Over the past number of years, I’ve been fortunate enough to break the drudge of middle class routine with a variety of trips, some rather long, like 7 years on shvil yisrael and others, jaunts of varying length with friends, families and foes (or pho’s, in the case of 2 Vietnam trips.) I enjoy writing about these trips and there are people who claim to enjoy reading what I write.
So I’ll endeavour to write about our recent trip to America. I’ll try to be brief, but the chances of that are about as good as Donald Trump sending flowers and a kiss on the cheek to Joe Biden.
Quite a few people were surprised that I would risk flying 11 hours in a potentially corona laden tin can to the only country in the world doing worse than Israel in controlling the spread of the virus. As Israel went into lockdown and with it my tourism business, I saw 2 options. One, Susan and I sitting at home, staring at the walls and each other, trying to find something we hadn’t seen already on Netflix. Or head off to the North-East corner of America, where corona was relatively under control, people relatively obeyed mask wearing mandates, everything was relatively open and is a relatively normal part of the country. Paul’s theory of relativity.
Before departure we were required to fill in 3 forms and be tested negative to Covid not more than 72 hours previous. This pandemic has given Israeli bureaucracy a new lease of life, as if it needed it. We were sternly warned that without our negative Covid test, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would not grant us entry. They must have either known the result by E.S.P., or Google, which spies on us anyway, sent a copy of the email result straight to the Governor. Either way, no-one asked anything about a Covid test throughout the journey.
One of the attractions of staying at Susan’s family’s beach house (perhaps “only reason”?) is the proximity to New England lobster pounds. It never occurred to me that these are called lobster pounds because they sell lobsters and other slightly unkosher but delicious seafood quite cheaply, by the pound. And all along I naively thought it meant that it was a sort of house, derived from the word compound. Obviously I’m not a New Englander. In any case, 40 minutes after deplaning at Logan and 3 ½ minutes after arriving to the beach house, there we were, standing in line at Browns Lobster Pound, waiting to order and devour lobster, shrimps, scallops, clams and cod; steamed, poached or fried. Chips (French fries in local parlance) and onion rings are obligatory.
I am being unfair if I imply that Browns is the only reason to vacation at Salisbury Beach. The family beach house backs directly on to miles of broad, sandy coastline, with the Atlantic Ocean reaching out into the horizon and beyond. Whilst Salisbury Beach is rarely uttered in the same breath as St Tropez, Koh Samui, Aruba or The Great Barrier Reef, on a grey, blustery day, with sea mist wafting over the beach, it really is a slice of heaven-on-earth.
I won’t wax so lyrical about Salisbury Beach township. It is a solid working class town that Bruce Springsteen would sing about if he knew it existed, whose central entertainment complex is Joe’s Playland, a relic of the 50’s with pinball machines, racing car video games and Susan’s all-time favourite sport – skeeball. Cultural highlights in Salisbury include restored vintage (American 50’s, 60’s and 70’s) car parades every Saturday and wet t-shirt contests. I thought of entering but was advised against it. To be honest, I’ll take out-of-fashion Salisbury Beach over snooty Kennebunkport, 20 km to the North, every time.
We had lots of plans for this trip; Autumn foliage hunting in the Berkshires, exploring New Hampshire’s White Mountains, spending a week with our son Yoav and experiencing elections Made In America. And just a little bit of eating. But all this pales into insignificance when Susan’s true reason for this trip is revealed. Shopping at the famous Kittery Trading Post. Imagine a cross between Dick’s Sporting Good’s on steroids, a posh and hip clothing store, camping and backpacking paradise and an entire floor of NRA approved, 2nd amendment weapons of destruction. Nothing is cheap, neither in price nor quality. Except THE TENT. Whilst Susan wandered around her version of Willy Wonker, I headed to the discount tent, where end of line goods are sold off at up to 40% discount. However, at the end of this particular week, the tent was being taken down for the winter. So there was a further 70% discount on top of the 40% discount. That works out to about 80% discount. And I used to think a 15% discount at HaMashbir was really special. Once Susan had finished window shopping the maximum priced stuff, we got to work on our 2021 wardrobe. It was a double bonus. We bought lots of good clothing really cheap and we would, for once, be only one year out of date in our dress sense. We were slightly embarrassed that whilst we thought that we had bought what appeared to us like a lot, our puny, half-filled trolley was nothing compared to everyone else’s over-stuffed mega trolleys.
