Keeping In Touch With The Big Kids

Momma Cuandito and I retuned home last Wednesday from a twenty-four day road trip to Florida, where we've enjoyed a relatively brief respite of winter warmth approximately nine of the last ten years.  Our two favorite spots are Anna Maria Island off the coast of Bradenton, and Fort Myers, the spring training home of the Minnesota Twins.  This most recent trip was by car, the fourth time we've chosen that means of transportation.

We don't kill ourselves to get to or from Florida.  That would defeat the purpose of opting for the highway over the sky way.  Some folks drive through the night, changing drivers and making a beeline from one state to the next.  That's not us.  Although we might have at least one day which involves around six hundred miles of daylight travel, we make up for it by spending two nights in a row once or twice at pre-selected sites.  This year those places going south were Georgetown, Kentucky (a remote suburb of Lexington) and Lake City, Florida.

Not to short change our three kids and their spouses, but as is true with many traveling grandparents, the biggest downside to being away from home is the absence of our grandchildren.  There are few hours in a typical day when I don't think about the four of them, whom I sometimes refer to as the Gorgeous Creatures.  I don't know that MC and I could ever relocate south for the entire winter knowing that the Gorgeous Creatures were an airplane ride, as opposed to a few minutes, away.

When Momma Cuan and I are on the road, I like to imagine that our kids are thinking about us, wondering where we are and what we're up to.  To a large extent that may be fanciful thinking; they have their own families to attend to.  Still, I keep in touch with them from the road by sending (usually) short emails from my phone.  When you’re a ham-handed non-typist using a phone, the brevity of correspondence is dictated. Once in awhile the recipients reply.  The emails, like photographs, also serve as memory joggers if I read what I've sent at a later date.  Full disclosure: I already have, and probably will again.

Today, March 15, was supposed to be the date of our eighth annual Fours & Field Contest party, celebrating the NCAA's Selection Sunday for March Madness.  (For a refresher on what the Fours & Field Contest is all about, check out my February 24, 2013 post.  The FFC has been enlarged and modified since then, but the basic principles described therein remain in place.)  Instead, Momma Cuan and I are sitting around the house, social distancing ourselves from the rest of humanity.  It's a predicament brought on by the coronavirus threat.  There is nothing good on TV, and the book I'm reading is an easy one to put down.  This might be a good time to post on my blog, which I've been known to label my "SR&LRB" (an inside joke).  The topic I've chosen is the path requiring the least amount of thought: the aforementioned emails.  There are eleven of them.

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Feb 17    HELLO FROM CHAMPAIGN

Hello boys & girls,

I know you’re worried sick about us, but we did make it to Champaign, 514 miles from the QE.  Home of the U of Illinois.  Once we got to Tomah it was all snow and rain.  We got here at 5:30. Staying at Drury Inn, where they give you 2 free drinks. I had scotch on the rocks. The amount of booze in a drink is < a thimbleful.  Ate dinner at a brew pub downtown, Destihl.  Maybe the best beef stroganoff I’ve ever had.  Washed it down with a 6.7% hazy IPA and a 9.1% Scotch ale, both made by Destihl. Tomorrow we head to Lexington, only 312 miles from here. Hi to JB, RM, JM, LJ, WJ, LR, UL, R and P.  I love you all.

The Old Illinoisan

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Feb 18    HELLO FROM GEORGETOWN

Hello Boys & girls,

We drove 308 miles from Champaign to Georgetown, which is about 20 miles north of Lexington. On the way we stopped for lunch at Mac & Don’s in Seymour, Indiana, the home town of John Mellencamp.

Georgetown has a historic downtown with buildings even more ancient than your old man.  Went to a brew pub called My Old Kentucky Foam. I had a nitro brown ale and a pale with high IBUs.  The bartender was an authority on just about everything. For dinner we went to a place called Fava’s. I had a traditional KY casserole which the locals call Hot Brown. Meh. Mom had catfish. Meh. I had butterscotch cream pie, my usual favorite but in this case, Meh.

We finished the night with a couple of Bushmills on the rocks at the only Irish pub in town, Slainte Public House.

Tomorrow will present a challenge for Mom and me: Trying not to step in horse kah kah when we tour nearby WinStar Horse Farm. Word to the SOs, the Gorgeous Creatures and the pets. I love you all.

The Old Equestrian

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Feb 19    GEORGETOWN SECOND DAY

Hello boys & girls.

Our second day (Wednesday) in Georgetown, KY was fun. Toured WinStar Farms, which boards and trains racehorses (mostly stallions), and conducts breeding and sales operations too. See the picture below of Mom with the 2017 Kentucky Derby winner, Always Dreaming. We managed to avoid stepping in the horse poop.  Ate one of the best hangabers EVER, the Big Blue Burger, in Midway, KY at a place called Wallace Station. Reminded me of PM Park in Clear Lake. Ancient and atmospheric.

Returned to Georgetown for a self-guided walking tour of historic Georgetown, where many of the buildings are > a century old. Took a break with Irish brews at Slainte Public House. After a short late afternoon nap had a fab dinner at Rodney’s On Broadway. The restaurant is in an old mansion; reminded me of Forepaugh’s in St. Paul. I had short ribs. Mom had a peanut butter sammy.

I love you all.

The Old Horse Breeding Authority

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Feb 20  HELLO FROM STOCKBRIDGE

Greetings boys & girls,

Drove 415 miles through lots of snow and sleet to get from Georgetown to Stockbridge, Georgia. It’s about 15 miles south of Atlanta. I used to think Chicago traffic was the worst, but metro Hotlanta’s congestion gives Chitown a run for the dubious title.

For those of you keeping score at home, we ate lunch at a Chick Fillet in Cleveland, Tennessee. 

Tonight we ate din din at The Bridge Grill & Oyster Bar in Stockton. Mom had oysters while I had a shrimp poor boy.  Their beer selection was fair to partly cloudy.  The waitress called us “honey,” “love,” “lovie” and “darlin,” among others.

Our main objective for the day was to get past Hotlanta. Mission accomplished! Tomorrow: Finally Florida!!

I love you all.

The World’s Greatest Driver

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Feb 21    HELLO FROM LAKE CITY

Hello boys and girls,

No, not Lake City, Minny Hota; Lake City, FLORIDA.

We drove 270 miles from Stockbridge to get here late Friday afternoon.  Lake City is about 45 miles south of the state line.  The drive was easy, all interstate with no bad weather.  The interstates in GA and FL are at least 3 lanes in each directIon. Trucks must stay in the two right lanes. That is a great law; must have been passed by Republicans!

The temp finally hit 50+ degrees for the first time anywhere on our trip when we got near Macon, which is in the middle of Georgia.  It's also home to the Allman Brothers Band.  I know you (especially Michael) are curious as to where we ate lunch, so I will tell you: Tifton, a medium size city in southern Georgia, named after former BSM President Bob Tift.  We tried Steak 'n' Shake, which is real big in the South.  It was surprisingly good.  We both had boigahs and shakes.

Once in Lake City we didn’t waste much time heading to a tap room, Halpatter, which is Seminole for “alligator.”  I had IPAs and MC had an IPA and a cream ale. All four veddy veddy good. From there we went to Marion Street Bistro, the hippest and busiest place in town for dinner. Decent food but horrible service. I had sheemp n’ grits. Mom had a flat bread.

Lake City claims to have a historic downtown. What a joke. Nothing but 3 bars and the fire department. Makes downtown St. Paul look like the Vegas Strip.

Finished the night by going back to Halpatter, where a band from Geogia called Pine Box Dwellers was doing Dylan.

I love you all.

The Old Pitter Patterer

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Feb 22    LAKE CITY SECOND DAY

Hello boys & girls,

For the record I thought I’d tell you about day # 2 (Saturday) in Lake City. Ever heard of Stephen Foster? He is one of the greatest music composers in American history. He wrote Oh Susanna, My Old Kentucky Home, Swanny River, Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair, and 250 other songs in the 19th century. Most songs were about the South even though he was from Pittsburgh. We went to the Foster Museum which is the centerpiece of a beautiful regional park in his honor. Inside the museum are dioramas which show a scene from ten of Foster’s songs. One of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in a museum.

Ate lunch in Fat Belly’s, a back woods BBQ joint. Both the Foster Museum and Fat Belly’s are in a little nearby town called White Springs.

Then we drove back to LC and went on a hike along Alligator Lake. I will send a picture I took of Mom there.

Finished the day with dinner at Phish Tales. Every “f” on their menu (and website) is spelled “ph.” I had blackened mahi mahi. Mom had prime rib.

I will only bore you with one more report. Thanks for your warmth and compassion. I love you all. 

The Old Stephen Phoster Phan

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Feb 23    HELLO FROM HOLMES BEACH

Hello boys & girls,

This is the final installment of my exciting Road Trip series. Before we left Lake City yesterday we decided to treat ourselves to a Dunkin Donuts greftas. Then we drove 221 miles to Holmes Beach. All interstate until you get to Bradenton. Then about 17 miles of driving under 45 mph.

For you statistics freaks out there, here is the poop:

Distance from SLP to HB via the route we took = 1,728 miles.
Total miles driven, including tooling around seeing the sights, driving to restaurants, etc. = 1,881 miles.  [Note: Fort Myers is another 120 miles south of Holmes Beach.]

Our condo is a block from the beach in a residential neighborhood, very close to a popular burger joint called Skinny’s and right across the street from the rear of Publix. The unit is vey nice, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Having my own bathroom is huge; that means I can splash as much as I wah!  Best of all, there are two lanais, one on either side of the unit. The only negative is that our unit is on the third floor, 29 steps up. (Yes, I counted.)  That is a tough climb for a geezer like your old man.

Last night we walked to a bar/pizza joint 2 blocks away, Solo’s. Struck up conversations with the regulars and watched the first period of the Wild-Blues game. Their tap beer selection was horse kah kah, but their bottle inventory was EK. In case you’re curious I had two Goose Island IPAs and one Laguinitas IPA. Mom had wine.  I have a feeling we’ll be back.

Have a Red Letter Week. Always enjoy pix of the Gorgeous Creatures and the Four Legged Creatures, especially those I can view more than once or twice, if you get my drift.

Greetings to all. Peace, love, harmony and tranquility.

The Old Lanai Lover

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Mar 8    HELLO FROM MARIETTA

Hello.  Here is an abbreviated update on our travels. We drove 612 miles today from our Fort Myers condo to Marietta, which is a suburb of Hotlanta on the north end of its metro area. The Florida and Georgia interstates are filled with horrendous drivers. Atlanta has horrible traffic. Glad to be through there tonight so we don’t have to face it tomorrow.

