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This is a book about baseball and family and the loss of neighborhoods in America. Kearns’ childhood obsession with the Brooklyn Dodgers is recounted with deeply personal memories. Baseball becomes intertwined with her family – especially the sickness and death of her mother, but also her sisters and father. Her childhood friends also had a baseball nexus as she and her best friend were the most avid baseball fans among the children of Rockville Center NY – Kearns a devoted Dodgers fan and her best friend Elaine a Giants fan. The travails of the Brooklyn Dodgers – seven times to the World Series without a championship – mirrored the personal tragedies of her family and others in her close-knit neighborhood.
“Wait till next year” was the mantra of the long-suffering Dodgers fans. And, she realizes as she reaches adulthood, it is indeed the mantra of life, the optimism that keeps us going when all seems lost.
I am a baseball fan. And not just any baseball fan but a Boston Red Sox fan. Kearns notes, in her epilogue, that her second team – the Red Sox – had much in common with the Dodgers of her youth. I can attest that “wait till next year” was also, before 2004, the mantra of every Red Sox fan.
I enjoyed this book despite the fact that, in many ways, it is a downer. The Dodgers and Giants both abandon New York. Her mother dies. Her father, who had suffered a series of catastrophic losses before marrying, falls into a deep depression. A neighbor dies while watching baseball on TV. She loses the close friends of her youth. The neighborhood disintegrates as people die or move away.
But all of that makes the book a poignant memoir. The Dodgers provide the glue that binds the memories together.
Well, just shy of four weeks, actually, and not completely without television because I did have a weekend away in which I immersed myself in Law and Order. But it is my most TV-free span since my parents acquired our first set back in 1954. Even the transatlantic cruise in 2018 had television on board.
So what does a TV-generation guy do when deprived of his daily dose of boob toob? Well…
Read. I have finished several books.
Organize his DVDs and CDs. This can take a long time since I feel obliged to view/listen to any that I am considering discarding.
Watch all James Bond movies (thanks, Ray!).
Learn how to connect the television to my T-Mobile router so that I can watch shows on Netflix.
Watch the 7 seasons of Mission Impossible (the TV series, not those awful Tom Cruise movies).
I haven’t finished the Mission Impossible series yet (46 DVDs) but I am working on it.
Occasionally I read a book that I admire but have a hard time recommending. This is one of them. The problems I have with the book are (1) there are no likable characters and (2) I found the jumping around in time – from 1991 to 2016 – to be distracting. That said, I have to admire the author’s craftsmanship. She worked hard at developing an intense story and manages to tell it with some major plot twists that she keeps well-concealed. So I admire the book but didn’t like reading it very much.
I have now been residing at my summer site in Orange MA for two weeks. Normally, after two weeks in a place, I would be settled – unpacked, lawn furniture deployed, gas grill set up, etc. But not this time. Because I am in a “temporary site” I have left everything as close to ready to travel as possible.
How “temporary” is the site? My water is from a splitter on the owner’s rig (with 75′ of hose needed). My electric is running off of a 20A circuit from the office (not 30A as I originally thought and I have already blown that circuit once, when the A/C came on while I was using the microwave). And no sewer connection at all. Two weeks without emptying the tanks? A new record and one that would not have been possible if Jett had been here. The owner has laid sewer and water lines to the site that will be my “permanent” one. But no electric yet and it is too far from the office to even use that 20A circuit. So I have no idea when I will be able to move. In the meantime the owner has promised to run the sewer to my temporary site. But he has promised many things many times and most of those promises go begging.
So what have I been doing? Let’s see…
The completed puzzle
The Safelite van, through my new windshield
Visits with in-laws Ray and Kim. But they are in the cabin only on weekends.
Reading. The latest novel will be reviewed shortly.
Jigsaw puzzle. Finished a very nice 1000-piece puzzle a few days ago.
Researching my TV options. I still have no real TV, but have managed to get the main TV hooked up to Netflix using my cell phone’s hotspot. I have also had a discussion with T-Mobile on changes to my service plan (because I don’t need both Jett’s phone and a stand-alone hotspot). I think I am going to drop the hotspot and use Jett’s phone to provide the hotspot for Netflix. I have also priced out Dish TV service, but am not yet convinced that the $500 startup cost and $50 per month fee would be worth it. So I may be looking at a summer with only Netflix for television.
