Road Trip 2016 # 3

I woke up in a Columbus Ohio Hampton Inn and looked down at my Buick in the parking lot.  It was covered with snow.  When I went outside to throw my backpack in the car I realized it was still snowing.  Fine powdery stuff.  The air felt wet.  It was 29 degrees and foggy and the parking lot was slick.  With the fog and the snowy ground blending together it was all too white.  It felt like something was about to happen.

If you were some restaurant company like Denny’s, IHOP, or Bob Evans wouldn’t it aggravate you that hotels essentially stole all the breakfast business from travelers by giving away free breakfasts?  If you’re an interstate hotel you have to offer breakfast these days to compete.  And some breakfasts, like the one I just ate, bordered on being good.  I had a freshly made waffle, hard-boiled eggs (the scrambled eggs in the chafing dish are powdered) yogurt like I eat at home, and passably good orange juice and coffee, all for free.  Free that is as long as you pay for a $110 dollar room.  Whatever the case I wouldn’t be making an extra stop.  Receipt under the door, breakfast in the lobby, throw the backpack in the Buick and I’m on the road.  If they would have had dinner in the lobby when I checked in I wouldn’t have left the building.  Today’s hotels make travel handy.

I was a lot closer to West Virginia than I realized.  The big green interstate signage pointed me to Wheeling.  With an early start, I had the potential for a great day in the mountains, if it would only stop snowing.  It wasn’t only the snow, it was that five feet of spray and slush thrown up by all the cars and trucks around me.  I was constantly using the windshield washers to see the road ahead.  I figured the snow was mostly behind me in Indiana and I was driving out of it. I hurried east.

 

There was a lot of traffic around Columbus, and they were in a hurry.  One of the reasons I avoid the Interstates when I can is the crush of cars on the road around big cities.   I knew the farther away I traveled from Columbus the better the traffic would be.  That’s exactly what happened.

As I crossed the Licking River by Zanesville (sort of makes you want to canoe that river doesn’t it?) I got into my sack of CDs.  I don’t know why I hadn’t played any the day before.  Instead of Dylan and the singer-songwriters of my past, I brought mostly groups.  I decided to give the Beatles a close listen and put on Magical Mystery Tour.  Was it snowing harder?  I couldn’t tell.  Maybe.

I hadn’t listened to that album for years.  And though it has all those songs whose lyrics are imprinted on my brain: The Fool on the Hill, Hello Goodbye, Penny Lane, the one I’d missed the most was Blue Jay Way.  It’s a George Harrison song.  The lyrics are inconsequential-His friends are lost in a fog in LA and can’t find his apartment.  It’s the music.  Although there is no sitar played on the track it builds in Indian raga elements, a droning sound in the background, slowly building crescendos, the eeriness of the East.  I don’t know why I don’t listen to it more often.  But that’s what road trips are for.  I turned it up, sang along, and was belting out the words, including the WOP da dadada for the brass parts, to “All You Need is Love” when I crossed into West Virginia.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where
You are meant to be

It’s easy

There’s a big tunnel through a mountain at Wheeling.  They call that mountain the Wheeling Hill but to a guy from Illinois, it’s definitely a mountain.  The road atlas showed the two-lane road I’d chosen to take south at an exit just past the tunnel.  As the dark of the tunnel turned to snowy brightness there it was, the Route 250 exit, closed.  Barricaded.  I hate it when that happens.

I took the first possible exit and dropped down into Wheeling.  Wheeling is pretty vertical.  I ended up in a big dip between Wheeling Hill and some other hill at a Citgo station.  I needed to see a man about a dog anyway so I stopped.  It had almost stopped snowing. 

With Google Maps and all the help we get from our cell phones, asking for directions as a gas station may be fading away.  But I think there’s nothing better.  After all, Google maps doesn’t live in the area. The people at gas stations do.  The woman I talked to was a good example. I told her the 250 exit was closed.

“They close that exit when it's slick.  There’s a real steep climb right after you leave the interstate there.  How are the roads?”

“I wouldn’t call them good.”

“Well, I can put you on 250 two ways.  One involves a big hill.  Sounds like a good morning to take the other way.”

“I agree.  What do they say about the weather this afternoon?”

“They say it’s going to snow hard again but you can’t believe them.  They called off school this morning for nothing if you ask me.  Weatherman called for a big snow and it didn’t happen.”

 A little school-aged girl was coloring on a stack of Pepsi twelve-packs behind her.

“I don’t pay much attention to what they say.”

Now that was a woman after my own heart.  I consider weathermen fearful alarmists. 