For lunch we had a picnic of leftover egg salad sammiches at a rest area near Ashburn, Georgia. For dinner we ate quesadillas at a Mexican joint called Pappasito's near our hotel. Mom thought it was great. I thought it was okay.

Heading for Paducah tomorrow. Love to all. Miss you all.

The Old Grumpy Guy

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Mar 9    HELLO FROM PADUCAH

Hello boys & girls,

You have been sitting with your phones, awaiting this update. Relax... Here it is.

We drove 369 miles to this city right across the Ohio River from the land of my peeps. I was worried about driving around Nashville, but after getting good navigation tips from a guy in a travel information center on how best to do it, no probzlemzskiez.

Lunch was a fish fillet + shamrock shake, at Mac & Don’s in Cadiz, KY.  Our first stop in Paducah was Dry Ground Brewery where we sucked down some EK hazies and pales. Mom, the U of M grad, chose a trippel for her THIRD brew.

Dinner at Max’s Wood Fire Grill In downtown Paducah. I had jambalaya. Grade = A, but a dubious practice regarding the prices on their menu. Mom had cavatappi.

We were going to stay in Paducah two nights, but The Boss now says one.

We are now back in our motel room. Mom just finished watching The Voice and is now watching Manifest. If I am lucky enough to make it to purgatory, it will not be worse.

Keep it light. Keep it mellow. Wash your hands as if you just handled jalapeño peppers and were now going to put in your contact lenses.  (Got that from Jenna Bush.)  Hello to the spouses, the Gorgeous Creatures and the four legged friends.

The Old Kin Tuck Traveler.

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Mar 10    HELLO FROM SOUTH BELOIT

Hello. We drove 436 miles to get from Paducah to SBI. All but 10 of those miles were in Illinois.

We started the day with greftas at Kirchhoff’s, a deli in downtown Paducah.  We each had a bacon & cheese croissant. Quite suck-you-lant. Right next door through an opening in a shared wall is Etcetera, a funky coffee shop which shares space with a small clothing store. It’s the kind of place SLP needs for its fledgling downtown in the Walker/Lake hood. Then spent 2 hours in the National Quilt Museum. I surprised myself by thinking it was great. I will send a picture or two. The artistry is amazeballs. (Is that Jill’s term?)

I hate to say it, but Illinois is a very long, boring state. Flatter than a mah-hmm. Not much to look at except for the southern quarter which is heavily forested. My favorite town name is Effingham. Lunch was Cheeseboogers at Culver’s in Mount Vernon, a medium size burg in southern Illinois. 

Couldn’t get a room in Rockford for < $200 due to high school basketball and wrestling tournaments in the area — price gouging? — so we drove 15 minutes up the pike to South Beloit. Had spagootz and meatsataballza in a super little Italian restaurant here called Anna Maria’s. Talked to the co-owner cook, a nice Italiano of the female persuasion. Let the women play through!

Should be home tomorrow afternoon. We will have been gone 24 days. Looking forward to seeing all o’ yuz.

The Old Paisano

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Mar 11    HELLO FROM ST. LOUIS PARK

Hello boys & girls,

While it is true that less than three of you inquired as to whether I would be offering a final installment of my round trip road adventures with Momma Cuan, there may be a completist among you whom I would not want to let down. As you probably know, a completist feels compelled to own or experience every single one of a series of things (for lack of a better word within my limited vocabulary), often for no other reason than to come full circle, as it were.  For example, I have no burning desire to visit Connecticut except for the fact that it is one of only three states in which I have never set foot.  (The other two are West Virginia and Hawaii, both of which I would very much enjoy visiting.) Another personal example is the TV show Lost. I thought the first two or three seasons were very good. The fourth and fifth seasons showed signs of mediocrity, so much so that toward the end of the fifth season the lazy writing made it apparent the whole endeavor was falling apart. Nevertheless I decided to endure the sixth and final season in the interest of completeness. Shame on me. The final season was the worst of them all.

I can’t leave you wondering if we ever made it home from South Beloit. Spoiler Alert: We did!

The hardest part about driving through Cheese Land on a Wednesday morning is keeping the mph within a reasonable level above the speed limit. Seven above is about all I’m willing to risk.  The Wisconsin Highway Patrol is notorious for setting speed traps along the interstate. Those guys are sneaky devils, hiding under bridges and on medians at the end of down slopes. I’m happy to report that on this trip I did manage to avoid the long arm of the law.

As we approached Eau Claire we started to get hungry and decided to bypass several McDonald's while patiently hoping there’d be a Culver’s.  We eventually saw a sign indicating Culver’s was off an exit ramp a few miles beyond Eau Claire. It wasn’t until we actually took the exit that we saw a second sign revealing Culver’s was 3.5 miles away. We should have returned immediately to the interstate but by this time we were really craving Culver’s. To make a long story short, we drove ten miles out of our way on a country road and never found the Culver’s. We ended up settling for Mac & Don’s west of Eau Claire after all.

We hit Minneapolis at 2:15, not early enough to avoid westbound rush hour traffic on I-94.  On second thought the traffic snarl is like a permanent condition more than merely rush hour.  I opted to exit at Riverside, then zig zagged our way home through south Minny and around Lake Of The Isles. We pulled into the QE driveway at exactly 3:00.  Our driveway is 320 miles from South Beloit.

The route home was 1737 miles from Fort Myers, compared to the 1848 miles I drove to get there. That is the difference between driving through Paducah in western Kentucky versus driving through Lexington in eastern Kentucky. The former is a hypotenuse route; the latter is more of a right angle.  In total we put 3791 miles on our car during the twenty-four days we were gone. Some people might call us crazy for driving instead of flying, but our theory is that the journey provides opportunities and memories which a flyer would miss.

I love you all.

The Old Completist

The Case Of The Flyaway File

A few days ago I came across an envelope which was buried beneath a short stack of papers in our den.  I had used the envelope to stash credit card receipts until I received an actual monthly statement from the card issuer showing those charges.  My practice was to make sure the dollar amounts on the statement matched my receipts.  Then I would shred the receipts.  For some reason, I never shredded a particular receipt which now remained in the envelope.

The receipt in question is in the amount of $37.97 from the 212 Motel in Olivia, Minnesota.  The fading yellow paper bears the date July 28, 2006, exactly twelve years ago today.  I may not be able to remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I vividly recall the details of that evening.  It is a story I have never told anyone -- and I mean anyone -- but to mark the occasion of this twelfth anniversary, I am posting it today.

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July 28, 2006 fell on a Friday.  Momma Cuandito was spending the entire week at our Northwoods cabin, while I stayed home to toil at my job at Wells Fargo, drafting loan agreements, promissory notes, mortgages, subordination agreements, manure easements and other exciting documents.  Momma Cuan had asked me to switch cars before she left, because my Lap Of Luxury, a 2005 Toyota Corolla, had more trunk space than her Mellow Yellow, a 2004 Volkswagon bug convertible.  She needed the extra room to haul some odds and ends, most certainly including several bottles of wine, to the cabin.

I usually use the time Momma Cuan is away to attend movies and sometimes concerts which I know she would not enjoy.  For example, my favorite genre of music is classic rock, which would not be on her top five list.  Such an opportunity presented itself that Friday night at Jackpot Junction, a casino in Morton, Minnesota with a fairly big outdoor arena.  The headliners were REO Speedwagon and Styx, two Illinois bands which gained national fame and are among my favorites in the geezer rock category.  Opening for them was Mickey Thomas who at that time was a solo artist but who had gained fame as the voice of several well known bands such as Jefferson Starship and Elvin Bishop.  (If you listen to oldies radio stations, you have undoubtedly heard Fooled Around And Fell In Love several dozen times.  Although the credited artist is Elvin Bishop, the lead vocals are by Mickey who played in Elvin's band when that # 3 hit was recorded in 1975.)

Buying a single ticket for the concert was no problem, but the asking price for the cheapest room at the casino's hotel was over $125.  In those days I would have opted to drive back to Minneapolis after the show rather than spend that kind of money on a room.  But there was a better alternative.  A mere sixteen miles north of Morton was the little burg of Olivia, home of the 212 Motel with rates less than one-third of the casino's.  Thus, my plan was hatched: attend the show, then make the twenty minute drive to the 212.

I looked forward to the concert experience all week.  I ducked out of work at noon that Friday, which in itself was something to relish.  I figured I'd drive all the way to southwestern Minnesota with the top down on Momma Cuan's bug, but I only made it to Eden Prairie when I eighty-sixed that notion.  It was too windy, and the skies looked threatening.  I settled for driving the remaining route with the top up, listening to Styx and REO CDs with the volume turned up to "11."  (Thank you for the thought, Rob Reiner!)  By the time I got to Jackpot Junction, roughly one hundred miles from home, I was totally pumped for the show.

Mickey Thomas was one of the best concert openers I have ever seen, not just an undercard filler but a bona fide rocker whose voice I'd put up against anybody's.  My faves, besides the aforementioned Elvin Bishop song, were Sara and Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, two Starship songs with Thomas as lead vocalist, both having hit # 1 on the Billboard chart in the mid-eighties.

Styx and REO alternated top billing on their joint national tour.  For the Jackpot Junction gig it was REO's turn to close.  Both bands have been around since the seventies, and claim repertoires which enable them each to play their own songs over ninety minutes without once having to resort to a cover or a song the fans had never heard before.  For the record, Styx has released sixteen singles which have cracked the Billboard Top 40; for REO, the number is thirteen.  REO's masterpiece album released in 1980, High Infidelity, is one of the most commercially successful LPs in the history of rock, with virtually every song, not just those released as singles, getting substantial radio air play.

Neither of the headliners disappointed that evening.  They gave everything they had for the Minnesota fans, even though they had probably grown tired of playing mostly the same songs at every show from year to year.  The only gripe I have, attributable to both bands, is that they are posers.  Think of every rock concert cliche, and those guys are guilty of all of them.  Windmill guitar strumming, a la Pete Townshend; jumping on top of an amp to get a silhouette in the spotlight; racing across the stage from side to side for no apparent reason; asking the fans to fill in with vocals on a chorus or two.  Still, I forgave them.  It's their music that mattered most, and these guys rocked the house.

What would a concert be without a brew or two to enjoy with the rest of the audience?  I was proud of myself for abstaining during Thomas' set, but made sure I had a pint for each of the following two.  The skies had cleared and the outdoor air was warm, perfect beer drinking weather.  At one point I wished I'd been extravagant enough to stay at the casino hotel; I could have pounded down a couple more cold ones and walked to my room instead of driving to Olivia. 