The next few days passed uneventfully, with family, fun and food, all in over abundance. If shopping at Kittery was Susan’s dirty little secret, then mine was seeing autumn foliage. I have been accompanying Susan to America for 30 years now but had never managed to time a visit to coincide with New England foliage. We were excited to get back to a sort of Reader’s Digest mini road trip to the Berkshires of Western Mass and see the famous autumn foliage. 4 days isn’t 6 months, but it would be nice to drive around the countryside again. But we almost didn’t make it.
When the waves are up on the Atlantic coast, the surfers come out to test their skills. The night before we were to set off to Western Massachusetts, Susan decide to try to invent a new type of surfing. Stair surfing. At our age, night time activities include multiple visits to the you-know-where. Our bedroom, on the second floor, is at the end of a corridor that has a kink in the middle of it. Susan, in a semi-conscious return from the bathroom, forgot about the kink and continued straight into the maw of the stairwell, surfing all the way to the bottom. I heard an enormous bang, then a series of smaller undefined noises and finally a whimper of “Paul, Paul, Paul”. I jumped out of bed and found Susan strewn like a rag doll at the bottom of the stairs, limbs skewed at unnatural angles. “Oh no,” I panicked “spinal care unit here we come”. Luckily, if you can call it that, there was no major damage. No concussion, no broken back, no bent bones. Terrible bumps, swelling, a puffy face with a black eye, rainbow variations of yellow, grey and black bruises and red abrasions over the entire left side of Susan’s body and a lot of pain. When Susan and I would walk together in the streets, people looked at us and I could see them thinking “…And she stays with him.”
By logic, Susan probably should have spent the next day in bed. But we had booked a room at an inn in the Berkshires and sometimes the best way to get around pain is to push past it and continue on, rather than lie in bed, feeling every single sore spot. And there were plenty of them. Pancakes for breakfast helped slightly to relieve the morning pain and we were off. We would test the theory, newly invented by me, that the wave lengths of the reds, yellows and oranges of deciduous trees were conducive to pain relief. We certainly had ample material to check the theory.
After a meandering drive we arrived at our first Berkshires stop, the MOCA in North Adams. Unbeknownst to us, this is the largest museum of contemporary art in the U.S. and it is a revelation, at least to two boors like us. A close friend of ours, whose husband happens to be an artist, happily declared that it’s her favourite museum in the world. Exhibits included giant glacial reproductions, 3 floors of geometric shapes and colours by an artist who we had never heard of but was confidently heralded as a deceased world renowned innovator in geometric shapes and colours art and our favourite; fascinating enormous concrete works that used the dullness of the grey concrete to challenge the observer’s perspectives. By late afternoon and barely 12 hours after her death defying stair surfing, Susan was starting to feel like she looked. After a colourful hour’s drive, we arrived at our quaint inn, in Lennox. Towns in the Berkshires are known for upscale WASPiness, and the most upscale and WASPy is good old Lennox, with gracious mansions and $1000 plus a night accommodations. Not quite our style, but our country inn was perfect for our needs.
Apparently this year the foliage started early and had a short season, so we were told to lower our expectations. What can I say? If this was post peak in a poor season, I can’t start to picture what high season in a good year looks like. Despite warnings that I might have missed out this year, the vivid reds, oranges, yellows, browns and purples lived up to everything I had ever imagined, and then some. I couldn’t decide whether I preferred mountain top vistas that looked like a real life Monet, up close and personal multicoloured forests, or singular trees that looked like that they were on fire.
