125: I LOVE INTERCOURSE – PENNSYLVANIA

Our alarm went off at 6:00am on Friday July 10, 2020; but for once I didn’t have a bounce in my step. The day before I heard my photographer tell his wife that Friday would be her day to enjoy the ambiance of the Amish. That only meant one thing: there would be no Presidential sites for me – and that sucked. But my demeanor quickly changed, however, as Tom filled the Edge with fuel at the Turkey Hill Minit Market along Lincoln Highway. From an opening in the camera case, I saw an enormous flock of Canada geese as they made their way north. What tickled my funny bone was the fact that those geese weren’t flying – they were walking slowly across Lincoln Highway and they had traffic stopped in all directions. I laughed to myself when Vicki said aloud: “The Canadians mess up traffic in Michigan all the time and it looks like they cause traffic issues in Pennsylvania as well.”

As we headed eastward towards Amish Country where fun goes to die, Tom said something to his wife that was out of the blue that made my molded resin ears perk up: “We’re going to be driving right past a Presidential gravesite in Lancaster and I need to go there. I promise – the rest of the day will be dedicated to the Amish and antique shops, but I have to stop and visit James Buchanan.” Vicki was a trooper; she never questioned as to why we needed to return after we had been to Buchanan’s grave in 2017. I think she knew that my photographer would recite the Bob Moldenhauer pizza analogy and Vicki would rather endure the site than hear the spiel again. It was roughly 8:00am where we arrived at Woodward Hill Cemetery; once inside the graveyard, it took roughly ten minutes for my photographer to find the grave of our 15th President. The first thing I noticed after Tom placed me on top of the large granite marker was my left leg didn’t seem quite right – again. It was as though my leg was weaker than it had been in the past year or so; and since it was only the third day of the trip, that concerned me. The second thing I noticed was an extremely hideous wreath that someone had left near the President’s tombstone. That circular evergreen monstrosity featured numerous apples, bunches of grapes, and a single large banana near the top. Upon first glance, I figured Fruit of the Loom had sent the arrangement to honor our only bachelor President.

Our stay at Woodward Hill Cemetery lasted only 15 minutes before Tom placed me back in the camera case. In my mind, I wondered if my photographer would make a quick side-trip to Wheatland before we left Lancaster since Buchanan’s home was less than three miles from the cemetery. But we didn’t go there; likely because my camera guy didn’t want to push his luck with his wife.

With my photographer’s wife behind the wheel, we found Old Philadelphia Pike in Lancaster and headed east. Five miles into the journey, we arrived at a well-known Amish and Mennonite community known as Bird-in-Hand. Tom’s original idea was for the three of us to take an Amish buggy ride at Abe’s Buggy Rides, but from the road it appeared to be closed. It only took a few minutes to drive through the entire town, which wasn’t a surprise as the population of Bird-in-Hand was roughly 500 people.

Four miles east of Bird-in-Hand was the “booming metropolis” of Intercourse, Pennsylvania – population of about 1,200. When I heard Tom ask his wife if she wanted anything out of Intercourse, I about fell out of the camera case. “Was he nuts? It was broad daylight, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Get a room, man!” But when my photographer posed for an image next to the blue and yellow city limit sign that read ‘Intercourse’, I realized it was the name of the village. Who would name a town ‘Intercourse’? I began to wonder if their town hall was on the corner of Penis Street and Vagina Avenue. We found a couple of shops in Intercourse; one of which sold hats that said ‘I heart Intercourse’ on the front. But when my two companions didn’t see any cool antique shops, they pulled out.

After an on-line search on his phone, Tom discovered that Strasburg, Pennsylvania seemed to have the biggest potential for antique shops that weren’t closed due to the virus. And sure enough, he was right. After we made the eight-mile drive through Ronks to Strasburg, we found a half-dozen cool shops that my companions browsed through. For Tom and Vicki, they had hit the “honey hole” for antique shops in Strasburg and we spent the next several hours looking at old stuff. My photographer kept an eye peeled for vinyl records and historical artifacts; he also searched for unopened oil cans for his friend Larry Huffman from St. Clair. It turned out to be the perfect day to spend inside antique shops as the weather had turned overcast and wet. At roughly 2:00pm, Tom and Vicki asked an antique dealer for a lunch recommendation and they were directed to a place called Pizza City that was on Main Street in the heart of Strasburg.