When the concert ended around 11:00 there was the expected log jam of hundreds of cars all trying to leave via the sole exit driveway.  Either the audience had been comprised of a lot of locals, or else there were plenty of cheapskates like me who were unwilling to pay the casino's exorbitant hotel rates.  I made the executive decision to drive to Olivia with the top down.  The weather wasn't bad, and I wanted to experience the bliss one gets from riding in an open convertible through the countryside on a starlit summer night.  I owed it to myself, especially after aborting my open air westward drive earlier in the day.  What good was it to have a convertible at your disposal and not put the roof down?  It would only be for sixteen miles.  What could possibly go wrong?

I found out the answer to that question within seconds after leaving the casino grounds and turning north onto U.S. Highway 71.  Although I had checked my bag at the 212 on my way down to Morton, I had left a small manilla file filled with papers in the back seat of the bug.  I had purposely put the file there so that I could look over its contents -- a combination of work-related documents and a few newspaper articles -- during an anticipated coffee break on my way home Saturday morning.  But being unaccustomed to driving a convertible, I failed to take into account that the file and its contents would blow around once I gathered speed on the highway.

I wasn't more than fifty yards beyond the Jackpot Junction exit when the file and papers did, in fact, start blowing all over.  I thought for sure they would escape the car, which at that moment was probably traveling only twenty miles an hour.  I foolishly tried to gather the papers by reaching back with my right hand while simultaneously steering with my left.  The first result was a swerve or two.  The second result was a red flashing light in my rear view mirror.  The Renville County Sheriff was lying in the weeds.

When you think about it, it makes sense.  What better place for the cops to set up shop for DWI suspects than at the exit of an outdoor venue which had just hosted a rock concert?  On most nights, it would be easy pickings or, if you prefer, low hanging fruit.

I immediately pulled over, then waited for what seemed forever for the fuzzy wuzzy -- thank you for the term, Detective Kojak -- to approach.  I had my drivers' license and proof of insurance ready to present.  He merely glanced at it, then asked me to step out of the car.  He took me to the space between my car and his, where an extremely bright flood light from the squad was pointing.

Kojak: Have you been drinking?

I had only a second or two to think about how I would answer, if in fact I decided to answer at all.  I had consumed only two pints, and I was confident that even having three would not have put me over the limit.  Nevertheless, I decided to lie.  "I had one beer," I replied.

He ordered me to stand on one foot and count to 30 by threes (three, six, nine, etc.).  Luckily I was wearing tennis shoes which afford much more balance than almost any other style of footwear.  I passed the test, no problem.  But wait... there was another part to the test.

Kojak: Now stand on the other foot and count backwards from 30 by threes (thirty, twenty-seven, twenty-four, etc.).  

I considered informing him that I taught eighth grade math for eight years, so he should really come up with something more challenging, maybe an algebraic equation.  That consideration was quickly abandoned.  No one else thinks my jokes are funny.  Why should he?  I did as told.

Then he gave me a breathalyzer test which involved blowing into some kind of apparatus which he took back into his car while I stood there in the flood light. Meanwhile, dozens of cars were exiting Jackpot Junction and slowly passing me by.  Gawkers!  What if someone recognized me?  What an embarrassment!  What if the whole ordeal was being filmed by a dash cam and would appear later on Spike TV?  What if I registered over the limit?  "No way," I convinced myself.  Still, I thought about the five grand an acquaintance of mine had to pay a well known Minneapolis lawyer to defend him in a DWI case.  I felt guilty even though I was not.

A few minutes later he came out of his squad.  "You are under the limit, although I think you did have more than one beer."  How did he know?  I was pretty impressed with the accuracy of his equipment.  As he returned to his car he called over his shoulder, "Drive safely."

Before I got back behind the wheel I gathered up the wind blown papers, stuck them back in the manilla file and threw it all in the trunk.  Crawling along the highway at 35 mph, it took me at least a half hour to reach Olivia.

Discovering the faded yellow receipt from twelve years ago has brought back memories, both good and bad.  It has also caused me to add something to my To Do List:  I've got to put the Uber app on my phone.  

Calabrian Quest In Cosenza

This post is a recounting of my attempt to retrieve the birth certificate of my maternal grandfather, Serafino Porcaro, from the government archives in Cosenza, Italy.  Although the story does not have a happy ending in the conventional sense, I would like to memorialize my appreciation and admiration for the Italian civil servants who gave it all they had.

The thought of attempting to obtain a copy of Serafino's birth certificate never crossed my mind until last December when I wrote to my cousin Louie's widow, Carole, to ask if she had any touristy recommendations for Calabria, the "toe" of Italy's "boot."  I knew she and Louie had once belonged to the Calabrian Club in Chicago, and went with that group to southern Italy at least twice.  Carole replied that on one of their trips Louie tried unsuccessfully to obtain the birth certificate of our grandfather.  She apprised me of Serafino's birthday, August 28, 1878, and his place of birth, Cosenza, a city of about 70,000 people located in north central Calabria.  I should note here that Louie was the oldest of Serafino's nineteen grandchildren -- I was the eighth -- so I felt confident that the information he'd passed on to Carole was accurate.
 

Fodor's travel guide describes Calabria as "poor" and the "least trodden of [Italy's] regions."  Maybe so, but the lack of tourism is one of the factors that appealed to our party of four: traveling buddies Admiral Bob and Madame Cipolle, Momma Cuandito and me.  Our theory was that there could be an inverse correlation between tourism and authenticity; this was an opportunity to experience the real Italy.  Rather than head directly from the Amalfi Coast to Sicily, where we would spend the majority of our sixteen day vacation, we decided to make Cosenza a one night layover.
 

The first clue that we were in a city not accustomed to hosting tourists was that the receptionist at our hotel, the Royal, did not speak English.  It was quite entertaining to watch Madame, fluent in French, converse with the friendly lady behind the desk.  Facial expressions and gesticulations came in handy -- no pun intended -- and enough was gleaned from the combination of French and Italian to figure out where to park our rental car and how to find the nearby pedestrian mall.
 

The open air mall extended for over half a mile, with stores on each side.  A grooved rubber track about eight inches wide ran along each edge, presumably to use if the pavement became slippery.  Detailed sculptures, some resembling mythological characters, others too bizarre to label, decorated each block. The two most notable establishments on the walkway were the Bulldog Bar, the mall's only tavern, and Magazzini Rossella.  Who would have guessed that my mother-in-law owned a business here in Cosenza?
 

We arrived around 5:00 at the end of the mall, where we noticed what appeared to be a government building of some sort across the street.  The three story structure was at the back end of an unadorned pavement plaza.  The windows on the top two floors were narrow slits.  The flags of Italy, the European Union and Calabria flew above the recessed front doors.  The employees were gone for the day and the building was locked, but we determined this would be our starting point the next morning.

***

After breakfast we made the fifteen minute walk to the government building.  Inside we encountered a small group of office workers.  Once again language differences presented a temporary inconvenience.  We learned that birth records were not kept in that building.  We would have to try our luck at a different place, about four or five blocks away.  Rather than just point us in the right direction, one of the workers accompanied us to the second destination, crossing a couple of busy streets to do so.  Naturally this was way beyond the call of duty, but we got the sense that he was disappointed he could not better assist us.
 

The second building, metallic with green trim, was an even more non-descript edifice than the first.  I did not see any identifying signage on the exterior.  If not for our helpful new friend who escorted us from the first office building, we may never have landed at the second.  We climbed a staircase to the second floor to find a stale working environment which looked like it hadn't been changed since the day it was opened for business decades ago.  Institutional green and beige were the predominant colors.  The office was supposedly the repository for official records of all kinds, such as birth, marriage and death certificates.  After a short wait, a male clerk took the card on which I'd written my grandfather's name and birthday, looked at it carefully and disappeared into a back file room.  He did not seem phased at all by my request for a certificate from the nineteenth century, giving no hint of the prospective impossibility of the task. This is going to be easy, I thought to myself.  My optimism was short-lived.

 

The clerk returned empty handed, but just as was the case in the first building, another employee came by and suggested yet another, third government archival office where we might find what we sought.  He took us out on the balcony and pointed to an old church on a hill almost a kilometer away.  It was there, he declared, where the city's oldest, and therefore least requested, records were kept.

 

At that point we'd been at it for well over an hour with nothing tangible to show for it.  I wasn't even sure what I would do with my grandfather's birth certificate had one been produced.  I also kept reminding myself that my cousin had already tried (and failed) to accomplish what we hoped to attain.  Therefore, I offered to call off the search at that point, before walking to and hiking up the distant hill, possibly to no avail.  My three companions would not accept my offer, reasoning that we'd gone this far in our search; we'd probably never return to Cosenza again, so now was the time.  Besides, this was an adventure!

 

We did not start out on the right foot, or should I say the correct route.  We ended up at a dead end, blocked by a fenced-in set of railroad tracks.  How do we go from there to the hillside church?  Once again Madame, the linguist, obtained directions from one of the locals who happened to be passing by.  We would have to do an "end around," first backtracking a little, then crossing a bridge over the tracks and the scenic Crati River, then ascending the hill on which the old church was perched.

 

After guessing incorrectly once or twice on which of the church doors to enter, our tired but intrepid quartet gained admission.  The final and most humorous part of our morning was about to begin.

 

Let me preface this "chapter" by stating that, up until then, the highest degree of security to which I'd ever been subjected were the two or three times my job required me to enter the Wells Fargo Operations Center, located in an unmarked building on the corner of 4th Street & Second Avenue in downtown Minneapolis.  If you did not know the name of your great uncle's pet goldfish, and answers to questions of similar ilk, you'd be denied access.  It turned out Wells had nothing on the Cosenza archivists.

 

Immediately inside the church door we were welcomed by cautionary signs, ropes and small barricades.  Behind a glass wall to our left were four women whose main job appeared to be scrutinizing aspiring entrants and, if said newcomers passed muster, granting admission to the second floor records storage area.  Each of us had to present identification and submit to inquiries such as place of birth, home address, occupation, and relationship to the person whose records we sought.  One of the women actually transcribed some of the information from our drivers' licenses onto a pad of paper.  No word if she filed that paper under "A" for Americano, "V" for visitatore (visitor), or some other category.  The whole procedure reminded me of an incident I'd read about in David Greene's non-fiction story Midnight In Siberia, where he described the triplicate forms required to be completed by customers dropping off and picking up their laundry at the dry cleaners.  I learned then that the Russians, and now learned that the Italians, absolutely love their paper trails.