Getting the truck’s windshield replaced.
Photographing headstones in the Silver Lake Cemetery, a large (7,000 graves) cemetery about 4 miles from the campground and conveniently on the route to my favorite disc golf course. Amazingly, nearly 45% of those graves are unphotographed so this will be like shooting fish is a barrel. I could have several thousand photographs posted on findagrave.com by the end of summer.
Reviewing and organizing CDs. I had done the same thing with DVDs before I left Florida, but since I have no real TV, listening to all the CDs seemed like a good idea.
Feeding the goats. Rusty actually likes the goats. At the owner’s suggestion, I bought a large bag of animal crackers and have been feeding them to the goats during our dog walks.
Thinking about my Plan B. If this campground proves to be uninhabitable I will need to go somewhere else. There are campgrounds not too far away that offer sites for about $800 per month. That would be acceptable for up to 3 months. But I don’t know it any sites are available. Doubtful. But I always have the option of returning to Fort Myers. That would be a shame and it is not something I would be eager to do, but that option always exists. Another option is to buy a generator and use it on the site with the new water and sewer hookups until the electric service is installed. Having a generator for boondocking use would not be a bad idea and I could get one that would provide 30A service for under $400. But I would have to make sure that it would fit in the bed of the truck when traveling.
Bottom line: there is still a lot “unsettled” in my current situation. Hopefully things will resolve in the next week or so.
Well, it is 17 years old so it wouldn’t be considered “pretty” in any situation. But it proved its worth last weekend when, en route to brother-in-law Ray’s cabin, I encountered a fallen tree that completely blocked the road.
Ray and his son Matt responded to my phone call and they arrived with an ax and a chain (Ray had left his chain saw at home). A few whacks with the ax removed enough branches that I could get close enough to attach the chain and pull the tree out of the road to allow the passage of vehicles.
My home for the summer – maybe – is the Quabbin Pines RV Resort in Orange MA. I say “maybe” because I am probably residing here illegally and could be booted at any moment. The campground is not finished – not even close – and is not permitted for use by paying guests. If you click on the campground link today all you get is a “Coming Soon” page. An empty website is not a sign of a campground on the verge of opening.
Living in this campground is bizarre. I have to think of this campground, in its current state (with a nod to Bizarro World) as Bizarro Campground. But before I describe the campground in detail let me describe how I learned of its existence and my experience on the day of arrival.
When I was speaking with my brother-in-law Ray early this year and moaning about the difficulty I was having in finding a summer site, he told me of the existence of a “new RV campground” very near to his summer cabin. He was kind enough to go check out the place for me and got a tour of the under-construction site in February. He reported that “there was a LOT of work yet to be done” and opined that it would not be ready by May. Nevertheless, the campground accepted both my application for a seasonal site and a deposit for $1000. Subsequent attempts to contact the campground, both by email and phone, were unsuccessful. I left messages but got no calls or emails in response. Still, they had taken my money and had not told me to not show up, so that was my destination on May 11.
My expectation was that the campground would be open but unfinished and still in the midst of construction. But when I pulled into the campground on Tuesday May 11 what I found was a ghost campground. No construction. No people. No one in the office. I called the number given by the sign on the closed office door and got a message saying that the mailbox was full.
So I sat in the parking lot, scratching my head. I called Ray to tell him that I had arrived but that the campground was closed. I started thinking about my options as I walked Rusty. Near the end of my dog walk I got a phone call from Mike, the campground owner. He asked if I had called and what I wanted. I explained that I was a seasonal tenant who had given him $1000 and was rather dismayed that I had no site. He said he could set me up in a “temporary site.” I didn’t question him as to how temporary or what the financial arrangements might be because even a temporary site solved my immediate problem.
The BigHorn in its “temporary site” in a closed campground
So Mike directed me to a spot next to his 5th wheel. He got me hooked up to a 30 amp power supply (not ideal but adequate) and put a splitter on the hose serving his RV and invited me to run my hose to it. Well, my 50′ of hose was too short, but a quick trip to Walmart got me another 25′ which was enough to get water. No sewer connection yet but he dismissed that as an easy thing that would be done by the weekend. “It’s what I do” he said.
Well, it is now Friday and it isn’t done yet. I can live another week without a sewer connection – the black water holding tanks are 60 gallons each and I have two of them. But the lack of any construction activity in the 3 days I have been here makes me doubt that anything will get done in a timely fashion.
