Fishnet Seafood (Johns Island, SC)

 

Sometimes you just happen upon good things. Traveling along US 17, through South Carolina low country, Angie had her heart set on seafood from a local business. After a long drive, and false starts, we finally discovered Fishnet Seafood on Johns Island, located in a refurbished gas station. A good sign was that several cars were parked outside and a big sign on the front door demanded a mask for service. With the omicron variant raging across the country, we were trying to be careful.

Once inside we were warmly greeted, surveyed the raw seafood, and found the menu from which we could order a meal. Angie equivocated over several items, while I quickly settled on the founder filet, served on white bread, and a side of red rice, a traditional low-country side dish. Angie finally decided on the six-piece fish dinner with green beans. What she did not realize was that it would be six whole pieces of fish. For two dollars more, she easily got four times the amount of fish. While we could never eat that much, I was not about to throw it away in their garbage. The women working in the kitchen were far too nice, and the fish was excellent. I did not want to seem ungrateful for anything.

 

Oregon Holocaust Memorial

 

Located in the beautiful setting of Washington Park, surrounded by tall, impressive sequoias and cedar trees, the Oregon Holocaust Memorial stands as a reminder. Dedicated in 2004, the memorial recounts what happened and the testimonies of people, recounting even non-Jewish people, who were persecuted during that time. On the walk to the memorial, bronze statues of items seemingly strewn on the ground are a reminder of what people brought with them, and ultimately separated from, during the deportation. These were items considered to be important and valuable, the things they did not want to go without: a suitcase, a teddy bear, a musical instrument. What is striking is that these are the same kind of items common among refugees around the world, even today. It is effective art in terms of remembering because these are commonalities among us all.

In the elevator

 

I got in the elevator, going for a cup of coffee, at the conference hotel. Already in the car was a fellow conference attendee. As I stepped in and confirmed that the car was going to the lobby, I noted it was obvious that he had not zipped up his pants before leaving his room. It was embarrassing, and there were only eight floors to bring the situation to his attention. My shyness wanted to avoid the whole situation; it was very awkward. There are many ways to politely call this to a male’s attention. In my mother’s family, if someone started singing, “Don’t let the stars get in your eyes…” all the boys knew to check their flies. In the Pittsburgh area, one only need ask, “Is Kennywood open?” Kennywood being the amusement park in Pittsburgh that has been open since the late nineteenth century. But those references are culturally and regionally based and would likely not work in this instance. As the elevator car reached the third floor, I looked straight ahead and said, “I’m sorry, but your fly is unzipped.” He reached to zip it up, sighing “Geez.” He thanked me, and I again apologized.  His reply was kind: “You have nothing to apologize for, you have saved me from a great deal of embarrassment.”

Jake’s Famous Crawfish

 

Dining out is not the special event it once was. Many people eat out daily, typically somewhere comfortable, and familiar. Once people dressed up to go for dinner, now it is routine and is completely acceptable in some quarters to wear baseball caps, or old t-shirts, while dining out. Restaurants come and go in a throwaway society. When there is an opportunity to eat at an old restaurant, one that has been around for a long time, it is worth the time, effort, and money to try it.

Jake’s was opened in 1892 and has quite the reputation. The crawfish in the name emanates from the original business: there were pools in the basement of the building where the freshwater shellfish could be raised and shipped around the country. I was told by my server, who had been working at Jake’s for 23 years, that during prohibition the brewery across the street would drop kegs down one of the many tunnels that were beneath the city, and it would naturally roll to the restaurant where it could be served in the backroom speakeasy. Furthermore, drunken and rowdy sailors could be pressed into service, sometime recovering from their hangovers to find that they were on the veritable “slow boat to China.”

Inside the restaurant today, the wooden décor is distinctive and, with the mural-sized classic paintings, creates an ambiance that is rarely found today. Pieces of memorabilia, all nicely framed to match the feel of the restaurant, tastefully grace the walls. Above my small booth for two people was a framed matchbook cover from the restaurant, circa 1930, that was donated by a patron who had been dining at the restaurant all her life. Across the room was a nice display of antique china oyster plates, no doubt valuable, were situated above a table of six.