 

Two or three of the women came out from behind the glass walled office.  Thankfully one of them, whose name I recall was Maria, spoke very good English, thereby advancing the whole process as expeditiously as their rules would allow.  She was adept at the art of small talk, so our fifteen minute wait for her co-workers to do their thing -- whatever that was -- did not seem such a grind.  In fact, it was rather pleasant.  Maria asked me if I knew my grandfather's name was a reference to angels, the seraphim.  Sure, I'd heard of seraphim, but had never connected the dots.

 

As I related above, Cosenza is not exactly a tourist mecca, so having four Americans at their office doorstep may have been a rarity for the employees, or at least something to tell their families about when they went home that evening.   Finally, they issued each of us keys, engraved with a number which no doubt matched a number somewhere in a row or a column on one of their office forms.  We inferred an important message: Woe to the person who loses his key!  All of us figured the keys would be used to open a file drawer or a container similar to what one would find inside a safety deposit vault. Wrong!

 

Maria led us to a lift  which creaked upward to the second floor at hospital elevator speed.  A twist here, a turn there, and we found ourselves in an anteroom occupied by three or four more workers, a different group from those on the first floor.  I'm not sure what they were doing to pass the time before we showed up, as the people in our foursome were the only non-employees there.  We presented the keys we'd been safeguarding which we then found out opened little square wooden cabinets for our jackets.  I really wasn't going to shed my jacket, but the Italians had gone through so much work to issue the keys I did not want to disappoint them by leaving my assigned cabinet empty.  However, Momma Cuan had no choice but to keep her coat, as her cabinet was at least six feet off the ground!

 

Soon we were escorted into the larger back room.  I was impressed by the wood paneling, the glass casings and the computer equipment.  This area was appointed like a small research library, which in fact it was.  Another handful of researchers were at desks. Maria got one or two of them started on looking for Serafino's birth record.  I could see them flipping the pages of long thick ledgers crammed with handwritten entries.  The workers meticulously combed through page after page to no avail.  Naturally, they performed some of the investigation on computers.  They found 531 Porcaro birth records, but none with a matching correct first name and birthdate.  Maria approached with more questions.  Was I sure I had the correct spelling?  The correct birth date?  Was Serafino known by any other name?  Was he born within the city limits of Cosenza or, instead, in the surrounding rural region?  Did I know if he had siblings, or what the names of his parents were?  Did I know when he emigrated to the United States?  I was not much help.  All I had to go on was the minuscule information which Carole had relayed to me.

 

A few more employees joined in the project.  They were absolutely giving it their all, working at different stations and eager to try different approaches.  They even invited Admiral Bob and me to try our luck at one of the computers.  We were all in that back room close to a half hour.  Finally we agreed to throw up the white flag.  It certainly was not from lack of effort.  In fact, I felt bad for the Italians that they felt bad for me!

 

***

 

We were in Cosenza for only twenty-one hours, yet I have several memories that are going to stick with me for awhile.  The crowded church where the archbishop presided over a solemn Wednesday evening ceremony to bless the holy oils which would be used for the coming liturgical year; the Admiral, approaching a pub called J. Joyce Irish Pub, only to discover it was closed (I have a funny picture which captures that disappointment); shortly thereafter, enjoying a beer while sitting on wicker chairs outside the Caffe Telesio, watching the regular old timers, including a nattily dressed older gent in a fedora, tell animated stories to each other; the nuns who appeared behind the cafe after the church ceremony, seeking a ride to their vehicle; the superb dinner we enjoyed at a corner table at Calabria Bella Ristorante; the cars zooming up and down the old city's narrow alleys on which people were walking for lack of a sidewalk; and the nightcaps we drank at the Bulldog before heading back to the Royal.  The topper, however, was the mission we did not quite accomplish looking for Serafino's birth certificate.  I will always remember the Italian civil servants who took on the task of aiding our search with the same degree of seriousness, vigor and concern as if he had been their own ancestor.

Four Days In The Corn, Part II: The Irish & The Germans

It's Wednesday in Iowa City, with all morning and afternoon to kill until the 8:00 tipoff of the Notre Dame-Iowa women's game tonight.  There is no shortage of possible ways to spend the time.  Our quarters, the Sheraton Hotel, is one of two hotels centrally situated along the pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown.  The mall also provides shoppers and diners plenty  of choices with a number of stores, bars, restaurants and even a small movie theater, the nonprofit FilmScene.  A large section of the four hundred fifty acre University Of Iowa campus borders downtown.  Included among the school's buildings is the Old Capitol, where the first state legislatures convened in the mid-1800's before the politicians decided to move the capital to Des Moines.

We have always enjoyed exploring college campuses on foot.  Illinois, Purdue, Penn State, West Point, Missouri, Texas, BYU and the Air Force Academy are some of the ones we have visited on our travels, in addition to the four where our kids attended school.  Unfortunately, due to the frigid winds which are sweeping through town on this last day of November, we wuss out on our planned campus visit this morning and choose a more laid back agenda.  After downing what passes for coffee in our room, we brave the cold gusts and traverse the two block long mall.  Other than the college kids who seem immune to the effects of the arctic breeze, there are hardly any walkers or bikers.  We duck into a few stores, but make no purchases until we arrive at Prairie Lights bookstore.

 

Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver probably still remains my favorite, but Prairie Lights isn't far behind.  This two story building just north of the pedestrian mall is the kind of place where one could spend an entire morning.  Every genre of book with multiple titles can be found here.  The store is also host to a number of events, most notably book readings by authors, many of whom are affiliated with the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop.  Some of the older the employees could easily pass for literature professors and research scholars, not that a finance major like me would know.

 

Since we've skipped breakfast, an early lunch is in order.  We happen upon a place which looks like a classic urban hot spot, the Pullman Bar & Diner.  It has the same vibe as Ike's in downtown Minneapolis, only smaller.  Just as in Decorah's La Rada two nights ago, we score the best table for two next to the front window.  The restaurant is long and somewhat narrow, probably designed to invoke thoughts of a Pullman car.  All that's missing is the clickity-clack of a train's steel wheels on the rails.  Mary selects one of her standbys, a croque madame, while I can't pass up the Frisco melt.  The food is hot and delicious, just what we need to thaw out from our stint outdoors.  We long for a real cup of coffee.  Our friendly young server, Arlinda, suggests that we order a French press, "because I love to push down the plunger into the pot!"  If that's all it will take to make her day, who are we to stand in her way?  Turns out to be a good choice for all concerned.

 

Back outside, we continue to investigate what downtown IC has to offer, this time outside the perimeters of the pedestrian mall.  It is not getting warmer despite the fact that we're now under the afternoon sun.  If anything, the wind has picked up.  Active Endeavors is a top drawer clothing store, specializing in outdoor apparel from name brand companies like North Face and Patagonia.  The floor manager spots my Notre Dame hat and informs me that the husband of ND coach Muffet McGraw was in earlier today.  We walk by the "second" downtown Italian restaurant, Basta Pizzeria Ristorante, and decide to return for dinner tonight.  Then we check out AKAR, which a 2014 travel article had billed as "a gem of an art shop" with "great children's clothing."  There's no question the place offers an array of brightly colored contemporary art goods and Iowa-centric wares, but the selection of children's clothing -- my main area of interest here in light of the travel article --  is much lower than my expectations.

 

Upon leaving AKAR we make a final decision to scuttle our plans to meander around campus, but Plan B is brilliant:  Return to the ped mall and have a beer in the Bread Garden Market.  I can't think of any place in the Twin Cities that's quite like BGM.  Most of the spacious interior is a beer and wine off-sale shop, with concentration on beer from Iowa breweries.   There's also a nice deli and hot food section which is doing a brisk business.  Along the lengthy side of the premises which faces the mall, there's a glassed-in, high ceiling dining area where almost every table is occupied by college students.  Some of them don't appear to be eating or drinking anything and have probably been camped here for hours, but virtually all are pouring over a laptop or a smart phone.  Mary and I, the oldest folks under the roof, take in the great people-watching scene while we sit at the bar and have a couple of locally produced tap beers.

 

After a short break at the Sheraton we head out for Basta, straight north via the pedestrian mall's one block north-south walkway which we hadn't seen before.  The ambience of Basta appears more authentically Italian than last night at Baroncini.  The place is divided into a bar area and a larger dining room, both of which have the lights down low and are furnished with dark wood.  As is true in many restaurants with such a floor plan, the bar area is more appealing.  After whetting our appetites with the stuffed dates appetizer, we order the salsiccia pizza, which is topped with homemade sausage and some peppers to give it more than a little kick.  Good thing I was washing dinner down with a Deschutes Fresh Squeezed.

 

The Iowa River splits the University Of Iowa campus in two.  Carver-Hawkeye Arena is situated across the river, much too far away for us to walk on a cold winter's night.  From the outside, the building doesn't look anything like a sports arena, yet this is where both the men's and women's teams play. It is barely one story high, hiding the fact that the basketball floor is in a bowl, located at what must be the equivalent of a good four or five stories below street level.  With the spectators' seats totally surrounding the court, it must be extremely loud if filled to capacity.  Unfortunately, that probably happens only for some men's games.  Tonight's attendance for the women will be no more than a couple thousand, if that.

 

The Notre Dame-Iowa game tonight is part of the Big 10-Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Challenge.  Before the season starts, the honchos from those two leagues try to pair up teams from each so that the pre-season favorites play each other, the teams predicted to finish second in each league play each other, etc., all the way down to the cellar dwellers squaring off.  For unknown reasons, that blueprint has been disregarded for this matchup.  Otherwise, the Irish would be playing Maryland, as those two women's teams are far and away the pre-season favorites in their respective conferences.  (Incidentally, the pairing of last night's men's game in The Bend between Notre Dame and Iowa was also part of the Big 10-ACC Challenge.  It is merely a coincidence that the men's and women's teams from those two schools were paired up this season.  It usually does not happen that way.)

 

One of the best parts of attending an Irish Lasses game is to watch the grand entrance of ND's coach, Muffet McGraw.  She does not make an on-court appearance when her team goes through the twenty-five minute pre-game warm up.  The task of overseeing the warm up is left to her assistant coaches with the help of the student managers.  Following the warm up each team clears the floor, heading to their locker rooms. Shortly thereafter, about five minutes before tipoff, the team's re-enter for layup lines and team introductions.  It is only until then that Muffet walks in, looking like a million bucks with her coiffed trim auburn hair, a silk scarf draped over a silk blouse, an above-the-knee skirt and, impossibly, high heels.  The sixty-one year old, not looking a day over forty-five, has been Notre Dame's head coach for the past twenty-nine years.  With the exception of the incomparable Geno Auriemma at UConn, Muffet has run the most successful women's basketball program this century.  They say that a lot of sports teams reflect the disposition of their coach.  The Irish hoopsters are calm, confident and savvy.  Currently ranked as the number one squad in the country, another adjective you might use is "good."

