From Sea to Shining Sea

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

 

After our European vacation last summer, we decided to concentrate on a domestic vacation this year. Because of Pam’s teaching schedule, she prefers we travel between mid-May and mid-August. Earlier this spring we discussed where we wanted to go, and we decided on two trips.

 

The first trip was to Carolina Beach, NC. We booked a condo on the beach for early June. Carolina Beach is located about 15 miles south of Wilmington, NC. While we had visited Wilmington several times, we had never been to Carolina Beach. It seemed very similar to many of the other East Coast beaches we have visited. There is a downtown of sorts with a couple of larger hotels, a large Ferris Wheel and an amusement area.

 

The beach road is lined with three-to-four story apartment buildings on columns with room for parking underneath. Several blocks east on the other side of the inland waterway and marina is the main highway to Wilmington. It is lined with shopping plazas, restaurants and beach shops.

 

The trip from our home to Carolina Beach is nearly 700 miles and we took two days to get there. We stopped in Mt. Airy, NC the boyhood home of Andy Griffith and supposedly the model for the fictional town of Mayberry in his TV show of the 60s. I had thought about spending some time there to check out his boyhood home and other sites, but I read some questionable reviews about his home and some of the other sites, so we decided to move on.

 

When we arrived at our rental condo, we were unable to open the lockbox holding the keys. The combination has been emailed to us a couple of days before we arrived. After repeated attempts to open the box, I phoned the renter and left a voice mail. To his credit, he texted me a phone number and he said he would arrive in about 10 minutes. When he got there, it took him several attempts to open the lockbox.

 

Once we finally got inside, we discovered it was a delightful apartment with a wonderful view of the beach and ocean. We had a very nice several days on the beach and received a nice tour of Wilmington from a college friend of Pam and her husband who live in the nearby suburb of Leland, NC.

After our six days at the condo were over, we packed up and drove to Southport, NC to spend a couple of days with a couple from Ohio that we have known for about 40 years. Their condo had an extra bedroom suite that had its own entrance. Paula and Dave lived in a huge, gated community called that has almost 5,000 residents on about 6,000 acres. This community has its own fire department, a couple of golf courses and even a library.

 

On our way home, we took a slight detour to Greenville, NC to visit my old friend Sam Barber. He is now 93 and he co-authored a book with my brother Tim called “Go Down Moses: The Wings Over Jordan Choir.”  We visited his house, and he prepared an excellent lunch for us. After checking into our motel, we joined Sam and about a dozen friends for dinner. It was a fun evening, and it was good to see Sam again.

 

About four weeks later, we flew a direct flight from Cleveland to Seattle on Alaska Airlines. I really like the fact that there is no connection on the way, so it took about 5 hours instead of 8 or 9 with a connection and layover.

 

We arrived at SEATAC, Seattle’s airport about a half-hour late and the terminal was extremely crowded, and the baggage area was being renovated. It took us a while to find our bags and then we went to the area where shuttle buses to the car rental facility. We had to wait for three busses before we could get to the car rental center. The service at the Budget rental counter was extremely slow even though I had a reservation. We schlepped our luggage to the elevator and found our car in the assigned space.

 

There was one problem. Another group was loading luggage into the Hundyai we thought we were getting. I talked with the group, and we compared paperwork, and we had both been assigned the same car. His booking was with Avis, and it is a partner with Budget. We went to the counter in the parking garage and waited about 10 minutes for the only clerk on duty to deal with another customer.

 

After some negotiation, we agreed that the other couple could have the Hundyai, and we were given a Jeep Wrangler. I was surprised at how roomy it was, and it had a comfortable ride. My biggest objection was it had poor mileage of only about 23 mpg on the highway. We still had a three-and-a-half-hour drive to my niece’s house in Chelan, so we decided to stop for the night at motel in Cle Elum, WA that was about halfway to Chelan.

 

After a decent continental breakfast at the motel, we continued to Chelan. The highway followed the Columbia River as it curved north from Wenatchee, WA. It was a scenic drive with the river on the right and mountainous terrain on the left. During the drive, we did see several bighorn sheep up in the hills.

 

My niece Angela and her husband Kevin live in a very nice house on a hillside with a beautiful view of Lake Chelan. During our visit we had fun visiting a winery, going to concert with a pretty good band covering rock songs from the 60s through the 90s and lounging in their pool that felt good with temperatures near 100 each day while we were there. The last night we were there, Angela and I had fun covering a couple of songs on the Karaoke machine they have. She has a beautiful voice, and we had a great time covering Elton John and Kike Dee singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty’s “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

The next day we headed for Pasco, WA to visit my nephew, Neil. He is a social worker and an avid runner who lives in a nice ranch style house in a quiet neighborhood. He has a cat, so Pam and I had to book a hotel because I have a significant allergy to cats. We spent the following day touring the tri-cities (Pasco, Richland and Kennewick, WA) that are in the southeast corner of Washington.

 

We visited a park dedicated to the USS Triton, the first submarine to circle the world submerged. We had lunch at a brew pub not far from Hanford, WA that was one of the prominent sites in research to develop the first nuclear weapons used against Japan at the end of World War II. That evening, we were joined by my niece Angela and her husband Kevin who came down from Chelan.

The next afternoon, we all visited Neil and Angela’s aunt and uncle to celebrate their 60^th Anniversary. James Burney grew up in a small town in Alabama and joined the Marines while he was still 17. He then went to Vietnam on three tours of duty. While he was back in the US on leave, he met Fredine Hamilton who was in the US Army at an NCO club, and they instantly connected.