So a brief history of the campground, as given to me by Mike. The campground was started by a relative (uncle?) and was operated for many years, mostly, it appears, as a traditional campground for people with tents and pop-up trailers. No sewer connections and the water and electric connections were spotty and not suitable for modern RVs. The uncle died and his wife tried to run it without him but failed. It closed over 25 years ago and has sat idle for a quarter of a century.
Enter Mike and his wife. They decide they can turn it into a successful RV campground. The original plan was to open in 2020 but the pandemic hit, so plans were delayed a year. More recent delays were due to permitting and shortage of construction materials (Mike says he waited over 3 months for delivery of the metal roof for the recreation building).
The campground currently has an office building that had been abandoned for 25 years which looks to be serviceable but in need of cosmetic work, a swimming pool which looks old but Mike says it has a new liner and just needs a water treatment pump and a new fence, new propane tanks, a new septic system and 3 structures under construction: a recreation hall, a bathhouse and a “pavilion” which I think means an open-air structure where people can gather to avoid sun and rain.
Bathhouse
Recreation hall
No site has upgraded electric service and no sewer lines have yet been run, except the one to Mike’s site. But Mike is confident that he will be open by July 4th, just 6 weeks away. I am skeptical. Maybe if he has an army of construction workers but no such army has yet appeared. He has booked a 70-RV rally for the end of July. I have no idea how he expects to have 70 RV sites – and all 3 buildings – ready in just over 2 months.
Mike is quite proud of the site preparation that has been done in the lower area – I believe an area that was wooded in the old campground. This is the area that will allow him to book a 70-RV rally and it is where the pavilion will be located. But it is just an open field of dirt right now.
The open field
The site of the pavilion-to-be
There are a couple of minor things that make this campground – and the whole quixotic project – somewhat bizarre. One is the only completed new structure on the property – the shed housing the goats. That’s right, folks. The goat shed was completed before the bathhouse. Another is the fire truck. Why is there a fire truck on the property? I don’t know. I can only speculate that Mike offered to store it as a favor to town officials. You know – those people responsible for issuing permits.
Completed goat shed
Fire truck
The siding on the goat shed – and the siding that apparently will be on all other structures as well – is pine boards that Mike milled himself from trees cleared from the lower area. He says he has 35,000 board feet of siding ready to be installed. Pretty impressive. And I think it will give the whole property a very distinctive look.
I have already given the summary – that the TN7 was the most pleasant, trouble-free RV trip I have undertaken since the trip west in 2017. There were some highlights and lowlights and I will get to those. But first… the numbers:
14 hops
30 nights
2,150 tow miles (154 miles per hop)
3,290 truck miles
$1,435 in campground fees ($47.83 per night)
Because there were no significant problems you might expect that the actual route would be pretty close to the planned route and you would be mostly right. But I changed my mind about stopping near Philadelphia and was forced to add a second stop in MD.
TN7 segment 1 actual
TN7 segment 1 plan
TN7 segment 2 actual
TN7 segment 2 plan
Highlights:
Almost no RV or truck problems. The lone problem – the check engine light in MD diagnosed as a “glow plug controller fault” was dismissed as a minor cold-weather-only problem that could be ignored. The truck performed flawlessly. Even on the mountain hops it barely broke a sweat.
Seeing my stepsons and their families in VA. The timing of the visit wasn’t great as they were in the middle of moving out of the house they had occupied for 17 years, but they made time for me. As always, a pleasure. And I got to hand-deliver one last box of Jett’s memorabilia to them.
Cartersville GA. I picked this location for its proximity to Atlanta but treasure it now for its proximity to the Booth Western Art Museum and the site of the Civil War’s Battle of Allatoona Pass. Both of these were more memorable than Atlanta.
Second visits to Civil War battlefields in Manassas and Chickamauga.
A really fine Italian spaghetti-and-meatballs dinner in Maryville TN.
A poignant return visit to Pigeon Forge TN.
A lovely lunch with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in 35 years in NC.
Lowlights:
A cracked windshield in VA.
Dodging a possible tornado in MD.
An embarrassing back-in debacle in TN.
A sunburn from that NC lunch.
Obviously the highlights outweighed the lowlights on TN7. This is important as this trip was a test of both the truck and my desire to travel solo. I think it was a success on both counts.