As the day grew later, the rain came down harder; finally we decided to head further east and find a hotel close to Valley Forge – which was scheduled to be our first stop in the morning. After scouring her phone for a good deal on a place to stay, Vicki booked a room at the Holiday Inn Express in Malvern, Pennsylvania. My photographer’s wife did a great job with the location – we couldn’t have stayed closer to Valley Forge unless we spent the night inside Washington’s Headquarters. After we registered and unpacked the car, Tom and his wife needed something for dinner. Unfortunately their options seemed bleak as all of the nearby eateries served ethnic food and my companions wanted good old American cuisine. I laughed to myself because that meant they were stuck eating McDonald’s. While McDonald’s is the ultimate American diner, it’s also why a lot of Americans look like my chubby photographer. As the rain continued to pepper our room’s window, Tom placed me on the table where he applied Gorilla Glue to my left shin and wrapped it in white gauze tape. Thankfully my photographer had learned from the past as he brought the official ‘Bobble head Medical Kit’ with him on this trip. Following surgery, the lights were extinguished at roughly 9:00pm. Besides the small setback with my leg, I had made it – I survived an entire day of Amish Country. Even though I don’t have a sense of smell, only because I’m a resin-made bobble head, I swore I got a whiff of horse manure at some point during the night. “Ya gotta love those Amish!”

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Saturday morning July 11, 2020 was a welcome site – the sun was shining bright in the cloudless sky over southeastern Pennsylvania and there weren’t any Amish in my near future. There was, however, a full dose of George Washington on the agenda and I couldn’t wait to hit the road. My companions had the Edge packed and we began our six-mile trip to the Valley Forge National Historic Park. The first thing we discovered as we entered the boundaries of the park at 8:02am was it had opened at 8:00am – which meant we were late. But even though the park was open, the Visitor Center and other buildings remained closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After making several wrong turns in the 3,500-acre park because Tom had read the small map on his phone incorrectly, we finally made it to the parking lot that was designated for George Washington’s headquarters at nearly 8:30am. I was excited – I couldn’t wait to see the headquarters. But when I looked through the opening of the camera case for a glimpse of the historic building, all I saw was a set of public restrooms. Little did I know there was a half-mile hike ahead of us – and unfortunately, there were times when that walk put my photographer and his wife dangerously close to other people; some off whom weren’t wearing face coverings.

Once we made the 15-minute walk from the parking lot, which took us past a train station, Tom removed me from the camera case as we stood in front of George Washington’s headquarters. The impressive gray three-story stone structure was built in the late 1760s by Isaac Potts, a Quaker who operated a nearby grist mill. General Washington moved into the Potts house on Christmas Eve 1777 where he lived and conducted the army’s business from an office on the ground floor until June 18, 1778. Later in his stay, George was visited by Martha who came from Mount Vernon to live in the house with her husband. While it would’ve been cool to have gone inside the headquarters, we couldn’t as the NPS had kept it closed because of the virus.

During our 25-minute stroll near the Potts house, I thought about the 12,000 Continental Army troops that had hunkered-down on that very land in the early part of 1778.  While it was a popular belief that the harsh winter weather decimated Washington’s men, that wasn’t the case.  There wasn’t a lot of snow or ice, and the temperature stayed above freezing – at least for most of their time at Valley Forge.  As a matter of fact, most of the 2,000 soldiers who died while encamped there succumbed in the spring and it was due to typhoid or influenza; and possibly because of malnutrition.  General Washington also made sure his troops were inoculated against smallpox, which made me happy to know that George wasn’t an eighteenth century anti-vaxxer!

On our hike back to the Edge, my photographer and his wife did their best to keep away from other tourists; especially the ones who refused to wear face coverings – which was most of them.  Safely back in our vehicle, we began our 46-mile journey to the second George Washington site of the day – the place where the General made his famous boat ride across the Delaware River and into the history books.

It was exactly 10:00am when we arrived at Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania – and once again we noticed most of the tourists in the area were not wearing masks.  We were in our fourth day of the trip, and it didn’t take long for us to realize that there were good things, as well as bad things, caused by the pandemic; excluding, of course, the tens of thousands of people who had lost their lives by early July.  While some of the buildings, homes, and museums were closed because of COVID, the summer crowds that we usually fought while sightseeing weren’t a problem.  The lack of people made it easier for Tom and Vicki to stay clear of the kooks who believed the virus was a political conspiracy.

A wide asphalt pathway led from the parking lot into the Washington Crossing Historic Park.  Although there were several buildings that we saw during our walk along the path, my photographer went right past them.  Tom had his sights set on one thing – a large granite marker that was located just east of the Visitor Center.  I noticed, when I was removed from the camera case, the four-foot-tall marker had an inscription on its face that read: ‘Near this spot Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas Night 1776, the eve of the Battle of Trenton’.  I was nervous when Tom set me on top of the monument – the surface was very uneven and I worried that I would’ve fallen to my death had I lost my balance.  With my surgically repaired left leg wrapped in gauze tape for support, I managed to stand tall while I posed with the mighty Delaware River behind me in the distance.

