Department of Small Worlds

Armchair Adventures

Published Aug. 5, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Haven't We Met Before?

            If I met a guy in a bar and he asked where I was from and I said, "The South Pole," I guarantee he'd tell me he grew up two blocks from there.

            That's what a small world it is.

            Everybody has their 'small world' stories.

            Sometimes it seems that no matter where I go, I meet somebody from Fredericksburg. And if they aren't from there, their cousin or next door neighbor is.

            At the moment I'm in Prescott, and that's about 2,200 miles from home base in Spotsylvania.

            So the day after I get here I'm heading out to check the mailbox. (It's always full of junk mail when I've been gone a couple of months.) A neighbor across the street says 'hello.'

            I return the greeting and she stops to chat.

            Now I've spoken to this neighbor a number of times and never took much notice of her accented English. This morning I cannot help notice that it is quite Irish. I don't want to ask her about it directly so, instead, I mention that I've just gotten back from a trip to Ireland.

            Well, you can imagine how her face lit up. She tells me that she's from Limerick, a city in southwest Ireland.

            Oops! I hated to have to say that we had deliberately chosen to drive around that city on the bypass, to avoid the traffic.

            Once upon a time on a solo trip to Alaska in 1995, I had camped in a remote, deserted campground. Next morning, I continued my drive across that country's outback.

            I'd only had instant coffee and toast for breakfast so, when I rounded a curve and spotted a small bar-and-café, complete with curling smoke rising from its chimney, I stopped for breakfast.

            It was a friendly local place, well off the beaten tourist track, and a smiling young lady put a steaming mug of coffee in front of me and asked what I'd like to eat.

            So, okay, the bottom line: she'd grown up in Woodbridge, gone to then-Mary Washington College, and learned to fly at Shannon Airport under the wise tutelage of the late Shorty Dettinger.

            How much smaller world can you get than that?

            Actually, you can.

            A few years back I discovered that my next door neighbor here in Prescott was a young woman whose dad had been principal of a middle school in Spotsylvania. A nurse, she had grown up there and had married a teacher out west.

            The couple moved away shortly after that and I cannot remember her name.

            There are small, small world stories everywhere you go. One reason you discover them is that the first thing travelers usually do is ask one another where they are from. They say there are six degrees of separation among us. I'm not sure it isn't more like four or five.

            Everyone you meet knows somebody that you have at least met. Or at least their cousin. Or so it seems.

            Long, long ago, when I taught at Southland Boys' High School in Invercargill, New Zealand, I remember being introduced to two other Americans on the faculty. One was Jerry, from California. The other was Tim Sullivan, a math teacher from New Jersey who had friends (or maybe it was family) from Northern Virginia. Tim Sullivan, while not a rare name, happens to be the name of my grandfather and one of my sons.

            As I said, everybody who gets around has their small world tales. They are always a lot of fun. I've related a few of mine here which popped into my head. There are lots of others.

            What about you? If you have a favorite small world story from your own wanderings, drop me a note. If I get enough of them I'll pass them along in another column. 

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Ireland: The West Coast

Colorful shop in a Dingle alley typifies Irish love of color and flowers.

 Armchair Adventures

published July 29, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Ireland's Beautiful Dingle Peninsula

             Ireland's Dingle Peninsula isn't very large. From the city of Tralee to the town of Dingle is less than 30 miles. But it may be one of the few places on Earth where you can take a drive from 2012 back to the Iron Age in less than a couple of hours.

            This is no joke. When you can travel in both space and time like that, the additional dimension brings new meaning to the reason why we love to explore.

            On the drizzly morning when we left our B&B at Camp Junction headed for Dingle, the road soon turned into little more than a paved wagon path, twisting and bending up, up till we emerged on the flank of a grassy mountain.

            The scenery was beyond words, reminding of a drive from Billings, Montana, over a mountain range and down into one of the less used entrances to Yellowstone.

            My son, Tim, was driving, and I bid him stop so we could stand in the rain and soak up the exhilarating scenery. Fewer than 10,000 humans inhabit the whole peninsula, but there are more than half a million sheep, and I could spot them, widely dispersed white dots across these lonely green ranges.