If the trip south in the fall is similarly successful I will seriously consider a full summer of travel – possibly to do the “30 MLB stadiums in one season tour” in 2022.
168 miles via Blue Mountain Road, NY 32, US 9W, I-587 in Albany, I-90, US 20, MA 9, MA 112, MA 2 and MA 122. Cumulative tow miles: 2150. Truck miles: 218. Cumulative truck miles: 3290. The extra truck miles were due to a trip to the Mount Calvary Cemetery in Kingston, a trip to Big Pink (thanks, John Bartel, for the tip) and a shopping and refueling trip after I got to my destination. I also made a wrong turn from I-90 onto US 20 and that added about 3 tow miles.
That concludes the TN7. I will do a wrapup soon, but the bottom line is this: the truck performed brilliantly and there were no major problems along the way. I have to rate this as the most problem-free trip since the trip to the west coast in 2017.
The route chosen was a toll-free route because (1) I am cheap and (2) it wasn’t much longer, time-wise, than the route up I-87 and over on I-90. The roads were mostly 2-lanes but traffic was light and there were very few points where I was delayed by traffic. The low point was Pittsfield MA which is an ugly industrial town and I did encounter some long traffic lights there. Otherwise, smooth sailing on a sunny, cool day.
The trip to Mount Calvary Cemetery was unexpectedly successful. I reduced the number of unphotographed graves from about 150 to 62, so about 90 graves photographed in a little over 3 hours. 30 graves per hour? Yeah, that is productive.
Big Pink, I think
The trip to Big Pink was less successful. Let me say that this house is remote and a bit spooky. It is at the end of a half-mile poorly maintained dirt road. “No trespassing” and “private road” signs were everywhere. The house itself is surrounded by trees and is fenced, probably to deter sightseers like me. I half expected a guard with a shotgun and a doberman to appear and escort me back down the road. Well, that didn’t happen but neither did I get a good photo of the house. If you want to see Big Pink, read the Wikipedia article.
But it was only 10 minutes from the campground. I had to try.
Where the rubber meets the road
The campground in question is the Rip Van Winkle Campground in Saugerties. Jett and I stayed here for a couple of nights last fall on our way south. I didn’t like it much then and I am still not a huge fan. I got the same site – #77, a huge pull-through – and that was nice. But the roads are narrow with sharp turns and steep hills. And the staff is not particularly helpful. I arrived at 1:30pm, which is usually late enough to check in. But I was informed that check-in time was 3pm and I should leave and return in 90 minutes. She didn’t even bother to see if the site was available. I had to execute a very tight U-turn (did I mention that the roads are very narrow?), missing the back end of a parked pickup by about 2 inches. I went a half-mile down the road and parked in a closed business parking lot (it was Sunday) and used the time to check emails and news. I had to execute another tight turnaround there – one that left some rubber from the RV’s tires on the asphalt.
The campground does have excellent cable TV, which was a treat after nearly a week with only very spotty over-the-air television.
My destination for the summer is the Quabbin Pines RV Resort in Orange MA. The arrival there was more of an adventure than I would have liked. But I will save that story for a separate post.
77 miles via US 9, US 9W, Glasco Turnpike, Kings Highway, NY 212 and Blue Mountain Road. Cumulative tow miles: 1982. Truck miles: 181. Cumulative truck miles: 3072. The extra truck miles were due to a sightseeing trip to the Bronx (to see how difficult it would be to drive near Yankee Stadium) and a couple of short shopping/refueling trips.
The would have been 76 miles, but the staff at the destination refused to register me at 1:30pm, so I had to turn around (missing a pickup by about 2 inches on the turn) and find a place to park for 90 minutes. Annoying because they made NO effort to see if the site was available.
A faster route was available, but I knew I would be early and the faster route had tolls. Why pay to wait longer?
This was yet another problem-free hop (knock on wood). The weather, though cloudy and cool, was dry. The roads, though mostly 2-lane, were level and the traffic was light. So, all in all, a very pleasant drive. And I got to use another Hudson River Bridge that I have never seen before: the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie.
My home in Croton-on-Hudson was the Croton Point Park. This Westchester County campground was not at all what I expected. I thought that, being one of the campgrounds closest to New York City, that it would be very oriented to serving transients – RVs staying for short periods. I also thought it likely that there would be a strict limit on how long an RV could stay, as is the case at other regional parks that I have seen. Maybe two weeks max. Well, about half of the RVs had clearly been there longer than two weeks. Or even two months. Maybe two years.