 

We had a nice visit, and I learned a lot about them. James and my brother Neil, who was married to Fredine’s sister Wanda, became best friends and spent a lot of time together. James was a huge fan of Alabama football (Roll Tide!) while Neil grew up during the Woody Hayes era at Ohio State. James told me he would always root for the Buckeyes because of their friendship, unless they were playing Bama.

Tragically, James passed away just a few weeks after our visit because of a heart attack. He was just a couple of weeks away from his 91^st birthday. We did not get to spend a lot of time together, but I will always remember him because of his friendship with my brother.

 

The next morning, Pam and I left Pasco and headed west towards our final destination, Long Beach, WA. After driving several hours driving through the stunning scenery of the Columbia River valley and the Dalles, we arrived in Long Beach, WA. This town could not be more different than the notable California town of the same name.

 

The Washington version is at the southwest corner of that state where the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean. Across the river is Astoria, OR that is an active seaport and the town where President Thomas Jefferson established the first fort on the Pacific Coast for the new United States of America.

 

While in Long Beach, Pam and I went to the beach to dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean, which was outrageously cold for July. We also visited a cranberry farm that still operates in conjunction with Washington State University. During our two days in Long Beach, daytime high temperatures were only in the low 60s, but that felt great after the daytime highs in the 90s in Chelan and Pasco.

Also, I did feel some sense of accomplishment since we had now visited beaches on the both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the same summer. While in Long Beach, we explored a few shops along the main street and visited a small park dedicated to the cross-continent expedition of Lewis and Clark from 1804 to 1806.

 

We also visited the Flavel mansion which was built and occupied by one of Astoria’s most important families. Finally, it was time to head to Portland, OR to catch our flight home. While we headed to the airport, we heard news stories about the significant computer hack that affected numerous businesses, including airlines, that day.

 

Our “red eye” flight was scheduled to leave Portland at 11:14PM for Chicago, but it didn’t pull away from the gate until almost 2AM! So, we missed our original connecting flight from Chicago to Cleveland. As we landed in Chicago, the gate agent gave us two standby tickets for a flight to Cleveland that would leave about three hours later.

 

We went to the gate and were fortunate to be the last two people to board a later flight to CLE. We made it home only about three hours later than originally planned, so I thought we were lucky to come through the major computer-hacked disruption okay.

 

It was a very eventful summer trip, and we are glad to be home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Afternoon of Laughs-The National Comedy Center

For my birthday recently, my wife Pam and our son Brian, accompanied me on a tour of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY. This small city is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from our home in Stow, OH, a suburb of Akron.

The NCC is in downtown Jamestown and is a couple blocks from the companion Lucy Desi Museum dedicated to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz who had one of TV’s earliest and most successful situation comedies. Lucille Ball was born and grew up in Jamestown and her gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery attracts many visitors each year. 

We spent about three hours at the NCC and could have spent more, but my aching back and feet said that was enough. One of the outstanding aspects was its multiple high-tech displays that allow you to access the work of hundreds of comedians and comic actors.

When you enter the museum, you create a personalized comic profile at a large touch-screen monitor. You are given a wrist band to touch and “log-in” and then you are asked to select your favorite stand-up comics, comic actors, favorite TV comedies and favorite comedy movies.

Throughout the museum, you tap your wristband to the different displays, and you receive videos and information about the comics in your profile. But our first stop was at the George and Jolene Brand Schlatter Theater where we saw an impressive tribute to Johnny Carson the Tonight Show hosted by a hologram of Jimmy Fallon. 

Because of time constraints, we decided to skip the tribute to Laugh In that was created by Schlatter. We did see numerous clips from that show throughout the museum and that theater presentation will definitely be part of our next visit.

There are dozens of interactive exhibits, but two of my favorites were the prop tables and the exhibit about talk show hosts where you could see clips of their best comedy skits, monologues and funny interviews. I watched clips from Johnny Carson, Dave Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and even Steve Allen. There was an awesome clip where Allen was hoisted 75 feet in the air to host the Tonight Show from a perch attached to a flagpole! 

The prop table allowed you to select a prop from a shelf and move it around on a large interactive table. I picked up a cast iron skillet prop and used it to see where it was used as a prop in a Three Stooges movie and several cartoons including Road Runner and Bugs Bunny.

There were several displays about writing comedy including one where you could display a portion of a script and then see the actual script on screen. I selected scenes from Cheers, M*A*S*H and others. There also was an interesting segment about that scene from the movie “When Harry Met Sally” that takes place in a deli restaurant.

In a promo video for the NCC, one visitor observed it’s, “…not a hall of dead guys,” and it certainly isn’t as it pays tribute both present and past comic actors and comedians.

Toward the end of the tour, there is a stage with a prompter and microphone where you can do Comedy Karaoke. I picked two bits: a Jim Gaffigan bit about Hot Pockets and another called Dad Jokes by Fozzy Bear of the Muppets. It’s a good thing Statler and Waldorf weren’t there to see that one!

We still had a lot to see, but it was getting close to closing time, and we hadn’t seen even half of the exhibits. The final exhibit was a series of interactive screens where you tapped your wrist band and received information about your comedy profile. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to finish that.

The next day, the NCC sent me an email with my comedy profile. It said I like Satirical/Topical humor, Observational humor about the ridiculousness of “normal” things and Absurd illogical or other worldly humor.

It was a great day full of laughs and happy memories.