 

Notre Dame's two best players are All American junior center Brianna Turner, and All ACC point guard Lindsay Allen, a senior.  The Lady Hawkeyes are an above average, albeit unranked, team which gives the Irish a challenge for about thirty minutes before ND pulls away as expected.  I am curious to keep an eye on two Hawkeye reserves, senior forward Hailey Schneden and sophomore forward Hannah Stewart.  They are alumna from my two former high schools, Assumption and Bishop Ryan, respectively.  Final score: ND 73, Iowa 58.

 

The night is not over just yet.  We have discovered that Iowa City, despite its small size, is home to a speakeasy!  Okay, maybe speakeasies went out with the end of the Prohibition Era, but that's the motif which the Clinton Street Social Club is shooting for.  We have to check it out!  The Club is located near the edge of downtown at the top of a narrow set of dimly lit stairs, the entryway to which off the sidewalk is about as wide as a pencil.  Once on the second floor you can tell that this place is geared for the old time cocktail crowd.  Sure, there is a person or two with a beer or a glass of wine, but spirits are in order here.  The Club's website calls itself "an apothecary of enlightened libations." Sounds serious.

 

Everyone in the place is sitting at the bar.  Our bartender, Ryan, looks like he, himself, would be carded if he walked in as a customer.  Ryan says he graduated seven or eight years ago with a business degree, but after an unfulfilling short-lived career in other cities, he returned to IC, the place he missed too much to stay away from.  Mary orders a French 75, and I try the Club's version of an old fashioned.  I have the same thoughts about this place as I had earlier today at the Bread Garden Market.  I can't think of a Twin Cities establishment, at least none that I've been in, which resembles this speakeasy.  Maybe that's why I like it.

 

 

***

 

Momma Cuandito calls me The Linear Guy.  She's poking fun at me, but I consider it a badge of honor.  I like to have my ducks in a row.  I am also big on symmetry.  Every debit should have a matching credit, every zig calls for a zag, for each Republican there should be a Democrat.  Well, scratch that last one, but you do get my drift, don't you?

 

Tuesday was our getaway day from Decorah.  What was our final task there?  Picking up some beer to go from Toppling Goliath.  It seems natural (and symmetrical) that on this Thursday morning on which we are leaving Iowa City, we should do something similar.  Lucky for us there is John's Grocery, an IC institution and my favorite grocery store of all time!  We had been there once before ten years ago when we visited Jill at Loras and set off on a day trip.

 

True, John's is a grocery store, but its calling card is the huge selection of beer stocked on its shelves both in the room temperature store proper and in their bank vault size walk-in cooler.  It's a pretty safe guess that almost every one of the thirty-five-plus beers made in the state of Iowa is there, and dozens from all over the Midwest and other regions.  Belgian and German beer also occupy a generous section.  What is most unique about John's is the bevy of beer glasses, steins and mugs to match dozens of the beers available for sale.  Wine lovers won't be disappointed either.  John's has expanded its wine inventory since our last visit, and it's now pretty impressive.

 

After making a sizable purchase of liquid refreshments at John's, we jump into our Lexus... I mean our 2005 Toyota Corolla ... and hit the road.  We are 305 miles from home, but our first destination on this final day is a place we've been meaning to visit for years, the Amana Colonies.

 

In 1855, only nine years after Iowa became a state, a group of twelve hundred religious refugees of German descent created a settlement on fertile lands along the Iowa River.  They called themselves the Inspirationists.  Their main occupation was farming, but they set up seven villages along a sixteen mile loop.  The villages were spaced about a mile and a half away from each other, roughly the distance which an ox-pulled cart could traverse in an hour.  The settlers developed a variety of skills concomitant with village life, such as baking, weaving, carpentry, teaching and preaching.  Unlike the Amish, another German group often confused with the Inspirationists, the Amana colonists not only adapted to technological advancements, they embraced them.  The most important event in the Inspirationists modern history occurred in 1932 when the people elected to separate their church from their economic activity.  Following that separation (sometimes called "The Change"), one of the colonists started an appliance business which grew into world famous Amana Corporation.

 

We make a quick drive through Homestead, the first village one encounters by driving counter-clockwise on the loop.  The main drag, V Street, is about a half-mile long, terminating as one might expect at a corn field.  With a population of under 200, Homestead looks like any other tiny midwestern town.  Neatly kept houses and a few churches line the road.  There is also a church museum and a country inn.

 

Next along the loop is Amana, the hub of whatever action the Colonies have to offer.  We have the extremely good fortune of hitting the Amana on the day before its biggest weekend festival of the year, Prelude To Christmas.  Many of the residences and retail buildings are decked out with wreaths and lights.  People are outside attaching garlands and decorations to the fences along the perimeter of their yards.  The Christmas spirit is infectious.

 

We don't want to go store hopping on an empty stomach.  The Ox Yoke Inn looks like our best bet.  Inside there are several dining rooms, most of them filled with customers.  The atmosphere is somewhat like the Norski Nook in Osseo, Wisconsin;  jolly rotund waitresses serving an older crowd many comfort food entrees followed by home made pie,  Behind us is a long table occupied by ten women who are playing a raucous dice game, apparently to decide who picks up the tab.  Good thing for the loser there will be no bar tab here.

 

Mary orders the chicken lunch plate while I pick the sauerbraten.  Both are excellent and filling, but that does not deter us from ordering two pieces of pie, coconut creme and rhubarb meringue.  I wonder how many folks from IC and Cedar Rapids drive over here for lunch; they are each only a half hour away!

 

Before we return to our car we walk across the street to check out the General Store and a children's shop called the Red Wagon.  At Amana Meat Shop & Smoke House, Mary buys a huge ham which she plans to serve the famdamily when we congregate at Brainerd in January.  Our final stop is the Amana Woolen Mill on the edge of town.  The enormous building houses both a manufacturing facility and a retail room.  Mary tosses a hint my way that we should spend $200 on a thick red woolen blanket, but I feign a hearing problem.  Yet, it's hard to walk out of that place empty handed, so I buy her a Stormy Kromer hat, which its label modestly describes as a wollen baseball cap with ear flaps.

 

The Millstream Brewing Company is located in a quaint cottage across the street from the Woolen Mills.  I have been sampling some of their product over the past few days, and it goes down easy.  I wouldn't mind checking out their tap room, but then reality sets in.  I've already made a mental note to put Decorah's Pulpit Rock on the itinerary for our next trip to Iowa.  Now I'll have to add Millstream to the list.

 

We do a quick drive through Middle Amana, the next village on the loop.  Its population of 581 makes it the largest of the seven hamlets.  Then finally our explorations are over and we point true north.  It's time to find our way home.  Who would have ever guessed we could have such a good time spending four days in the corn?         

Four Days In The Corn, Part I: The Land Of Ole & Goliath

For many Minnesotans, heading south for a winter break is as natural as going "up to the lake" in the summer.  Which southern sojourn did Momma Cuandito and I consider this season?  The list of possibilities included Mexico, the Caribbean, Arizona and Florida.  Even Cuba got a mention.  We chose Iowa.  It's more than where the tall corn grows.

 

Decorah.  For several years we passed through Decorah when our daughter, Jill, attended Loras College in Dubuque.  Both of those cities reside on US Highway 52.  Usually we zipped through, or even by-passed, Decorah in our hurry either to get to Jill or to return home, but on those few occasions when we did make a stop in Decorah, including once for a swim meet when Jill swam for the Duhawks against Luther College, we recognized it as a town worth visiting.  In addition to Luther, this small city is home to two other well known points of interest, the Vesterheim Museum and Toppling Goliath Brewing Company.

 

We arrived early on a Monday afternoon and checked into our Air B&B, Vossheim.  Located on a residential street a few minutes south of downtown, Vossheim is owned by a friend, Linda, whose mother lived in that house for ten years.  The Norwegian word "heim" means "house," and "Voss" refers to the family's ancestral village back in the homeland.  The one-level rental quarters features two bedrooms, one and a-half bathrooms, a huge updated kitchen and a comfortable living room.  Flying in the breeze outside the front door is the flag of Norway.

 

My inclination is to make Toppling Goliath our first stop, but we both acknowledge the folly of such a plan.  It just might be too hard to leave.  So instead, we decide to check out what downtown has to offer.  The main drag in Decorah is Water Street, "not Main Street" as a few locals advised us.  For a small city, Decorah's shopping district along Water Street extends for more blocks than I would have guessed.  It kind of reminds me of Galena, Illinois, a regional shopping mecca, although Decorah is smaller.  Most of the buildings lining Water Street are dark brown two story structures, housing gift shops, clothing stores, art galleries, book stores, cafes, bars and banks.  Oh boy, there is no shortage of banks.  The money must be rolling in from many of the hundreds of nearby farm families.  Radio station KVIK plays classic rock from its studio across the street from the Vesterheim at the west end of Water.  Shades of American Graffiti?  The Winneshiek Hotel is the place to stay if you're looking for conveniently classic lodging.

 

It is not hard to spend half a day downtown, and that's not even including the Vesterheim, which is on our agenda for tomorrow.  Since I became a grandparent I have developed an entirely new outlook on shopping.  My old strategy, pre-grandkids, would be to suck down a beer or two in a bar while Momma Cuan visited the stores.  Now, I actually go into many of the stores with her, not to shop for myself but to see if there's any potential purchase with the beautiful granddaughters in mind.  It isn't until that curiosity has been satisfied that I step outside and wait for my better half.

 

After popping into a few Water Street stores like Modish, Revelation, J.Tupy's  and Margaret's, it's at last time to quench our thirst. The lucky denizens of Decorah are blessed with two microbreweries. So many brews yet, for us, so little time. We decide to save Pulpit Rock for another visit -- I'm confident there will be one -- and make a beeline for Toppling Goliath, just across the bridge spanning the Upper Iowa River from downtown.

 

Walking into Toppling Goliath, we immediately sense a cozy atmosphere.  We sit at the small bar, as is our custom in any tavern, and it doesn't take long for the fellow next to me to ask where we are from.  Did our Minnesota accents give us away, or are we the only strangers in the bar?  I suspect the latter.  It turns out the inquisitor knows the same family that owns our b & b; that family, the Istads, also owned the Whippy Dip ice cream stand in town.

