For the past six years, I have been making a trip to Ann Arbor, MI, to visit my dear friends G.&N. I usually spend three or four days in Ann Arbor, but I felt like I needed more time than that away from home and work this year, and J. was not able to travel with me, so I decided to make the entire trip using back roads, stopping along the way to see random things and places and attempt to capture what little local color might be left over from the pre-interstate age of automobile travel. It would take me two days to get from Alexandria to Ann Arbor, instead of the usual nine hours, and I would spend the night in Pittsburgh.
Leaving home at the tail end of the morning rush hour on a Friday, I headed West on VA-7, intending to stop in Leesburg, VA. Strange as it may sound, in my ten years, give or take, of living in the DC area, I have never been to Leesburg, and never driven on Rt. 7 any further than Tyson's Corner. To my great disappointment, the road proved to be far from the idyllic country drive I had hoped for, though I suspect until ten years or so ago it mostly was. Today, however, it cuts its way through the worst kind of exurbia, punctuated by a traffic light every half mile, all of them, needless to say, red. I didn't arrive in Leesburg until after eleven.
Historic downtown Leesburg, however, was attractive, quaint, and quite lively, sustained by a combination of tourists and day-trippers from DC and the horsey set from the surrounding Virginia countryside. I parked the car and walked around a bit, taking mental note of places worth visiting if J. and I were to come there together. I had my coffee mug refilled at the Shoe Coffeehouse, evidently a shoe repair shop in its previous life. The coffee was decent, albeit on the weak side. My attempts, admittedly lame, to joke with the barista fell flat.
Leaving Leesburg, I headed North on US-15, crossing the Potomac into Maryland at Point of Rocks. I was now driving through the sort of environment I had been hoping for - the two lane road winding through thick greenery on both sides. The traffic was still fairly heavy. Bypassing Frederick, MD, which I have visited numerous times, entirely, I headed for Hagerstown, MD. My original intention was to take US-40 as far as was practical. US-40 was the first major US highway designed for automobile travel in the 1920s, and had once crossed the US from Atlantic City to San Francisco. Today, however, the segment West of Park City, UT, has disappeared entirely, and the remainder has been subsumed in many parts by interstates, including I-70 in Maryland. So I took what the DOT now calls "Alternate US-40," a genuine back road that apparently hews closer to the path of the old National Road, originally planned in 1806 and approved by Jefferson himself. I was in downtown Hagerstown a little after 1:00 p.m.
To many DC area residents, Hagerstown is known primarily for the large outlet mall on its outskirts, but apparently the city, originally an industrial railroad town that has been hit by the disappearance of railroads, mining and manufacturing like countless others in the Steel Belt, has been making an effort to reinvent itself as a tourist destination, boasting of quaint neighborhoods, bed-and-breakfasts and antique shops. Based on what I saw, it has been partially successful. Downtown Hagerstown was larger than I expected, stretching for many blocks in every direction. The neighborhoods leading up to it looked like the neighborhoods I've seen elsewhere in Maryland, and seemed none too prosperous - narrow pot-holed streets, run-down brick townhouses, a dented Chrysler K-car parked here and there. Downtown proper, however, had a bit more life to it. Most of the storefronts were occupied, there was a fair number of people on the sidewalks, and traffic was congested. While it didn't quite reach bustling level, it was clearly a city that has managed to retain, or regain, at least some vibrancy. The most obvious sign was an abundance of late-model Lexus and Mercedes cars, obviously not owned by locals, parked all along the streets. I parked my own far less impressive vehicle across the street from the large, institutional-looking public library and set out in search of lunch.
Walking around, I realized quickly that in its heyday, the downtown must have been gorgeous. Ornate facades, some preserved or restored to something resembling their original glory, were everywhere, and the building themselves had the impressive heft born of the confidence the community had once had in its position in the world. Some, to be sure, were in disrepair and looked sad, but enough remained at least to tickle my imagination, if not quite enable me to experience Hagerstown's golden days first-hand.
A couple of pubs downtown were open, and fairly well peopled with customers, but I opted for Skyline Coffee (2 Washington St.), located on Public Square, the geographic center of Hagerstown. For all the world, Skyline looked and felt like a big-city café, with the menu hand-written on giant chalkboards and the walls painted an inviting brick-red. The woman behind the counter looked like a textbook coffeehouse employee, too - young and attractive, with pale skin, green eyes and straight red hair worn in a disheveled ponytail, dressed in a tank top and hiking pants. My optimism, however, was shot down quickly. The woman, who I later found out was the owner, had the flattest affect of anyone I have ever met. No smile; monosyllabic responses. She clearly had no interest in making her customers feel welcome, much less being engaged in a conversation. In fact, she looked like she had no interest in anything at all. I ordered the grilled ham and cheese, which according to the menu came with green apple chutney. When I found none on the completed sandwich and asked what happened to the green apples, she replied, her voice never wavering from its original frequency, that they had none. By the time I was done with the mediocre sandwich, she was sitting at one of the outside tables smoking a cigarette, looking straight through me at some non-existent point far in the distance. Really wanting to like the place in spite of my experience thus far, I went back inside to find another employee, a tall and emaciated man of indeterminate age with vaguely exotic features and long black hair worn in an looped pony tail the way an American Indian at one time might have. He turned out to be quite a bit friendlier and, to give credit where it is due, made me an absolutely delicious espresso.
Walking back to the car, I stumbled upon a used bookshop called Barnwood Books (103 S. Potomac St.), and wandered in. The large main room was filled with shelf upon shelf of paperback romance novels and other popular fiction, neatly arranged, while what I tend to think of as "real" books were located, in great disarray, in a much smaller room off to the side. There was only one other customer in the store, browsing the romances. I looked around idly for a couple of minutes until I stumbled upon a hardcover copy of Joseph Epstein's Snobbery: The American Version. When I walked up to the counter to pay for it, I was shocked to hear the clerk, in response to my question, say that business was great, and that the recession has only made it better since people were buying used books instead of new ones. I must say hearing her say that made up for the bad lunch.
I was back on the road some time before three, staying on US-40 which paralleled I-68 just South of the Pennsylvania border. Bypassing Cumberland but going straight through the heart of Frostburg, MD, an appealing-looking college town, I finally crossed into Pennsylvania near Grantsville, MD, and headed due North across Laurel Highlands towards Pittsburgh.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
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2 comments:
Sounds like you passed through the giant road cut at Sideling Hill between Hagerstown and Cumberland, which I always thought was called Cumberland Gap but apparently isn't. I also learned of the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike, thirteen miles of highway and tunnels that is now a cycling preserve.
Thanks for that link, Steve. Fascinating stuff.
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