            Crossing the ridge, we made a long, straight descent toward a mist-shrouded sea. Tim wanted to see a place locals call Inch Beach. But hopes of driving this wide sandy expanse yielded to common sense after a local told us we could do it, but would likely have to pay the lurking tow truck operator a hefty fee.

            Back on the winding coast road, we came to the town of Anascaul. It would be just another small Irish coastal town but for the stop we had in mind.

            Just on the edge of town we found what we looked for. An old blue-and-white pub bearing a name no one would expect here: The South Pole Inn.

            In 1923, one of the most famous and heroic of the explorers of the Antarctic, retired to this, his birthplace. The man was Tom Crean, second officer in the Royal Navy who accompanied Robert Scott on two major explorations, leading a party that rescued Scott close to the South Pole on one of them.

            In 1914, this quiet, pleasant giant of a man was chosen for Ernest Shackleton's legendary bid for the pole, aboard the ship Endurance.

            There is not space here to recount one of the most heroic and amazing stories in the annals of human exploration. I know what a sweeping statement that is, but those who know never forget this story. Suffice to say that, once more, Crean came through, playing a pivotal role in the survival of the ship's entire crew and their return to England.

            Learning that Tom Crean's pub survived (Google the South Pole Inn), I could not have returned stateside without visiting. We did better than gawk, we had lunch in this little hostelry, which was sold out of his family after Crean's death in 1938.

            I was both honored and humbled by this visit. And as we emerged from the pub into the rain, we walked across the street to a small park. There, a likeness of the pipe-smoking explorer stands, his arms full of puppies born to one of the sled dogs

aboard Endurance. (Among many other duties, the Irishman found time to take care of the expedition's dogs.)

            We drove on around the west end of the peninsula. The scenery here was spectacular-steep cliffs plunging hundreds of feet into the North Atlantic. But strung across the tops of these cliffs for miles was something else I had come all this way to see.

Small, simple stone huts, "beehive huts," the archaeologists call them.

            They are old, and they have survived over incredible periods of time, guardians of this rugged coastline, home to a rugged civilization that survived here over millennia against great odds. Life here must have been difficult, yet some of these sites have been

carbon-dated at more than 4,000 years old, a few even believed to date back 6,000 years.

            Tim and I loved our entire Ireland trip, but if I was limited to only one place, this would have been it: Dingle, County Kerry and surrounds.

            Next time-if there is a next time-I'll come back to this place. There is far more than I can relate here but these are highlights we both found rich and rewarding. Earlier, I mentioned something called the Dingle Way. Hikers come from around the world for this eight-or-nine-day trek around the peninsula.

            We talked to a young hiking couple from Maryland who had just finished the trek. They loved every mile of it but said it wore them out.

            My Ireland to-see list is already long, if I am lucky enough to return someday.

            And just in case you're wondering, no, we did not see Fungie, the people-friendly wild dolphin that welcomes visitors to Dingle.

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Wandering Ireland-Part 3 of 4

The Rock of Cashel

Armchair Adventures

published July 22, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

To the Coast by Way of The Rock

        So many things in Ireland go by more than one name. The Rock of Cashel, for instance. It suggests, well, some special sort of rock, wouldn't you think?

            But what if your map should call it St. Patrick's Rock or The Fortress Rock at Cashel?

            Well it is all those things and more. What it is, has to be any Hollywood set designer's doped dream of what an ancient castle or fortress must be.

            Son Tim and I drove away from Kilkenny, Ireland, thinking we couldn't find a more spectacular medieval castle than the big one looming over the River Nore there.

            Cashel changed our minds.

            Dominating the skyline of the town of Cashel, The Rock, as guidebooks often call it, is a complex of thousand-year old buildings clinging to a huge limestone upthrust jutting up from a lovely green grass plain. It fairly defines the phrase, medieval fortress castle-my name for it.

            And it isn't my imagination that those fields are the stuff of dreams and song. These are the plains of Tipperary, made famous in a World War I song my mom and dad sang me as a child.

            Little wonder there are so many photos. This is the place you bought that expensive camera for.

            We parked in the lot below, craned up at the Rock, shot the obligatory photos and trudged up the hill, an easy walk, incidentally, despite guidebook descriptions.

            Many of these Irish historic sites today, including The Rock and Kilkenny Castle, are owned and cared for by the government-the equivalent of our national historic parks.

