The Richmond International Raceway was the most unusual one we had seen so far, although NASCAR fans are no doubt familiar with its unusual “D” shape and its short length of ¾ mile. There was no steep apex to climb, and we could not accelerate to a very high speed at all.
Like the previous day, the roads between Richmond and Baltimore meander through beautiful countryside, pretty little towns. In one town especially, we were a real sensation, a parade to watch; the children in a Day Care Center came out onto the front porch and waved at us as we rolled past. There were certainly no abandoned trucks in this part of the country; instead we found rolling, prosperous farmland, and we turned off onto a little two-lane unpaved road between cornfields on the way to our "Surprise and Delight," the Belmont Farm Distillery.
An open field soon found itself occupied by several hundred Minis, organized into rows and spaces by our Mini crew (which always seemed to precede us no matter how quickly we left in the morning).
The distillery ("Something's brewing in these hills") was indeed an interesting place, definitely an improvement over the Travel Plaza, and we were given a tour by a real character who had been making moonshine for a very long time; some of the bottling equipment was decades old.
The countryside was spectacular on the way to Baltimore, especially since it was a little cooler and we had the top down - long stone walls stretching for miles, big horse farms, corn growing out in the fields. We stopped from time to time to admire the walls and stretch our legs.
In another one of those eerie coincidences, we found that the daily route took us through a charming placed called Purcellville, Virginia, and Martha realized that this was the home of my niece, Beth Sawyer. How surprised she was to receive a call from Martha, although we did not have time to arrange a meeting. Now I know where my niece lives.
Baltimore proved to be a divided city. Our hotel was downtown, midway between the safe part of Baltimore and the unsafe part. Our evening event was at the B & O Railroad Museum, but it was located several blocks away and we were not eager to move our car from its secure location in the parking garage. Should we walk? A young Black man on the front desk seemed to be slightly appalled by the idea. "I would not do that," he said. So we asked about the free shuttles that ran regularly down the street in front of our hotel. A woman outside said yes, she had just been on one of those, and a fight had broken out between two Black men in the rear of the shuttle; a switchblade had been brandished. So we decided to take a cab to the Inner Harbor, which seemed to be a completely different city. The cab driver was from India and had been in Baltimore for 14 years, making a good life for himself. America is like that, it seems, a land of opportunity, its cities containing safe harbors (like the peaceful little Town we live in), but also areas that are not so safe. Our events were not held in these areas, but we could see them over the fence, out there on the perimeter where crime was commonplace and lives were desperate, and the idea of motoring across the country for pleasure was not an option. But here in the safe harbor we were in a beautiful, civilized, cultured city; I could understand why people would want to live here.
In the Inner Harbor we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, and we watched joggers run along the harbor, families with children meander by, enjoying the cool evening breeze. I expected to see Tom Hanks or Sally Field stroll past, dispensing pearls of homespun wisdom.
We were amused to discover that if you want anything from a wait person at Bubba Gump you turn the little metal sign on the table from "Run Forrest Run" to "Stop Forrest Stop."
My momma always said,
"Life was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get."
No comments:
Post a Comment