IF YOU’RE FOLLOWING THE VACATION CHRONICLE that I started last week, you know I’m lying in a Pittsburgh hotel on the South Side with a Headwich and chicken-wing hangover along with my wife, Susan, and traveling companions Bud and Sandy Donaldson.
It was dawn of day two in our East Coast adventure. After a long day and night in Pittsburgh, we were to be picked up by my niece, Cassie, and taken into the quiet, wooded north of my home for one day of quiet, rest, and peace.
She dropped us 28 miles from Ridgway at an Enterprise Car Rental in the last nearby big city of Dubois. Here we rented for two weeks a souped-up Dodge Charger. Vroom! Renting cars at the airport is insane. Rural rental rates are low, low. At the end of our trip, my sister Carol would take us out of the woods and back to the airport.
If you read me, you know something of Ridgway. You know it’s small, in the forest, and recently got a 100-year flood that put half the downtown under several feet of water. Bud and I expected to spend part of our time helping to fix things, but the town had already rebounded. The family sump pumps had done their duty. Ruined goods were hauled away. Wood was drying out, plaster replaced. Meager government money was applied for. People were back to work, if they had a job.
We got to sit on the porch. My Ridgway porch, since we all built it two years ago, has become the epicenter of all Eastern inactivity in the area. It’s an L shape, going wide up the side and narrow across the front, with one long white rope light in the corner crevice along the outer ceiling. It’s full of Wal-Mart patio furniture and two larch Adirondack chairs from wood leftover building the floor.
Sort of like Pittsburgh, we had only one night in Ridgway before running off to Toronto to a Brews and Blues Festival. Unlike Pittsburgh, we sat on our fannies the whole time. No 50-block walk.
After a few hours on the porch talking to friends and family we moved one block to the Elks Lodge, which still has many active members. From there, we moved two more blocks to Jordan’s, the central non-club bar and grill in town, for deep-fried pickles. We always visit both private and public clubs, to keep the peace.
There is an ongoing silent battle between public versus private clubs in town. The three public establishments complain that the five private clubs are allowed to gamble and collect dues to offset liquor and food costs. Clubs have to give half their proceeds to charity, but they don’t complain much. Patrons will pay $2 for a beer and $20 for numbers.
The Elks, thanks in part to gamblers, serves beer at half-price and a big daily lunch for $2.50, a block from my house. I can’t complain about that.
On our only night in Ridgway, Bud and I took a midnight stroll. The women turned in. He and I walked past many of the big, old timber-baron estates in town. Bud, like everyone else I’ve brought to visit, was awed by the number of huge three-story homes. At one point he said of one home on Hyde Street, “It must be nice to live next to a park.”
I said, “That’s not a park, Bud. That’s his front lawn.”
Next morning we were off to Toronto. Navigation in today’s world may be easier, but it’s no less stressful. We used to have to hunker over paper maps folded like a drunken sailor’s hat on our laps. Now we have more paper maps, plus the car’s GPS, plus three phones with GPS and their annoying computerized voices and people calling out conflicting instructions and Yelping local attractions and finding too many options to “Turn here!”
Toronto was public transit heaven. I was pleased to park. We were a few miles from downtown, along Lake Ontario, and a few blocks from the house ran the $2 trolley into the heart of the city, letting us off two blocks from the Brew Festival.
Now, let me tell you this, brothers and sisters, you may have been to party towns before. You may have been to the Caribbean, you may have been to Monaco, or Rio, Amsterdam, Puerto Vallarta or Port Costa, but I’ll just say that those towns have nothing on Toronto. These people rock! You can’t tell noon from midnight. It’s a short summer up north, the days are lighter longer, and citizens take maximum advantage of every warm breeze. At midnight we are packed inside the trolleys, standing room only. Out the windows, restaurants and clubs are spilling into the streets. People are walking everywhere, some dressed quite wacky.
I don’t want to describe the Brew Festival or my close encounter with Tom Green who interviewed me for his television show until next week when I have more space. I’ll just say that when I saw Tom standing there at the Beau’s Brewery tent next to a poster of their new Tom Green Beer, I was so happy to see him alive and well that I broke through the crowd and gave him a big bear hug.
“You were the funniest guy on TV,” I said in his ear. I had no idea what would happen next.
Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.
Peter Bray says
Always a treat to read your adventures, Steve!
Peter Bray, Benicia, CA