            And as at our own heritage sites, you can expect guides and an introductory video, usually quite well done.

            Before entering the castle, we looked for and spotted another historic site, one that I had read was nearby. It is the ruins of the Hore Abbey-graceful, peaceful ruins, ignored by the crowds, in a field about a third of a mile away. I wish now that we had taken time to visit there. The walk alone would have been worth it.

            From a distance, The Rock appears to be a single, quite old stone structure. That is deceiving. While the assorted structures are jammed together atop their prominence, there is actually the Cormac Chapel, the Round Tower, the Hall of the Vicars Choral, St. Patrick's Cross, the beautiful 13th century roofless chapel, and the walled graveyard and grounds.

            These names correctly indicate that this complex of nested structures served many purposes for many owners over the span of its long life, including residence, cathedral and-always-fortress in an often lawless land.

            There is something else, too. It is the Forgotten Void, a small enclosure between an old chapel and the Round Tower. The Tower is believed the oldest stone construction on the site, dating to about 1100 a.d.

            No one seems certain when this limestone outcropping was first built upon, but with the tremendous defensive advantage it afforded in many warlike times, The Rock has been in use for a very long time.

            St. Patrick is said to have baptized King Aegnus in about 450 a.d. at this place. The castle was given to the church at the beginning of the 12th century and the cathedral was built on the site prior to the year 1300.

            We took the tour, felt the winds that whip this hilltop religious redoubt, and headed back down off The Rock, well aware we had been someplace we would never forget.

            Several blocks away, we went in search of food in Cashel, deciding upon a nondescript place with the name "Ladyswell Café." Tim chose the restaurant, and chose well. It was full of locals, and locals always know best when it comes to dining. I had the seafood chowder; he had the pesto chicken salad.

            A word about Irish food here. This little country chock full of rich farmland is dairy heaven. You had better be prepared for real cream, real butter, and so forth, and the best quality. And if you are working your body as nature made it to be worked, it won't hurt a bit. Wherever you travel in this land, the sea is never far, either. And the bounties of the sea are a staple of Irish menus.

            It was time to move on. We hoped to see the west coast at Tralee and the Bay of Dingle that evening and the Irish countryside was calling.

            We took back roads leaving Cashel. As we turned a corner in this country of beautiful farms, I looked back over my right shoulder and saw, proud and lonely, this ancient sentinel of The Rock.

            We stopped and took a long look back at this hauntingly beautiful site. The photo that you see above is what we saw.

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The Irish Heartland

     Kilkenny Castle overlooks the city and the Rover Nore.

Armchair Adventures

published July 15, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

The Rich History of Kilkenny

            On the morning of our third day in Dublin, my son, Tim, and I headed out of the city, intent on getting a glimpse of the Ireland we had come for.

            As so many cities have, this one had a 'beltway' to navigate but with a novel twist: tolls for using it were to be paid at service stations along radial freeways streaming outwards of Dublin. It worked through a series of computer-controlled cameras snapping images of every license on the toll road.

            If we had gone to Ireland for the narrow, winding country lanes, this 21st-century techno-stuff disappointed. Yet, as we would soon discover, that high-tech gimmickry soon disappeared.

            We would revel in many drives down narrow winding ways in the next few days. All that's needed to find them is to take the off-ramps into the past, down countless Irish lanes that even today are little more than paved paths for pony carts.

            That easy, unstrained joining of ancient and contemporary is one of the country's most engaging features. And the Irish themselves seem entirely at ease with this.

            Our immediate destination was Kilkenny, in the country's central southwest region in the county of the same name.

            Kilkenny's popularity as a tourist destination may stem from its appearance as the quintessential small Irish medieval city. Once we managed to deal with and work around the crowds it was a wonderful town, full of scenic cathedrals, friendly locals, pleasant little shops and all of it crowned by that architectural and historic masterpiece, Kilkenny Castle.

            The castle sits high atop a bluff overlooking the River Nore and the city's commercial core, itself appropriately aged to support the more prominent structures.

            We saved the serious sightseeing for the next morning and set off along John Street (could be called Pub Street) in search for food and lodging. We discovered the latter at a small B&B down an alleyway. If there is an Irish pub that doesn't serve decent food, we did not come across it.