She went on to give me a complicated list of turns, landmarks, and cautions that would take me to Route 250.  Never once did she ask me where I was going or why I wanted to travel on route 250.  I appreciate that very much.  No prying, just information.  I bought a bottle of blue stuff for the windshield since I’d been using the spray heavily, filled up the Buick, and was on my way.

I got lost.  When I consulted Siri in my I IPhone for Route 250 South she kept directing me back to the closed exit.  I had made the important turn, at an Italian restaurant my gas station guide emphasized but had gone wrong somewhere else.  I pulled into a cramped dead-end parking lot jammed upside a hill.

Finding a flat spot in West Virginia is not easy.  As I navigated through this little lot, reversing and inching forward to turn around and head the other way, a pickup pulled in behind me.  He got out of his trunk with a laundry basket in hand. He was an older guy wearing some kind of a military baseball cap with scrambled eggs on the bill.  He looked kind.  I stepped out of the car and approached him for directions.  As I got close I saw the laundry basket was full of little kids’ clothes; neatly folded little sweat shirts, tiny balls of socks, pink pajamas.  Maybe a grandpa helping out his daughter.  What did I know?

He was headed for a stairway leading to an upstairs apartment above an insurance agency.  He seemed eager to talk.  Couple of old guys on a snowy day.  As I had gotten lost in Wheeling the snow had almost stopped.

“You’re looking for 250?  Why do you want to drive on 250 on a day like this?  How about telling me where you’re going?  Maybe I can suggest another way.”

I hate when they ask where I’m going.  They never understand.

“Eventually I’m going to Florida.  But today I wanted to travel a back road through the nice hills of West Virginia.  250 looks like it would be good for that.”

He gave me that look people always give me in small towns off the Interstate when I say I’m going to Florida.  It’s a look that says ‘Are you crazy or are you kidding me?’  This man didn’t inquire further about my destination, but I could see he wanted to.  Curiosity is fairly obvious.

“They closed the schools you know.  And they say the snow is going to pick up again this afternoon.  The storm that was in Indiana is coming through here.”

“Yeah.  Tell me am I close to 250 at all?”

“You’re not far.  You can pick it up in Moundsville. But I’m telling you, it’s not a good day to be traveling that road.   When my boys were young and had ball games in little towns out there they would get sick on the bus from all those switchback turns.  And that was on dry pavement.  Those turns would be downright dangerous on a day like this.  You’d be better off picking up Route 2 and following it down the river valley.  Route 2 goes through Moundsville too.”

“That sounds good.”  I’d go to Moundville and find 250 on my own.  It’s hard to argue with someone who thinks they know what’s best for you.  He proceeded to give me directions to Moundsville.  Nice guy, but very paternal.

On the way to Moundsville, it started snowing harder.  As I came down the hill toward the Ohio River I could make out a tugboat pushing a huge string of barges.  I promptly lost Route 2 in downtown Moundsville.  The snow wasn’t helping.  The wind was blowing hard and snow stuck to the road signs, making them hard to read.  It wasn’t a big town though.  I’d find my way.

Somewhere toward the edge of Moundsville I turned a corner and encountered a formidable old stone wall.  Snow clung to the mortar, outlining each block of sandstone.  It stretched for a city block. 

When I turned the corner the front of the building appeared: Gothic, cold, frightening.  It looked like a smaller version of the old prison in Joliet.  It was the now-closed West Virginia State Penitentiary.  I had stumbled onto an institution with a storied past.

Built in 1876 and closed in 1995 it was the scene of 94 executions during its time.  In addition to those planned deaths, riots and murders were common within its walls.  When first built, it had its own working coal mine,  carpentry shop,  paint shop,  wagon shop,  stone yard,  brickyard,  blacksmith, tailor, and a bakery that taught inmates skills (while exploiting their labor) and made the prison financially self-sufficient.

But as the facility aged, policies on incarceration evolved, and overcrowding occurred the prison in Moundsville worsened.  A 1979 prison break saw fifteen prisoners flee its sandstone walls.  In 1986 a prison riot resulted in a two-day takeover by the inmates, four murders, and then Governor Arch Moore traveling to the prison to meet with gang leaders and agree to at least some of their demands.

And there it was;  cold and empty, all that death and violence, with so many stories to tell.  There were tours available that I would have loved to have taken.  But I had to go.  It was snowing harder than ever.

250 branched off Route 2 in the middle of town.  Just a little sign, and a steep climb up followed by a sharp curve.  250 would take you quickly up and out of the Ohio River Valley and put you into the Appalachians.  I traveled about a quarter-mile, the only car on the road, the only tracks, before turning around and heading back to Route 2.  The old guy with the laundry basket was right.  Route 250 was too dangerous on a day like this.  I had to hand it to him.  But it’s so much easier to admit you’re wrong when you don’t have to say it to the person who told you so.