A semi-permanent Croton Point resident?
Croton Point is a peninsula that juts out into the Tappan Zee, the broad lake in the Hudson River just south of West Point. As such, it is surrounded by water and should be prime real estate. Except that the chosen use for much of the peninsula is a garbage dump. The dump was closed and capped in the 1990s and now it is reclaimed recreational space. But what a waste!
Tappan Zee from one of Croton Point’s hiking paths
Another thing that makes Croton Point interesting is its proximity to commuter rail. To enter the park you must pass a commuter rail station and cross a bridge over a huge commuter train yard. I looked into it and this line is a direct shot to Yankee Stadium – a factoid that would be relevant if I actually tried to do the 30-stadium MLB tour – I could stay at Croton Point and be an hour by train from Yankee Stadium and about 2 hours by train from Citi Field, home of the Mets.
116 miles via PA 670, PA 191, US 6, I-84, NY 17, US 6 again, NY 293, US 9W, US 6 yet again, US 202 and US 9. Cumulative tow miles: 1905. Truck miles: 138. Cumulative truck miles: 2891. The 22 extra truck miles were due to a refueling trip to the nearest diesel depot, 11 miles away.
This was a difficult hop to plan and even more difficult to execute. There are a lot of “passenger cars only” roads near New York City and I very much wanted to avoid those. Also, the route chosen by both Google and the GPS took me over the Bear Mountain Bridge, a bridge over the Hudson River that I had never traversed before and looked like it might have weight restrictions. So my plan was to go a few miles further east, over the I-84 bridge, then head south on US 9. But when I got to NY 17 and both Google and GPS were telling me to take it, I caved. I was thinking that NY 17 could be taken to the Tappan Zee Bridge which would be close to my destination. But the Tappan Zee is too far south and I ended up heading to the Bear Mountain Bridge, images dancing in my head of my rig rolling over a scale and flashing lights and sirens going off. “Too heavy! Turn back!” In fact there was an ominous sign about a weight limitation of 10 tons somewhere ahead and I did mental calculations as I drove. Yup, pretty close.
But the weight limit on the Bear Mountain Bridge is 58 tons. I needn’t have worried.
What I should have worried about was the narrow, winding segment on US 202. It is a scary road. Beautiful, but scary, with a low rock wall all that separated my rig from a dive into the Hudson River. 10 minutes of white knuckles.
Not a long hop, but a memorable one.
My home in Honesdale PA was the Ponderosa Pines Family Campground. This campground is remote. I had to traverse about 5 miles of roads that didn’t have route designations and I could use only the GPS because my phone had no cell service (until I arrived, then the cell service was fine). When I checked in the office staff told me that I could take any transient site (there were about 8 along the lakeshore) because I would be “all alone down there.” I didn’t know quite what they meant because there were lots of seasonal RV sites all around the transient sites. But, as I discovered after I set up and took Rusty for a walk, none of them were occupied. This must be a weekend family getaway campground. I truly was by myself “down there.”
All alone in a very dark, very quiet campground. And by quiet I mean no sounds other than the owls – no planes, no trains, no automobiles. And no sounds from other campers. Downright spooky. But quite serene.
There was dense fog in the morning, followed by heavy rain all day. The lake rose about 6 inches. A nearby town, Prompton, had over 4 inches of rain and some street flooding. I prayed that those tiny roads that led out of the campground would still be passable when I had to depart. They were.
Morning fog at Ponderosa PinesMy site on the lakeshore, after the rain
TN7 wrapup
I have already given the summary – that the TN7 was the most pleasant, trouble-free RV trip I have undertaken since the trip west in 2017. There were some highlights and lowlights and I will get to those. But first… the numbers:
Because there were no significant problems you might expect that the actual route would be pretty close to the planned route and you would be mostly right. But I changed my mind about stopping near Philadelphia and was forced to add a second stop in MD.
Highlights:
Lowlights:
Obviously the highlights outweighed the lowlights on TN7. This is important as this trip was a test of both the truck and my desire to travel solo. I think it was a success on both counts.
If the trip south in the fall is similarly successful I will seriously consider a full summer of travel – possibly to do the “30 MLB stadiums in one season tour” in 2022.