            The choices seemed innumerable. We opted for a friendly place, nearly deserted, at the north end of John Street. It may have been for the service, as the young woman there could put a smile on anyone's face.

            Starved for food and news, we snagged a good deal on both and for stateside news, she bid me go behind the bar and use the computer. And the old news hound did just that, logging onto the New York Times to read headlines about the Supreme Court health care ruling. The 21st century certainly has its advantages!

            By the way, to continue momentarily along this line of digression, I do believe free Wi-Fi was, if anything, more widely available in Ireland than in most American towns I've been to. Got a smart phone? Don't travel without it, but be sure to bring the right charging adapter.

            Friday dawned gray and drizzling. We donned rain gear and headed for St. John's Bridge and Kilkenny Castle. Begun in the 9th century, this enormous building, like so many others, was not built over night. Instead, these Irish castles seem to go through a series of lives, expanding, being partially destroyed in some war or other, changing purposes and owning families over centuries.

            Not all guidebooks give you the straight scoop on these things. One reports that this stalwart stone eminence dates to the 12th century, but a guide told us where we could peer through a glass floor at a floodlighted section of a stone foundation dating to the 800s.

            But for practical purposes, most of the castle as it is seen today dates to the 17th century, when it was home to the Butler family, who ruled some 90,000 acres of surrounding Ireland and-essentially owned those who rented it for farmland. This, by the way, from some of the best informed guides I've ever run into. Tim and I talked to three of these historians separately, at length.

            And these were historians, carefully linking eras of British history from centuries past to the present. It was fun asking them to fit the fictional story of NPR's popular Downtown Abbey into the narrative of this castle and others like it.

            Nowhere in the Irish Republic are you likely to forget that the English ruled this land with an iron and often scornful hand for many lifetimes. It took little Ireland until 1923 to win the independence that we had won a century-and-a-half earlier.

            To this day, the Irish seem very fond of Americans. After all, in the great potato famine of 1847-49 and thereabouts, it is believed that a million Irish died and an equal number fled their homeland, most of them to America-an unthinkable toll for a small country.

            And just as Americans know from generational memories of their own Civil War, the Irish will long remember the famine and the generations they spent struggling for independence. 

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IRELAND in the 21st Century

Late evening, Dublin's spectacular James Joyce Bridge, aka The Harp Bridge for Ireland's national symbol.

Armchair Adventures

published July 8, 2012

First in series of four

by Paul Sullivan

Impressions of Ireland

            It seems unreal to think that 24 hours ago I was in the airport at Dublin, Ireland, awaiting a plane back to the States.

            Half a century of expectations went into that moment. Half a century of wondering about Ireland. We had spent eight days roaming the Emerald Isle in an effort to see just what we guessed right...and what we had all wrong about this ancient land. Right or wrong, we loved it all; would return in a heartbeat.

            We have a new dream now: to return someday and walk the legendary Dingle Way-more about in a later column.

            Impressions? Right there you have one of my fondest-talking to people who had just walked that 8-day trail among the rugged, weather-beaten windswept crags where sheep still roam the same moors where iron-age man survived elements and invaders at least a thousand years before Christ.

            That’s on a peninsula along this island nation’s west or Atlantic side. On the eastern side of this Indiana-sized country of 6.1 million, Dublin is another world.

            Ireland, as anyone who follows the news knows, is a member of the EU-the European Union. A member whose economy is not doing well. With some one million inhabitants, Dublin would seem to be the economic engine that drives Ireland. But is it? I certainly wouldn’t know, but our impressions would put it the other way around. Namely, that rural and small-city Ireland seems to be in decidedly better shape than Dublin.

            East-to-west, we saw no real evidence of dire need outside Dublin. Of course, appearances can be deceptive, but the country’s farms and independent businesses certainly gave the impression that they were not suffering.

            We both commented on what a cosmopolitan city Dublin is. Typifying this, on our last night in country, we had dinner in a Mexican restaurant sitting next to two German men, served by a Chinese waitress.

            Dublin serves up a rich stew of the very old and 21^st century. Divided by the River Liffey, the city has a lattice-work of bridges, centuries old and strikingly new, both vehicular and pedestrian. It has an excellent public transit network including light rail.

            The double-decker tour buses, with their hop-on, hop-off at will plan provided our means of getting the essential overview. We liked ‘em so much we went back for a second round.