On one of our days we came down from the lofty Berkshires into the Springfield area. In itself, a bit humdrum, until you get to Northampton. It’s a university and arts town which boasts glowingly that it is the most liberal town in the USA. If that’s how they want to define themselves, great. The terms “liberal” and “weird” don’t have to be interchangeable, but I know which one I would use to describe this place. I have never been in a town with this many deranged people wandering the streets. There seems to be a contest who can have the strangest face tattoo and hair style, as if they’d ripped off the designs from a cheap Canadian sci-fi series. Rings and piercings are obligatory and that’s just in places I could see. I shudder to think what got pierced in body parts I can’t see. Same-sex couples walking down the street, hand-in-hand, is thankfully perfectly normal these days, but a romantic hand-in-hand threesome walking down the street is, how can I put it?…new to me. I guess visiting places like Northampton is part of expanding your horizons, and it’s a preferable horizon to feeling threatened by gun toting militias upholding their 2nd amendment rights, as in other places in the country.
I wish it to be on public record how admirably Susan battled the pain of her stair surfing incident, and whilst our pace was perhaps slower than our usual sedentary tempo, we managed to balance the see and do of a mini road trip with the rest and don’t of an elderly holiday.
On the see and do side of the ledger, we visited the Shaker museum in Hancock. I was aware of this obscure Christian sect before, especially their quilts and furniture, but knew nothing of them. Being myself a member of a religion that seems convinced that fowl have mothers milk, mandates waving chickens above our head during one time of the year and peering into cupboards with a candle at another, I guess I shouldn’t be calling Shakers weird. As well as living in kibbutz-like communes, being devoted to hard work and simple rustic living, they practised total celibacy, which besides being almost inhuman in its demand, sentenced the sect to a relatively quick demise since they had no way to procreate and thus usher in future generations. There were other principles which included continual confession, equality between men and women, but at the same time clear and defined roles for each sex, and acceptance of all who take on the Shaker belief (You need that one since you weren’t producing any toddlers to keep the sect going). The Shakers broke off from the Quakers and believed that Mother Ann, the daughter of a 17th century English blacksmith is the female embodiment of Christ and represented his second coming. I don’t wish to offend, but one day I’m going to get a list together of all the weird things that different religions request of their believers and we’ll see who wins the weirdness stakes.
As is always the case when I’m behind the wheel, a 3 hour drive from point A to point B stretches out to 5 or 6 hours because there’s always something to see at points W,X,Y,and Z along the way. And so, as the sun was thinking about turning in for the night, we still had an hour and a half until we got back the beach. Google maps found us a hotel that getting there entailed taking an off road off an off road to the hamlet of Phillipton. We didn’t get as far as the main street, which according to the locals, doesn’t exist, but we did get to the King Phillip Motel, Restaurant and Bar, capably managed by Carol. She oversaw our check-in, took our dinner order and served us drinks from behind the bar. If Lennox had been a little snooty, then Phillipton was somewhat frayed and rough around the edges. However, in three days in the Berkshires we’d barely had a conversation with anyone. Within half an hour we’d heard Carol’s life story, the guy sitting next to us at the bar had bought us drinks and the old guy watching TV was telling us how he had to be careful of Covid as he’d had a lung, or liver, or both, transplant. We liked rough around the edges. It being 10 days before the elections you couldn’t avoid politics. We didn’t get a clear picture about who Carol supported, but she certainly didn’t have any love for the Democratic party, and I certainly could understand why.
Upon returning, we had a few days to recharge our pretty full batteries in preparation of our son, Yoav, flying in from L.A. on Sunday. There are very few things that thrills an empty nester more than the opportunity to spend a number of days with one of their children. Every few years we try to have all four children in Israel for a family get together, and that’s great. But it’s rare that we have the chance for 5 days of one-on-one with one of our kids. This alone is enough to justify the trip.
