made it in Hoboken at the same place I made a bag and skirt before, one of two sewing hotspots that I frequent. I think I'm going to take a bag-boot-camp there in October.

Here's a bag that I made and sent to my friend Jessica last week at the same time that I sent the quilt.



And here's a shot that ended up on the crafts shop's Facebook page:

More New Adventures in Wi-Fi

Remember last year when I learned I could sit in a rest area by the NJ Turnpike and skim wi-fi off of passing buses?

Today on Facebook, I noted that I was sitting in J. Fenimore Cooper service area, trying to steal wi-fi from a passing bus.

And Kevin Kobasic quickly sketched up this funny image!

A disclaimer: I was not hanging over the bus. I was sitting in my car. And the Bolt Bus likely said "New York City," not "A(n)dirondacks."

Roadside America

It was all about the automobile in 1950s America. And shore town Wildwood, NJ—with Chubby Checker doing the Twist the first time there and Bill Haley and the Comets performing "Rock Around the Clock" for the first time—was in its heady heyday.

Here's a sneak preview at a photo I took last night in a quick tour of Wildwood's 1950s architecture. There are more than 50 of these old hotels left, and tourists love them.