            Even at that, Dublin has such a rich and varied mix of sites to see that we saw but a fraction of it and could have spent our entire time there.

            Favorites-different as they are-would be the Trinity College Library with its Book of Kells exhibit, and the Guinness Storehouse.

            The home of Ireland’s favorite drink is almost surely the single most popular tourist attraction in the country. I’d bet on it. This masterpiece of marketing concludes with a pint of Ireland’s favorite export high atop its brewery in a glass-enclosed pub with what has to be the most spectacular possible views of Dublin.

            Tim signed up for the Guinness Academy, a 10-minute introduction on the proper way to pour a pint. And I must say, there is a thing or two to learn, as he later showed me in a historic pub many miles way, in a part of this story yet to come.

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Berryville: Heart of the Valley

Time trip: Sammy, Bev and Margy at Berryville News Stand

Armchair Adventures

published July 1, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Back to the Future

 in Berryville

            Here’s what I can recall about Berryville and Clarke County. It’s from way far back, mostly in the 1940s and 50s.

            Mom always said we had lots of McCormick relatives up there, in what she’d call The Valley. That means the Valley of Virginia-the upper valley not far from Winchester.

            Through mom’s mother’s side, we’re McCormicks, but the only one of them I know still living up there is cousin Bev Whiting.

            Aunt Bessie was Bev’s mom, and she was something else. Dad called her a pistol. When I was little, Aunt Bessie evoked a certain amount of fear. Not that she was mean, but she ran the big feed and grain store down by the railroad tracks. She was the boss. And nobody in Berryville ever doubted that.You didn’t cross Bessie Whiting. No sir.

            But I digress.

            I’m not sure if it was my sister, Margy, (Margaretta) or me made the suggestion we ought to drive up to Berryville and see Bev.

            And so it was that on the first day of summer-lovely day it was-Margy wheeled her Honda van westward, over the Blue Ridge, down into the Shenandoah Valley and into Berryville.

            My first reaction was that no town in Virginia could resist change, could hold back the flood of development so well.

            It could have been 1950, from that initial cruise down the main drag. I mean, had anything changed?

            There was great-grandpa Province McCormick’s last home; further along, there was the Battletown Inn, where the diminutive Civil War mounted Scout had hung-out in his final years. A few miles back up the road we had passed something with the name “Hawthorne” on it-a subdivision, I believe. That had been the old McCormick farm before Union troops burned it during a rampage down the Valley.

            Some years before she died, mom offered each of her four kids a piece of the old farm. By then we had established lives elsewhere and turned it down. Now-now that it’s way too late, I’m not so certain.

            This is unspeakably lovely, hallowed, green ground; so close to the fabled Shenandoah River. No wonder someone wrote those unforgettable lines of song, “Oh, Shenandoah, I Long to See You!”

            Back to the moment. It had been so long that neither of us could remember exactly where Bev lived. Margy turned here and there, I tried to lift it from the screen of my fone. Just then she said, “There he is!” And darned if he wasn’t-a small man dressed all in white-southerner to the core-waving us on from three blocks away.

            “Well,” I remarked, “He may be 92, but he sure has sharp eyesight!”

            Bev Whiting is the living embodiment of Old Virginia. Thoroughly decent, well-mannered, level-headed, and looking forward, with an eye on where he’s come from. But it was his sunny disposition I enjoyed most. There couldn’t be a mean bone in the man’s body.

            A child of Berryville, he’d lived his entire life in Clarke County, but for time soldiering in the U.S. Army Field Artillery during World War II.

            I don’t know if there’s a town historian, but I know who I’d nominate for the job. We could not imagine anything or anyone in Berryville worth knowing that Bev Whiting does not know.

            Bev, his stepson, Sammy Card, and the two of us sat there and “visited” (as old timers say) for awhile.

            But when Virginians get together, they eat together. Where to?

            We cruised the town’s single commercial street which offers several choices for dining. But there was only one choice for me, and I said so.

            We had to lunch at the Berryville News Stand.

            In the decades when it really was a news stand, it had been Bev Whiting’s store. The nerve center of Clarke County might have been a more accurate name for the place.

            It’s a deli now. Nothing fancy to look at, but my turkey-avocado-cheese sandwich and big glass of iced coffee was top-grade.

