 | THE USA |
| THE USA |
TO THE PAMLICO
So here I am, foot to the floorboards, pedal to the metal, heading north out of New Bern in search of a ferry, that is, until my brakes dissolve in a flurry of melting asbestos
"Is this asbestos you can do, Eric?"
"Sorry"
Now of course, I did say a short while earlier that I was in a hurry, but you aren't thinking that I was going to let an early 1950s Ford "I don't know what model it is but according to a badge on the boot - or trunk - it's an overdrive" pass me by, are you?
On a journey to New Jersey in 1999/2000 I met this guy called Bob Hess who has a place called "Rust Doctors" at Bamber Lake behind Toms River. His yard is full of old cars, trucks and the like, including several cars not unlike these. This one has the same front as the cars with which he plays about, and he amuses himself by cutting the fronts off them and welding them on to other cars. But why he would want to do this kind of thing, he never did explain.
If Bob had an e-mail address, I'd write to him and ask him for more details about them. However, he told me he didn't have one, so I donno. Mind you, that was 5 or 6 years ago. Maybe things have changed. But he was an interesting guy, was Bob. Used to race old British cars such as Ford Anglias and Ford Cortina Mark Is around North America. Interesting guy, was Bob Hess.
But back to the Ford - you can see from the windscreen and a few other bits and pieces that this car was made in the days before safety glass and laminated windscreens.
Give me a big suitcase and an unlimited baggage allowance on an aeroplane and this would certainly find itself disappearing across the Atlantic with me.
This of course reminds me - one day I really must get round to writing up my visit to the States from that period and putting it and the photos on line, even though the pics are old-technology 35mm prints.
Since writing this however, a little research on the internet comes up with a website for the aforementioned Mr. Hess. A mail is on the way even as we speak, and when I receive a reply to my question, I'll post it up.
Back on the road again, and power down heading northwards. But again, I can't go too far without being distracted (this seems to be the buzz-phrase at the moment, doesn't it?)
You may well be asking yourself what is so interesting about a school sign (for school sign it was) with flashing amber lights out here on the side of Highway 17 (for I was back on Highway 17 again since leaving New Bern) but the interesting part is what is perched up there on top of the pole.
Yes folks, it's a solar panel. Out here in rural North Carolina.
I'd seen a few of them along here powering remote road signs. This evidently means that even out here in this part of the USA alternative energy is slowly starting to make some kind of headway against the all-pervasive oil barons. A comforting thought.
There's still a long way to go before the east coast catches up with parts of the South West of the USA though, where even the oil barons themselves are dependent upon solar energy to keep the oil flowing out of the well.
As I drove into the township of Wilmar, about halfway between New Bern and Washington, I suddenly realised something. And that was that I had missed my turning to Aurora. And not just missed it too, but missed it by miles. Hence I had to branch off down some country roads that didn't look too appealing.
Judging by the position of the sun, I was heading grosso modo in a south-westerly direction. So after a few miles of this, I eventually hit a metalled road heading in the right direction. Now most metalled American roads are in such good condition (at least in this part of the USA - in the south-west it's so different, as readers of my earlier pages will recall) that you can easily do 85 or 90 miles per hour. And you are unlikely to encounter much in the way of rival traffic too, so you can put the hammer down quite easily if your car can do it. And the Focus could, too. Beautiful, long, sweeping bends. I really enjoyed that drive, I have to say.
Of course, sooner or later, I hit Highway 33, which was going to take me in the direction of Aurora and the ferry. I knew I was going in the right direction. I'd lost some time, and added a fair bit of distance, but I wouldn't have missed that last 15-20 minutes drive for the world.
But judging by the area I'd driven through - poor, trailers, cars on blocks, and all these churches! This seemed to me to be rather weird. Now with all these churches, one would imagine that this would be because there are a lot of churchgoers round here - all these people praying to God. And as, by the looks of them they are mostly poor, one could easily imagine that one of the things they would be praying for would be to improve their lot on earth, to be more like other sucessful Americans.
But by the looks of the visible trappings of life around here, God appears to have failed them. It's very difficult to understand how God could be so pervasive in an area such as this. This really looks like the kind of place upon which God has turned his back. If there really was a God, then with all these churches and all this praying, how could God have let these people down? That surely is the paradox about the Christian life - in that the people who truly and passionately believe in God seem to be the ones who have benefited the least from his presence.
Now I know that most Christians are going to argue about the benefits of spiritual over financial wellbeing, but surely the whole idea of praying to God is that the results will improve your life, and believe me, the life that some of the people around here appear to have could surely do with some improvement. I'm really happy with the kind of lifestyle I have. It's not rich, it's not luxurious and it's not lavish by any means, but with a very careful arrangement of my priorities I do ok, and it's a darned sight better than the life that most people around here seem to have.
On a totally different tack completely, another thing that makes me laugh in the United States, and I'm sure I've talked about it before, is the adverts on the radio. Like they spend one minute on the advert, and then another five minutes on the disclaimers following the adverts. It wasn't the first time I'd encountered this, but out here it was every advert that was like this.
Taking the road down towards Aurora, I couldn't help but notice that I was threading my way between and across all kinds of different railway lines. This looked interesting as according to my map there wasn't anything interesting around here for the railway lines to service. This immediately conjured up inside my head all kinds of weird and fantastic ideas such as secret military bases and the like, as indeed you might expect if you've been following my pages for a while.
Unfortunately, (or fortunately, so you might say) the answer was rather more banal than that. At Aurora there is this absolutely enormous and impressive phosphate mine, as you can see from the point-and-click-on-the-move photograph just here (remember, I was in a hurry). Now at least I know the significance of all these railway lines around here.