Over these past 30 years that I have been travelling to Boston as Susan’s +1, we have only occasionally been tourists there. I’ve walked through Harvard and around hip Cambridge, followed the Freedom Trail, and seen the Charles up reasonably close. Susan even schlepped me once onto a duck boat tour, which won’t be repeated. But I have always felt that it’s always a second or third option in order to kill time between family stuff in Brookline. With Yoav in tow, we were going to be real tourists, and what better place to start than Faneuil Hall? I don’t know if it’s the Covid that killed it, or if it was dying already, but what a sad place. Half of the food stalls are empty and the workers in the half that remain plead with their eyes for you to stop and buy a cup of clam chowder. At more than double the price that you would pay at Brown’s lobster pound. It appears that the logic goes that if your stupid enough to be there then you’re stupid enough to pay the exorbitant prices. The shmatteh and shmontseh stalls, as well as the shops that remained in business in the compound surrounding the hall seemed to be running the same economic logic. At least I got to see one of those peculiarities that I thought only existed in fairy tales. A Christmas Shoppe. I would be very happy if someone would explain to me the logic of trying to sell 3 floors of Christmas kitsch, all year round? And for that matter, why a decorative teaspoon, engraved with Merry Christmas 2018 on its handle, is the same price as a decorative teaspoon with Merry Christmas 2020? Collector’s item?
A 15 minute walk led us to much happier haunts, Boston’s North End. Now this is more like it. Other than its Yankee pedigree, Boston has always been proud of its Irish and Italian heritage. And the North End is Little Italy. Churches, wine shops (No faux “ppe” here), bakeries and of course, great restaurants, which naturally, we tested. And the cannoli. From the North End it was on to the docks, the Back Bay and back to our car. Being a tourist is fun!
It wasn’t just us enjoying Yoav time. He was also enjoying his Mum and Dad time. After being tourists in Boston it was off to the White Mountains of N.H., which included the Mt Washington Cog Railway, the season’s first snow and a walk with me in a primordial forest in Franconia Notch. Being spoilt by Mum at Kittery Trading Post was an added bonus for them, whilst I grumpily sat around waiting for them to finish.
Once Yoav was safely back in L.A., our last week was dominated by more shopping, including about 8 kg of Chinese spices from a supermarket where we were the only non-Orientals in the entire place and the staff spoke next to no English. I’m going to have to use that somewhat unreliable photo translate app to have any idea what I’ve bought and how to use it. Powdered newt’s tongue, perhaps?
Of course, THE major event of the week/month/year was Tuesday 3rd November. Here in Israel, election day being a public holiday has a real festive atmosphere. No such thing in America. Over 50% of all votes were cast before election day so the day itself feels, more or less, like any other day. Almost. Because Newbury Street, amongst others, was totally boarded up in fear of violence. I don’t know if that’s in fear of right wing militias or antifa left wing mobs, or whether they take it in turns according to a lottery system. Whoever draws the short straw gets to loot Newbury Street. The long straw, runs amok in Cambridge. In any case, downtown Boston resembled downtown Lagos (with apologies to any Nigerian readers) and it was quite shocking. At least the Chinese dumplings in Chinatown were shockingly good.
No less shocking was the result. Ok. Biden won in the end. But 73,000,000 Americans think that Donald Trump is better suited to be president than Joe Biden. I simply can’t get my head around that. Forget left or right politics. Simply 47% of the American population think that Trump is more qualified to lead the wealthiest and most important country in the world. Please. Someone. Explain this to me. I’m just a dumb Australian living in Israel, observing from afar.
Certainly our family BBQ on election night was fraught, to say the least. Yes, we were warned of the red mirage, but when you’re looking at the results real time, with all the tension, hopes and fears, it looked pretty bad. And I can’t even say “all’s well that ends well” since who knows what these next 87 days are going to hold?
The final stretch was pretty much down time, unfortunately with a double meaning. On the one hand, down time meant us relaxing after 2 mini road trips, an injury and being generally sort of active (Yes, I know, poor me!!) and on the other hand, down time in the passing of Susan’s auntie. Given her age and deteriorated mental and physical state, the death of a relative is always sad, but there was much comfort in knowing that her suffering was over. And for us, in the perspective of a holiday in America, the opportunity to spend quality family time in a significant life event added extra meaning to the trip.
So how do I summarise our trip? It’s difficult not to sound conceited or boastful when I say that it was perfect in every aspect (Except Susan falling down the stairs. We could have done without that). We achieved quality family time, ate way too much, experienced natural beauty, relaxed a lot, enjoyed perfect weather, including a snow storm that left the beach totally white, and witnessed important events on a personal and national level.
You can’t ask for more than that.