 

My pre-trip research for Toppling Goliath has consisted of reading a 2015 article from the Chicago Tribune, in which it was reported that a Beer Advocate survey named seven TG beers among the top one hundred in the world.  Another website, RateBeer, calls TG's Kentucky Brunch the "second best beer in the world."  I am not too disappointed that Kentucky Brunch is not available during our visit, because its style, imperial coffee stout aged in whiskey barrels, isn't one of which I'm fond.  I do find a few draughts to my liking today, particularly an American pale titled Pseudo Sue.  I wouldn't know a citra hop if it was sitting right in front of me, but its refreshing taste is the keynote to the delectable Pseudo Sue.  Momma Cuan hedges her bets by ordering a flight of six small pours of different offerings.

 

We strike up a conversation with a couple at the bar who tell us they live within walking distance of both TG and Pulpit Rock.  Location, location, location!  I am envious.  When they ask how we'd found out about the TG tap room, I show them the Tribune article, pointing out that the story includes reference to a husband and wife, Tim and Carol Stoddard, whose practice is to bring growlers of TG beer with them on road trips to share in other breweries' tap rooms.  The couple laugh and inform us, "Yeah, we are Tim and Carol."

 

Our fellow beer drinkers are quick to offer their suggestions on Decorah restaurants for us to have dinner.  Some even call a place or two to determine if they are open on Monday; others give us directions.

 

The downtown bistro, La Rada, is our choice.  There, we are seated at the room's best table, tucked into a nook next to a ten foot high bay window.  The outdoor Christmas season scene, with a light snow falling against a twilight sky, could be a postcard.  We enjoy everything about our dining experience, from the tatted up server who totally digs our desire to ease through cocktails before ordering, to the hum of conversation among fellow diners, to Mary's penne with lamb and my flank steak.

 

Back at Vossheim, I magnanimously tell Mary that we should watch the last hour of her favorite show, The Voice, instead of the Monday Night Football Game.  The fact that Vossheim's cable TV package does not include ESPN has absolutely nothing to do with my suggestion.

 

***

 

Our first stop Tuesday morning is back downtown to Impact Coffee on Washington Street, next door to La Rada.  I have been to dozens of coffee shops in the Twin Cities, and I would place Impact right up there with the best of them.  The space is divided into two rooms.  The front is equipped like NASA's Mission Control in Houston.  You must need an advanced mechanical engineering degree to know how to use all their heavy duty coffee brewing gizmos.  We settle for lattes and a couple of scrumptious apricot almond scones that melt in our mouths.  An artsy arch between Corinthian columns separates the front room from the back, where all the comfy chairs are found.  Colorful paintings by local artists adorn the walls of both sections.  If we weren't headed for the Vesterheim, I would camp out on one of Impact's sofas for sure.

 

The Vesterheim is the national Norwegian-American museum, hosting over 24,000 artifacts.  The main building, which is the only one of the twelve open year round, is spread over four levels in a grand old brick structure.  The English translation of the museum's name is "western home."  The first floor focuses on the life that the Norwegians had before emigrating to the States.  Because of their rural cold weather environment, it was a hard existence.  On top of that, their government imposed many restrictions which they were eager to escape by heading across the Atlantic.  The first to do so was a group of fifty-three brave souls in a fifty-four foot sloop christened the Restauration, on which they sailed west in 1825.  A large replica of the Restauration and two other ships are displayed on Vesterheim's first floor.  One of those other ships is the actual Trade Wind (not a replica), the twenty-five foot vessel sailed to America in 1933 by the Hamran brothers, Harald and Hans.  Ships like the Restauration were crowded, limiting the physical possessions the new settlers could bring with them to the new land.  The museum teaches us that the most valuable assets those people had were not what they could stuff in a trunk.  Rather, it was their stories, artistic and mechanical talents, music, recipes and other elements of their Nordic culture which now live on, two centuries later.

 

The second floor picks up the narrative once the Norwegians have reached the New Land.  Two of the museum's most interesting displays are houses located on the first two floors showing a typical family residence both in the old country (on the first floor) and in America (second floor).  The Norwegians were expert craftsmen, as evidenced by the many pieces of furniture in the museum.  Cabinets, tables, desks, chairs, stools, and wardrobe chests are just some of the items housed at Vesterheim.  The folk art known as rosemaling, the practice of decorative painting, adds appeal to things like headboards, walls, lampshades, table tops, picture frames, even refrigerator doors.  The early Norwegians were also master wood carvers and jewelry designers.  Hundreds of those artifacts are displayed nicely on the second floor.

 

The third floor is primarily devoted to beautiful textiles, while the basement level concentrates mostly on military exhibits.  A fascinating narrative describes how many young Norwegian men were drawn into the War Between The States, fighting for both sides, even though they were new to the country and did not share the passions which drove most of their fellow soldiers.  Another basement exhibit details the 99th Infantry Battalion in World War II.  This battalion, comprised of about a hundred Norwegian Americans, were expert skiers and mountaineers who helped liberate Norway from Nazi control.

 

Once we are inside the Vesterheim gift shop, it is hard to leave.  I could spend an entire paycheck -- if I had a paycheck -- going crazy buying fabulous sweaters, knit stocking hats, books, dolls, games, toys and souvenirs.  As you might expect in this town heavily populated by Norwegians, there are entire sets of Ole and Lena cards with humor in varying degrees of taste, good and bad.  Exercising a little self discipline, we escape without too much damage to our pocketbooks.

 

For lunch we decide on a place recommended to us last night by our new friends from Toppling Goliath.  It's the Good Times Grill, located just down the College Drive slope from TG.  Good Times is what I would call a nice sports bar, if such a label is not an oxymoron.  I am impressed with their food choices, and end up with a chili and tacos combo.   My gold standard for chili has been Pecos River Hot from the Loon in Minneapolis.  (The Loon's menu description for their Pecos River is, "No beans, no B.S.")  I am happy to report that Good Times' recipe edges closer to the Loon's than 90% of all the other chili I've had.  My only disappointment with Good Times is that I am unable to sample the beer from their ample list, due to this afternoon's travel plans.

 

Speaking of beer, our last stop before we head out of Dodge is to return to TG to pick up a couple of bombers for our birthday boys, Luke (November 26) and Michael (November 28.)  Being risk-averse, I choose Pseudo Sue which, based on last night's experience, I know the young lads will enjoy.  I also pick up a tall boy four pack of Golden Nugget, one of TG's two widely acclaimed IPAs (the other one being Intergalactic Warrior), for my own consumption.  As we pull out of town I am proud of myself for remembering to bring a cooler from home.  Got to protect the newly acquired precious cargo!

 

Iowa City.  I would be remiss if I did not give a tip of the hat to northeast Iowa.  This is not your father's farmland.  Traveling south from Decorah to Iowa City requires negotiating over ninety miles of country highway, mostly on State Route 150, before hooking up with Interstate 80 near Cedar Rapids for the last short leg.  Although the crops have been harvested long before this late November afternoon, there is no mistaking the beauty of the rolling hills, the plentiful trees -- yes, trees! -- and the well kept farm houses that dot the landscape.  I can't help but make the mental comparison of what we are viewing to the northeast quadrant of North Dakota.  There the land is flat, the farm houses are miles apart, and the one tree is barely visible near the horizon, about fifteen miles from the road.  I love both parts of the country, the undulating topography of Iowa and the wide open plains of North Dakota.  Public Service Announcement:  If time permits, get off the interstate and enjoy the view!

 

Now that I'm in the twenty-first paragraph of this post, I suppose it's about time I disclose the main reason for our Iowa excursion.  Since the turn of the century, the Notre Dame women's basketball program, under the leadership of head coach Muffet McGraw, has established itself as one of the top two in the country, behind only perennial power UConn.  This season the Irish are ranked # 1 in the pre-season polls, and have won their first six games so far.  They have only one regular season game scheduled west of the Mississippi River, and that happens to be against the Iowa Hawkeyes.  What better reason for us to head south?  This will be the first time Momma Cuan and I have ever seen an Irish Lassie game in person.  Tip off is tomorrow night in Carver Hawkeye Arena.

 

We pull into Iowa City around 6:30 p.m., surprised Iowa City has any rush hour at all, let alone one that extends past 6:00.  We are reminded of home as we come upon downtown, where construction has blocked several streets and detour postings are everywhere.  We are staying at the Sheraton in the heart of downtown on the pedestrian mall.

 

Both of us are in the mood for Italian food, and there are two ristoranti within a few blocks.  We select Baroncini, which we find out after the fact from the hotel concierge is the preferred choice of the dual option.  (Don't ask why we checked with the concierge after, instead of before, we ate; that's just how we roll.)  My first impressions once inside the place are (i) nice but unremarkable ambience, and (ii) wonderful aromas pervading throughout.  Pre-dinner cocktails seem like a good, even if not novel, idea, so Momma Cuan chooses an Americano while I opt for a Bloody Boulevardier, which is made with bourbon, campari and sweet vermouth.  After enjoying a few sips, our server inquires how I like the drink, to which I respond positively.  He is proud to announce that he is the one who talked Baroncini's management into putting that concoction on the cocktail menu.

 

Momma Cuan enjoyed her hanger steak entre.  I keep to my personal tradition of ordering a pasta dish whenever I'm in an Italian restaurant.  This time it is agnolotti di Manzo.  Molto buona!  I am also impressed by the fact that Baroncini has Moretti Rossa on tap.  Not all Italian eateries do.

 

Our final stop of the night is to locate a sports bar to check on the Notre Dame vs. Iowa men's basketball game, which is being played in South Bend as part of the ACC-Big 10 Challenge.  We retrace our steps to the pedestrian mall and land in Brothers, a chain-operated watering hole across the street from our hotel.  Apparently Hawkeye Mania has not overtaken Iowa City, because only one of several TV screens is tuned to the game on ESPN.

 

I find it interesting to note the differences between the schools' veteran head coaches.  Mike Brey, the Irish boss, is about as congenial and easygoing as any coach in Division 1.  He rarely raises his voice, remaining calm even when a game is unraveling.  He is gracious with the media, possibly preparing for a post-coaching career in broadcast journalism.  Sometimes his announcer buddies make fun of his attire -- he used to be known for his mock turtlenecks -- and his recent "look," an unshaven countenance.