While Tom held me over the brown, murky water of the Delaware River, I could see in my resin mind’s eye General Washington standing in the lead boat that was being paddled through the ice-filled water towards the New Jersey shore. It was 6pm on Christmas Night 1776 when 2,400 soldiers, including George Washington, began to cross the river in what would be a surprise attack against the Hessian troops stationed near Trenton. By 3am on December 26th, dozens of Durham boats had successful transported the Continental Army troops, horses, and eighteen pieces of artillery across the ice-filled river into New Jersey. At one point, when my photographer stepped onto a floating dock to get a better angle, he nearly fell into the water when the wooden dock moved unexpectedly. Although I laughed to myself when the ‘big fella’ nearly went swimming, I quickly realized that he nearly dropped me into the river as well; and that wouldn’t have been a good ending.

The three of us walked along the shore of the Delaware River before we ventured up to the Visitor Center. Surprisingly, the building was open; although when my companions went inside to use the restrooms, they were very cautious to keep distanced from the handful of other people inside. As we retraced our path back to the vehicle, my photographer and his wife stopped at an open outbuilding that housed several of the Durham boats that are used when reenactors replicate the crossing. While the boats looked cool, they couldn’t compare to what my photographer had noticed across the street near the Washington Crossing Inn. Situated in what appeared to be the Inn’s garden, Tom saw a sculpture that brought the historic crossing of the Delaware to life with a full-size replica of General Washington and his troops inside their Durham boat. In other words, it was a sand-colored three-dimensional depiction of Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting with life-sized figures of the historic men.

When we left the site of Washington’s Crossing at 10:45am, I heard my photographer tell his wife that we were headed for Bethlehem. My first thought was: “Oh wow, we’re going to visit the birthplace of Jesus!” Instead, he was taking us a little over 40 miles away to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was the birthplace of Jimmy DeGrasso – the drummer for Alice Cooper’s band when Alice appeared in concert on ‘Wayne’s World’. While I usually march to the beat of a different drummer, like Peter Criss, the three of us set out on foot into downtown Bethlehem as we searched for a very historic place called the Moravian Sun Inn.

Built in 1758, the Sun Inn became a place where some of America’s most famous patriots dined and slept, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock. As I posed on the porch of the historic inn, I had the chills just thinking about the people who once walked within those walls. As a matter of fact, on September 22, 1777, fourteen members of the Continental Congress stayed overnight at the Sun Inn. I would’ve given my right arm to have been taken inside for a look-see, but the inn didn’t open until late in the afternoon; thanks to the darn ‘bug’.

In his original itinerary, my photographer had planned on he and his wife eating lunch where our forefathers once ate at the Sun Inn, but that didn’t happen. Instead, they walked to a Mexican restaurant called Urbano that was located about a block south of the historic inn where they were able to dine outside under a canopy along the sidewalk. When they finished their lunch of authentic tacos, Tom and Vicki found a couple of antique shops near Bethlehem before they headed northeast into New Jersey.

During our drive through the northern section of The Garden State, Vicki pulled into a service station for fuel while my photographer went inside the convenience store to restock their beverages. When Tom returned to the car, I heard him tell his wife about a guy he met in the store – my camera guy sounded like a kid who had just talked with Santa Claus. It turned out the guy was wearing a Reggie Jackson jersey and Tom couldn’t wipe the smile off his masked face.

As the clock neared six bells, my companions decided to spend the night in Poughkeepsie, New York – which Tom figured would be an ideal location that was relatively close to our fist site scheduled for Sunday morning. While it seemed the hotels in Poughkeepsie were expensive, Vicki found a good deal at the Hyatt Place that was located a few miles south of the downtown area. When we got into our room, Tom placed me next to the TV just before he and his wife set out to find some take-out grub for their dinner.

Saturday, the eleventh of July, had been a very good day; it felt as though I walked in the snowy footprints of George Washington, and I saw where the General crossed the Delaware on Christmas night. Although I looked forward to the small handful of Presidential sites slated for Sunday, it was our pre-planned VIP tour of Grant’s Cottage on Monday that consumed my mind. Nearly three years to the day we made our way to Mount McGregor and I got near the cottage where Grant died, but it was closed. I would’ve given my right arm to stand on the President’s deathbed, but that simply did not happen. In roughly 36 hours, however, I would get a second chance – and it had the potential to be one of the highlights of the trip.