            After lunch, we piled back in the car and, with Bev narrating, took the best tour anyone could imagine of his little town.

            Across the railroad tracks, there was the big building that used to be the family feed and grain business; back behind that, hidden in an industrial park, is the town’s economic lifeblood, Berryville Graphics, a major book publishing house. The Winchester Star had done a story that very day on its expansion. Think books made from real trees are dead as the dodo-bird? Think again. How about 120 million copies a year?

            Those employees must live somewhere, I mused.

            Bev showed us where. And in this scenic little village of surprises, we turned here and turned there and, suddenly found ourselves in a pretty typical suburban development, complete with waving UPS driver. We were right in the middle of the year 2012, after all.             And it really wasn’t all that bad.

           

           

           

Amtrak's Fredericksburg Problem

Armchair Adventures

for June 24, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Wrong Track with Amtrak

            We all have a tendency to think common sense will prevail; to believe that

things obviously wrong will be righted. But when they endure over years, causing serious problems or at the very least a major inconvenience to many, we think that some mysterious "someone" will do something about them.

            If you travel by Amtrak from Fredericksburg to anyplace else, you will have encountered what I am about to write about. If neither you nor anyone you know ever rides the rails on Amtrak to parts beyond, well, forget about this. Move on to other things.

            Several weeks ago I took my son to Fredericksburg's venerable passenger station to catch a southbound train. It was a Sunday morning. As the time for the scheduled 8:50 a.m. train neared, a familiar guessing game gradually spread through the crowd.

            There were several dozen travelers and wishers-well scattered beside the tracks, bags in hand, awaiting what I soon learned were both southbound and northbound trains.

            As if it were not weird enough that the two tracks are numbered 2 and 3, (rather than 1 and 2), nobody seemed to know which train would arrive on which  track.

            Some more assertive folks assured others that the southbound would be on the side nearest downtown, while northbound would be on the opposite side.

            I asked the gentleman who had said this how he had made that determination. "Well, he said, trains keep to the right like cars do on the road." He hesitated. "I guess," he added.

            Not wanting to sound like a know-it-all, or a railroad oracle, I said, no, that isn't right. Trains, I told him, follow no such rule and I had many times caught northbound trains on either of the two tracks. "I suspect," I told him," that rail traffic managers route the trains according to other trains using those same tracks, in order to maintain separation for safety's sake.

            An older woman arrived with big bags. A younger woman with her said the elderly lady had missed the train the previous day because they had been on the wrong side when the train arrived. "And it didn't wait," she said.

            When the train pulls into the station and you find yourself on the wrong side, you must grab luggage and run as fast as you can, frantically hoping to go down the long angled walkway to a center aisle beneath the tracks, cross over to the other side, then lug your bags back up, huffing and puffing, and hope the conductor has seen you and will signal the engineer to wait for you.

            "I just can not believe that in the 21st century," a young man indignantly announced, "that Amtrak inflicts this upon its paying passengers and cannot do better."

            Couldn't have said it better myself.

            Virginia Railway Express does. This little commuter line has an LED light panel providing train information.

            Often, travelers think that surely they can get this basic information calling Amtrak's toll-free number. Been there; tried that. What you get, calling in, is operators who can tell if your train will be late, but their computer screens to not provide the arrival track.

            Or, you might get the Amtrak app for your phone. I have it. Doesn't help.

            Aha, you might say, but they do make an announcement.

            And yes, you would be right, sort of. Sometimes they make an announcement on the track number; sometimes it is not garbled and you can figure out what they have said, and sometimes it is even far enough ahead of arrival that you have time to switch sides…so to speak.

            The Fredericksburg area, a serious tourist town attracting visitors from across the country and around the world (yes, it is true), has had passenger rail service since before the Civil War-a conflict in which, ironically, railroads played a major role.

            I travel through this historic station a couple of dozen times a year. A retired reporter, I naturally strike up conversations with others awaiting trains every time I visit the station and put up with this ridiculous situation.

            What amazes me is that it has gone on so long. And that solving this problem would be so simple and would cost no more than the price of a simple LED light panel.

            Passengers having to play guessing games with train arrivals in the year 2012, (I've always wanted to write this) is just no way to run a railroad.