 

The Iowa Hawkeyes are coached by Fran McCaffery who, like Brey, is fifty-seven years old.  With his silver hair and expensive suits, McCaffery looks more like a Wall Street banker than a gym rat.  It's no real surprise that he holds an economics degree from the Wharton School Of Business.  I always enjoy watching Fran in action because he is hot tempered and not afraid to pick up a technical foul if he thinks his team needs a spark.  He is the quintessential feisty Irishman.  McCaffery has a twofold Notre Dame connection.  He was an assistant coach at Notre Dame for eleven years, starting in 1986.  Also, his wife, the former Margaret Nowlin, was a superior basketball player for the Irish.  On this night, Fran's Irish heritage, coaching resume and relationships do not provide him or his team enough luck.  The Hawkeyes are outmanned and fall to ND, 92-78.

The Second Best Thing About Liverpool, Part II: Two Nights, One Day

Thursday Evening.  From the time we arrived in town until Thursday evening, almost everything we've done has been Beatle-centric.  Now it's time for a respite.  There is no shortage of Liverpool restaurants which sound enticing in the travel books, but the description of one in particular catches my eye.  Formerly the Polish Catholic Church Of St. Peter, Alma de Cuba is one of those places which is so unique and atmospheric that you wonder if the food can possibly match the setting.  The restaurant is located in the Ropewalks section, which is known more for its nightlife spots than its eateries.  Unlike the Mathew Quarter to which we had walked Wednesday night, Ropewalks is a cab ride away from the Indigo Hotel.  Our plan is to have a drink at Alma de Cuba while we check out the menu, then either stay or try a different spot for dinner.
 

As soon as we walk in we are almost stunned by how cool the place is.  There is an indirect red hue pervading the rectangular space. At the end opposite the entrance we can see where the church's raised alter used to be.  Some paintings and icons more germane to a place of worship than a restaurant still adorn the altar. The first level has a large open wooden floor with a well-stocked bar along one side.  Although there is some seating at that level, most of the patrons are above at tables along the railings which are lined up to match the perimeter of the open floor below.  The chandeliers are circular with long-stem bulbs surrounded by what looks like curved tusks or antlers.  These fancy fixtures are complemented by a copious amount of candles throughout the space, another reminder of the building's past.
 

We sit at the bar and strike up a conversation with the bartender, who looks like he's barely old enough to order a virgin Mary.  Momma Cuan and I have our usuals, wine and beer, and peruse the menu.  We are so impressed with the surroundings that it's probably a foregone conclusion we'll stay for dinner, no matter what the menu says.  We agree that we can't recall any place back home in the Twin Cities which offers this kind of atmosphere.
 

Twenty minutes later we are seated upstairs where we can soak in the awesomeness from a different perspective.  More candles, stained glass windows, a vaulted ceiling, just the right amount of light.  What's not to like?
 

Our original mild concern about whether the food might be merely a second thought here, as is the case with some places with unusual ambience, is dashed as soon as we take our first bites.  Momma Cuan raves about the salmon, "done to perfection."  Keeping with Alma de Cuba's Caribbean theme, I choose the jerk chicken and am more than satisfied.  The portions are generous, so we certainly don't need another course. But when we spot sticky toffee pudding on the dessert menu, we feel obligated to share it so we can compare it to our recently discovered gold standard, the sticky toffee pudding we devoured at the Waterfront Fishouse Restaurant in Oban, Scotland last week.  Alma's version is delicious, but the Waterfront retains the crown.

As we leave the restaurant we see the millennials making their way into Ropewalks.  The sidewalks are crowded and the young folks have spilled onto the streets.  Their night was just getting started, but ours is waning.  Momma Cuan and I grab a cab.  At our age, you can only cram so much fun into one evening.

Well, maybe not!  Back at the Indigo we decide to have a nightcap in the hotel bar.  I know what MC is going to order: a 50-50 mixture of Hennessy and Bailey's, served in a brandy snifter with ice and a wee splash of charged water.   Besides the obvious purpose of having a delicious drink, ordering this concoction usually leads to two ancillary observations.  First, it's always interesting to notice whether the bartender catches on right away or if he acts like he's never mixed anything before other than Jack and coke.  The latter description fits our bartender this evening.  Secondly, how much do they charge?  This can get pretty funny, like when you give a McDonald's cashier $6.25 to pay a $5.17 tab.  Unless there is a key on the establishment's software for the specific item ordered, in which case the dollar amount would be built in, many bartenders are thrown for a loop coming up with a bill for MC's drink. Our Indigo bartender has to convene a summit meeting with a co-worker and their manager to determine a dollar -- I mean pound sterling -- amount.  In any event, they should have comped the drink; too much charged water!  I'm only half-kidding.
 

Friday Afternoon.  Liverpool is the fifth chapter of our six-chapter fortieth wedding anniversary tour -- the others being Reykjavik, Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands, Glasgow and Manchester -- and the only one about which I had slight apprehension before we left home.  I figured this would literally be a once-in-a-lifetime sojourn to Merseyside, and therefore I wanted to see as much Beatles stuff as possible.  But I wasn't sure if Momma Cuan would feel like we were overdosing on Beatlemania.  It turns out either she is a good actress or else she really got into the Beatles history too.  So on this, our last day in the home of the Fab Four, we are off on a Magical Mystery Tour. 

Magical Mystery Tour is not only the name of the Beatles' ninth studio album, it's the official service mark of the tour company we decide to use today.  The company is run by the same outfit that owns the Cavern Club.  Their buses are brightly colored in psychedelic designs, easy to spot from a distance.  Just like yesterday's National Trust tour, the Magical Mystery Tour also leaves from Albert Dock, but there are two main differences.  First, the National Trust tour drives customers to Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road, and includes admission into those two childhood homes.  After forty-five minutes in each house, the bus returns directly to Albert Dock.  By comparison, the Magical Mystery Tour carries its riders all over the city, including not only external views of John and Paul's old houses, but also the childhood homes of Ringo (10 Admiral Grove, in a purportedly poor section of town called "the Dingle") and George (12 Arnold Grove in the Wavertree neighborhood, where he was born and lived for six years before his family moved to Speke).  Strawberry Field and Penny Lane are famous landmarks we visit, as is St. Peter's Church in Woolten.  That's where on July 6, 1957,  Ivan Vaughan introduced fifteen year old guitarist Paul McCartney to sixteen year old pseudo-guitarist John Lennon, whose band, the Quarrymen (in which Ivan was a member), had just finished playing its afternoon session at the church's garden fete.  We also drive by various other places such as schools the Beatles attended, bars where they played or hung out, and the cemetery where Eleanor Rigby is buried.  Of course no tour of this type would be complete without a pass down Lime Street, where the action in the thirty-nine second Beatles song Maggie Mae takes place.  The tour is narrated, with several photo stops along the way.  [For an additional tidbit about McCartney's Allerton neighborhood, see Note # 1 at the end of this post.]
 

I was always under the impression that Ringo's Dingle neighborhood was much poorer than where George grew up in Wavertree.  Now having seen them in person, it is my impression that the actual housing units themselves are very similar, almost identical, and at least now the neighborhoods do not appear to be impoverished at all.  Both 10 Admiral Grove and 12 Arnold Grove closely resemble row houses I've seen in Baltimore, except that the Liverpool version has the front entrance at street level instead of at the top of several stairs.  They are two-story buildings built right up against their property lines, almost as if they share a common wall with their neighbors on either side.  There are no front or back yards.  The buildings' fronts are perfectly flat with little stoops but not a front porch.  Ironically, both Admiral Grove and Arnold Grove are narrow streets, not really what one pictures upon seeing or hearing the word "grove."  [For an additional tidbit regarding Arnold Grove, see Note # 2 at the end of this post.]
 

One reason fans love the Beatles songs Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane is the imagery they evoke.  I am surprised that seeing those two places in real life does not match the pictures I'd conjured up.  Strawberry Field used to be a thickly forested area behind Mendips, and the grounds where a Salvation Army orphanage was located.  Young John Lennon liked to sneak over the back yard fence to enter Strawberry Field when his Aunt Mimi wasn't looking.  Lennon identified with the orphans because his own father, a merchant seaman, had abandoned his family, and Lennon's mother was talked into letting her oldest sister, Mimi, raise John.  When Lennon wrote the song, he inexplicably added an "s" to the second word of the title.  Today, much of the original footprint of Strawberry Field has been developed into residential housing -- Woolten is a desirable neighborhood -- and the original Salvation Army building has been replaced by a more modern office building.  In short, Strawberry Field does not currently come close to how it appeared in the '60's.
 

Penny Lane, as it turns out, does not really contain a roundabout at all, notwithstanding the song's lyrics.  I pictured a circular drive with spokes/roads going off in different directions. Instead it is busy point where several streets intersect, kind of like Seven Corners on the West Bank of Minneapolis.  If you are familiar with the song, you might wonder if there is a barber shop, a bank, a shelter and a fire station.  The answer to all four is "yes," with an asterisk.  The asterisk is because the shelter is really just a simple bus stop, and the fire station has closed.  The intersection is heavily trafficked and is under construction, so the mood isn't quite what I was hoping for.  Penny Lane is a "McCartney song," although Paul, John and George all would have ridden the bus passing through that intersection dozens of times on their way to the town center.
 

The second main difference between the National Trust tour and the Magical Mystery Tour is that, unlike the National Trust tour which returns its passengers to Albert Dock, the Magical Mystery Tour terminates at the Cavern Club.  We arrive there about 2:15 in the afternoon.  The comparison between Mathew Street at night and during the day is like, well, night and day.  This afternoon there are more tourists and fewer scary people milling around than there were Wednesday night.  Now that our comfort level has increased, I can't wait to see what the "new" Cavern Club is all about.
 

The Cavern Club is as historically important to the Beatles rise to fame as any other landmark in Liverpool. It opened in January 1957 as a jazz club, and eventually transitioned into the most popular rock venue in town by the early 1960's.  The Quarrymen first played there on February 21, 1957, and four years later (February 9, 1961) the Beatles played their first gig in that cellar.  Pete Best was the Beatles' drummer at the time.  Another of the many bands that played there was Rory Storm And The Hurricanes, whose drummer was some guy named Ringo Star.  Best was axed on August 16, 1962, two days after Lennon, McCartney and Harrison offered the job to Ringo.  Ringo first played at the Cavern with the Beatles on August 19th in what turned out to be one of the most famous (or infamous) moments in the band's history.  Up until that time, the Beatles were arguably the most popular band in Merseyside, but one reason for that adulation was that Best had a large contingent of worshipers.  On the 19th, those fans showed up at the Cavern and chanted, "Pete forever, Ringo never!"