THE BAYVIEW - AURORA FERRY
Now, driving like a maniac as I have already explained, I arrived at the ferry with 15 minutes to spare, even allowing for my massive detour. In fact, the ferry was just arriving from the other side, as you can see. In any case, the truth of the matter is that it wouldn't have made any difference if I had have arrived here any earler, because there's no ferry across between 9:45 and 11:15 anyway. And at 9:45 I was still involved with Tainea's swimsuit (I was still harbouring some hopes that she'll let me try it on her if I were to ask her nicely?).
If you're ever out this way and want to take a ferry, you'll be advised to check out the ferry schedules for yourself, particularly as they are operating some kind of "fuel saving" schedule, which means that half of the ferry services are "suspended", which is another euphemism for "cancelled".
While we're on the subject of fuel rationing, official or not, you have to admit it's extremely ironic that the USA went to war with the aim of capturing all of Iraq's oil supplies for itself. Now, not only did it fail to capture any, but it upset the local civilians (who are by no means as naive as western politicians and journalists have us believe and can quite clearly see what was happening) so much that they went and sabotaged the remaining oil installations, with the result that even less oil is flowing out of Iraq now than when Saddam was in power and the oil-for-food programme was in force.
By December 2006, over 3000 American soldiers had died - more than died in Mohammed Atta's attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001. And 20th January 2007 saw twenty five American soldiers killed in Iraq - read all about it. American soldiers are being slaughtered like dogs on the streets of Baghdad, and the bushbaby's response is to send in more. It'll merely give the freedom fighters more targets to aim at. This site
has a pretty accurate picture of the casualties suffered by the invaders in Iraq.
Never mind Vietnam. Haven't the Americans heard of Verdun
It didn't quite work like that. Both sides were stuck in such a fight to the death that they were unable to swallow their pride and break off the action. As a result, hundreds of thousands of soldiers died needlessly, hundreds of others were executed for desertion as they fled the giant sausage machine that was the battle, and the two countries were exhausted for a generation.
This is precisely what is happening in Iraq, as the Americans are too proud to admit that they are defeated. They are just pouring more and more bodies into the massacre in a vain bid to avoid another humiliation such as that in Vietnam. The idea of course is to postpone any decision to retreat from Iraq until the Democrats are in power. That way, the Republicans can do the Nazi trick of blaming the other side for the defeat. How many American lives is the bushbaby going to sacrifice just so that he can make a political point?
As I was quietly musing over all of this, I noticed in my rear view mirror a minivan type of thing pull up behind me. A minivan full of children wearing clothes of some kind of lifestyle choice significance (at least the girls anyway) as you can see from the photograph. The girls were in frocks and lace hats, and even the adult females were dressed the same way. The boys, on the other hand, were dressed quite "normally". Nothing unusual at all about their dress, something that quite surprised me.It was something like Amish or Mennonite, and my previous experience with people from the Amish or Mennonite community was such that I decided that it wasn't polite to ask.
I know that one lot has renounced the use of 21st Century comforts so it wouldn't have been them riding in a minivan, so they must have been the other. But I couldn't remember which was which. When I boarded the ferry, I asked a fellow passenger about them. He told me that they were indeed Mennonites.
Now, I can understand the desire for people to wear traditional dress, and I don't have any problems with that at all. What really puzzled me however was the reason as to why the males of the species weren't in traditional garb. I'm not sure how the idea of cars and beer coolers fits in with their way of life either. But, to repeat the words of Éomer in
Lord of the Rings
So with that, it was all aboard the "Governor Daniel Russell" (whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was) for the crossing of the Pamlico Sound over to Bayview.
In actual fact, Daniel Russell was a Republican politician who was elected Governor of North Carolina in 1896. His success in office (governing events such as the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898)was such that when his term of office ended in 1901, it was another 71 years before the next Republican was elected to the post of State Governor. I looked back on this ferry crossing with no little concern when I realised that.
It reminds me of the question that was frequently asked, namely
"What is the difference between the Titanic and Lady Diana Spencer, one-time wife of Charles Windsor"?
"Well, only 1,517 people went down on the Titanic"
Before I forget, the "Governor Daniel Russell" was built in 1992 by the Orange Shipbuilding Company of Orange, Texas. It displaces 150 tons, which is not a lot for a ferry such as this.
Having said all of that, there was still time for a quick look backwards to the phosphate mine, as you can see here in the photograph on the left.
If you are interested (and why not?), the mine is owned by a Canadian company, the "Potash Company of Saskatchewan Inc". It claims to be the largest combined phosphate mine and chemical plant in the world, with a capacity of 6 million tons of per year, with its reserves claimed to last another 70 years.
I bet you are really glad I told you that.
Looking at the photograph of the wake of the ship here in the photograph on the left, I couldn't help a small, enigmatic smile - something that quite surprised several passengers on the ferry. If only they knew what was going through my head at the time.
In fact, I was recalling the conversation between Lance Percival and Sid James near the beginning of Carry On Cruising
SJ - "Who are you?"
LP - "I'm the son of a sea cook"
SJ - "The original one, I shouldn't wonder. And I suppose you're merely following in your father's footsteps?"
LP - "Well, actually, you might say that I'm following in my father's wake."
Well ... er ... quite. At least I thought it was funny.
Although you might not think it by looking on a map, this was quite a long crossing especially in a ship of only 150 tons. Having said that, though, it is larger than the "Santa Maria", twice as large as the "Pinta", and almost three times as large as the "Nina", the ships in which Columbus and his explorers set sail in 1492 to the Americas.
The journey did in fact took long enough for me to take in a session of the Teletubbies on the television. Cool!! One of my lesser-known claims to fame is that at one time I had a "relationship" with a girl who once won a prize for being the only person to correctly name the Teletubbies' vacuum cleaner.
Never mind, though. Bayview was looming into sight. We'll be docking in a minute.
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