The Beatles played 292 times in the Cavern.  Their last gig there was August 3, 1963, six months before the British Invasion.  One thing that set the Beatles apart from the dozens (if not hundreds) of bands in Liverpool was the experience they gained from playing many shows in Hamburg, Germany between August 1960 and December 1962.  When they first started playing at the Cavern, a lot of kids showed up to see "the band from Germany," not realizing the lads were fellow Liverpudlians.
 

When the Beatles were in Germany, they were hired by a British rocker named Tony Sheridan to back him up on an old song titled My Bonnie.  The song's artist was credited on the record label as "Tony Sheridan And The Beat Brothers."  When word got out across the Channel that the Beat Brothers were, in fact, the Beatles from Liverpool, teenagers sought out Beatles recordings.  One of the places they looked was in a record shop called NEMS, for North End Music Stores, one of the largest record outlets in the UK.  Brian Epstein, whose family owned the store, went to the Cavern to check out the group, and the rest is history.  It should be acknowledged that the foregoing story has been subject to various challenges and modifications regarding Epstein's previous knowledge of the Beatles, but no one disputes that the first time Epstein saw the Beatles perform was at the Cavern during a lunch time show on November 9, 1961.  Less than three months later he became the Beatles' manager.
 

The building above the "old" Cavern Club was demolished in 1973 to make way for an underground railway line.  The new Cavern Club was built in 1984 on essentially the same footprint as the old one, using 15,000 bricks which were rescued from the place prior to demolition.  The interior of the Cavern is about three stories down a flight of stairs from Mathew Street level.  The interior looks like three tunnels with low curved brick ceilings.  The tunnels are separated by brick walls which have curved apertures serving as glassless windows.  The center tunnel leads from the bar situated at the bottom of the entry stairway to the opposite end about twenty yards away where the small stage is located. Tables line both sides of all three tunnels.  The two side tunnels are outfitted with closed-circuit TVs so that, regardless of which tunnel you're in, you can view the stage either via TV or through one of the wall apertures.
 

The place is packed when we enter.  It seems more like Friday night than early Friday afternoon.  Momma Cuan scores a front table in the center aisle while I cash in the free beer coupons we were given by the tour.  On stage is a solo artist named Tim Shaw covering Beatles songs while he plays an electric guitar with panache.  Shaw has this crowd of Beatles fans singing, clapping and partying like it's 1964.  I have never heard of Tim Shaw before, but he immediately rises to my imaginary Top Ten list of best artists I've seen in a live performance.  As he's singing I realize that this is definitely a highlight, maybe even THE highlight, of our three days in Liverpool.
 

When his set is finished we scoot across the street to the Cavern Pub for another beer and some snacks, then back down the stairs to the Club to check out the next singer.  I did not catch his name, but Shaw was too hard an act for almost anyone to follow.  This time we're seated at a table in a side tunnel.  I snap a photo of a framed picture of the band Queen, which had their first-ever gig at the Cavern on Halloween night, 1970 and whose lead singer was the late Freddie Mercury.  I send the picture to Lindsey and Michael, who sometimes call my granddaughter, Winnie, "Fred."  What a great day, and we still have the evening to look forward to.
 

Friday Evening.  I am so proud of myself for having made dinner reservations at 60 Hope Street before we left home.  It is the only restaurant in Liverpool recommended by both Fodor and Frommer.  Fodor -- we call it the Bible -- has never given us a bum steer on any of our trips, so Frommer's additional seal of approval should make it a sure bet.
 

After a short break at the Indigo we catch a cab to take us to the eastern edge of the town center.  Hope Street is the only street in the world which has two cathedrals.  We're going to start at the north end of Hope where Metropolitan Cathedral Of Christ The King (the Catholic cathedral) sits on a hill, then walk a mile south down Hope to the Liverpool Cathedral (Anglican).
 

The cabbie proves to be another character, just like the one we met Wednesday.  "Oh, you want Paddy's Wigwam," he exclaims.  He advises us that the locals call the Catholic cathedral "Paddy's Wigwam" because most of the Liverpudlian Catholics have Irish roots, and the facade of the building does indeed resemble a wigwam.  It is past 6:00, too late in the day to enter, but Mary and I walk around the enormous cement patio surrounding the place.  The three dimensional relief which, taken as a whole, gives the wigwam effect, looks more like prehistoric birds up close.  The other notable architectural designs on the church are the extensions from the building to the ground, each appearing to me to be a poor man's flying buttress.  The flying buttresses on the Notre Dame de Paris are the ones I'm most familiar with, and they lend a unique and Gothic mystique to the structure.  By comparison, the ones on Paddy's Wigwam are straight, rectangular and metallic, reminding me of shoots one might see on the grain elevators of the North Dakota prairie.
 

There are two uncommon sculptures situated blocks apart on the west side of Hope Street.  The first consists of a pair of stone pillars located half-way between the two cathedrals.  On one pillar is a carving in the likeness of the Anglican archbishop, and on the other, two feet away, is a carving in the likeness of the Catholic archbishop.  It looks like the spiritual leaders are having a conversation.  The symbolism is apparent, even to a finance major like me: a call for peace and cooperation between the two denominations, Catholic and Anglican.  I'm sure the location, equidistant between the cathedrals, is not a coincidence.

The other uncommon sculpture is one of the most unusual pieces of art I've even seen.  Twenty-seven sculpted suitcases and a few guitar cases appear to be strewn about the sidewalk near the Liverpool College Of Art.  Some of the luggage is connected to or piled on top of others, while a few pieces are only bound to the pavement.  This work of art, titled A Case History, was created by John King, who installed it in 1998. Some but not all pieces are accompanied by identification tags.  There is a nearby display board which identifies the "owners," most of whom are past and present Liverpudlian celebrities.  Incidentally, Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe, the original Beatles bass player, attended the art school.

By the time we reach the Liverpool Cathedral dusk has set in.  This cathedral might be the biggest church I have ever seen, no surprise since we could observe its gigantic bell tower from the River Mersey ferry boat two days ago.  The church is surrounded by a densely wooded ravine, giving it the appearance of a medieval fortress encircled by a moat.  All that's missing is a drawbridge!  The combination of the dark red stone and the graying skies is almost spooky.  I don't think I'd go near there on a dark and stormy night.
 

We retrace our steps for a couple of blocks to 60 Hope Street.  This is the kind of upscale place which is gaining in popularity in the States.  The strategy employs farm (or sea) to table, fresh ingredients from local providers, with the emphasis on having a creative chef and well-trained service staff.  Check, check and check!  After sharing the poached pair appetizer, Momma Cuan orders veal rib eye and I have whole Dover sole.  Two enthusiastic thumbs up!  We are very happy with our selections, and offer mutual congratulations for our fine decisions.
 

I find it interesting to note that even though both Alma de Cuba and 60 Hope Street serve fantastic food, their diners' surroundings could not be more different.   Alma de Cuba is heavy on atmosphere, so much so that it would be worthwhile to stop in only for a drink and take in the vibe of the old former church.  60 Hope Street, on the other hand, looks brand new, with polished wooden floors, brighter than average lighting and a swarm of employees who leave little unnoticed.  The walls at 60 Hope Street are painted a pleasant robin egg blue, but are unadorned with any artwork, fabric or wall coverings.  It's as if the proprietors want their customers to concentrate on the food without distractions.  Both restauarants' approaches worked for us.
 

This is our last night in Liverpool.  One more stop is in order.  I wrote in Part I that I'm a sucker for olde English pubs with the work "Ye" in its name.  As luck would have it, one of John and Cynthia Lennon's old haunts, Ye Cracke, is only a block west of Hope Street.  The pub is in pretty good shape considering it's a nineteenth century building.  As we step from the sidewalk through the side door we can hear voices from other rooms in the rear, but there is only one patron sitting at the rail in the first room.  He is all by himself, listening intently to a football (soccer) game being broadcast on a tiny radio which sits on a shelf high on the wall.  There is no TV, but he is engrossed as he enjoys his pint and follows his favorite team the old fashioned way.  This must be Liverpool's version of a sports bar!
 

A young bartender soon appears, and after he delivers our beers a pretty woman named Leslie approaches us from behind the rail.  She is the manager, if not the owner.  She is all smiles, possibly because we are tourists -- the bartender must have tipped her off -- who sought out her famous tavern.  She shows us around the place, including the War Office, a small square hideaway in the middle of the interior where John, Cynthia and their friends, including Stuart Sutcliffe, used to shoot the bull.  Leslie brags that almost nothing inside has changed over the years, claiming that the ashes still at the bottom of the War Office's fireplace are from Lennon's cigarette butts.  Some of the artwork on the walls was drawn and signed by Stuart.  There is also an etched mirror paying tribute to John and Stuart who, together with their friends Bill Harry and Rod Murray, gathered as a foursome at Ye Cracke and christened themselves "The Dissenters."  They promised each other as art students that, when they went on with their own lives, they would make Liverpool famous.
 

By now Leslie and Mary have become BFFs, so they pose for pictures behind the bar.  If only we lived in Liverpool, we'd be regulars, just like John and Cynthia.
 

*****
 

Note # 1:  There is a visual memory which has stuck with me ever since September 30, the day Mary and I went on the Magical Mystery Tour and visited (for the second day in a row) Paul McCartney's house in Allerton.  There was a woman standing in the doorway of a residence close to where the bus parked around the corner from McCartney's.  Our tour guide identified her as Lily, who was a long-time friend of Cynthia Lennon.  Lily's mental acuity has deteriorated a little over the years, but she frequently waves to the tourists as they pass by her place.  The tour bus probably parks in the same spot every day.  She might have been in her own world, but there was joy in her face.  When our group was walking back to the bus, I was trailing a bit.  Lily was still standing in her doorway.  I waved to her and she seemed so pleased that I did so.  She smiled and waved back.  That was over a month ago.  I am thinking of the tune Paul wrote, I've Just Seen A Face, which includes the lyrics, "I've just seen a face I can't forget the time or place where we just met." 

Note # 2:  George Harrison's childhood home was 12 Arnold Grove.  When George became a celebrity, he sometimes used a made-up name such as when making dinner reservations or meeting people who didn't recognize him.  His alias was Arnold Grove.  One night George attended a concert where the headliner was his good friend, Eric Clapton.  Clapton spotted Harrison in the audience and called him up to join the musicians on stage for a song.  As Harrison was making his way up, Clapton told the crowd, "For this next song we have invited a guest guitarist, Arnold Grove!" The crowd politely applauded but didn't realize it was George until he reached the spotlight.  Then their cheers raised the roof.