I visited the restaurant, sans reservation, on a Thursday evening. I was hoping they would be able to accommodate a lone person without assigning me to the bar, which they did. The clientele was convivial. People were emerging with more confidence as the second anniversary of the pandemic declaration neared. The mask mandate in Oregon was to be lifted in the following week, and people were anxious to return to some form of normalcy, whatever that might look like. My dinner was classic and straightforward: as a drink, I ordered a Capella Porter from Ecliptic Brewing, a local business, Jake’s House Salad, with a light oil and vinegar dressing with glazed walnuts and bleu cheese crumbles, and for the main course étouffée with crawfish, chicken, and shrimp. Of course, it was to expectation, and the service was exquisite.

Jake's famous étouffée 

Powell’s Books City of Books

 

Powell's: The literature section where Dickens is located

Bookstores are where our mental journeys begin. There is a symbiotic connection between books and travel – they feed one another. We read about where we are going, or where we cannot go, take books along when we travel, then journal and write while we are away.

It is an iconic bookstore, a quasi-religious shrine for booklovers. Powell’s is a must-see experience when in Portland. In graduate school, Powell’s was an online resource for hard to find, out of print texts that fueled one’s imagination. Part of that search was premised on the idea that there was that one book that would solve the research problem, it would be the answer we were looking for. Perhaps I have become jaded, or less naïve, but I am not looking for that one single book.

Watching other people in Powell’s looking for that book might be as fun as shopping for ourselves. I overheard a conversation between a middle-aged woman and her father, who had an armful of books, “Dad, would you like to have a coffee?” “I am not quite done yet.” “That’s okay. We can have a coffee with everyone, then afterwards we will let them go, and you can look some more.” In the cooking section, I observed a twenty-something couple studiously transfixed by the books, located in a locked bookshelf with glass doors that constituted the cooking with marijuana section. In the sci-fi and fantasy section, the clothes worn by patrons were even better than the books.

Powell’s is so large that it is difficult to know how to tackle it. I was not even sure what I was looking for when I went in. At first there was a temptation to add to my Dickens collection, although there was nothing in the section that was unique enough or unavailable elsewhere. I wandered through the hiking and nature section, but it was primarily focused on the Pacific Northwest. Eventually, I was entranced with the travel section. I leafed through a couple of books and guides to El Camino de San Sebastian, because we have friends who will hike it this summer. But it was the travel writing that was beckoning. I walked out with two books about Ireland, probably not a surprise to anyone.

Travel Inconveniences

 “Pay your money and take your chances,” my friend Niel often says. Part of the art of travel is confronting and adapting to the unknown and the unexpected. It is not always easy, and often we become fatigued and frustrated.

My journey to Portland was not going to be easy to begin with. I anticipated arriving in Oregon tired, after a long flight that would get me to the hotel late at night. Little did I think how difficult the first leg of the trip would be. My departure was from Harrisburg, a regional airport where security and check in is easy. Calculating cost in the long run, the little more in airline fares is offset by the additional travel to airports further away, parking, gas, and time. The downside, of course, is then something goes wrong there are fewer options to rearrange travel plans than at a larger airport. A technical issue with the aircraft scheduled to take us to Chicago O’Hara necessitated a call to the mechanics. The flight would be delayed at least an hour. A change in plans: crabcakes at a restaurant in the airport in Harrisburg.

I returned to the gate. More bad news. The nearest mechanics were located at Washington Dulles, a two-hour drive from Harrisburg. Quickly, it became apparent that I would not going to make my connection to Portland. My rescheduled trip would now involve an overnight in Chicago, at the airline’s expense. But we still needed to get there. The gate crew started bringing out water and snacks, soon they promised to order pizza from a local place in Middletown. The talk shifted to bringing a replacement airplane up from Dulles to get us on the way. Gate B1 was becoming monotonous. Shops and restaurants were closing. Shortly afterwards, an announcement was made that the TSA Security checkpoint would be closing as well. The terminal shifted to nighttime work. Construction and cleaning workers started an overnight shift, something most of us do not see in a busy airport as we scurry to our destinations. While the bustle of the airport changed its focus, the automated announcements, such as “Welcome to Harrisburg International Airport…” and “Enhanced security procedures are in place…”, never stopped.

We finally boarded the airplane a full six hours after the scheduled departure and were in the air by a quarter to midnight. The flight was only half full because many people made alternative arrangements. The flight attendant seemed befuddled by the whole process and experience. After waiting in the terminal for so long, many people were exhausted. I was among them. I did ask for a water when she came by, but otherwise tried to doze. At twelve thirty, the flight attendant made a solicitation about the airline’s credit card – given the previous six hours that was a pointless act. I realize that people like the flight attendant are just trying to do a job, none of this was her faculty. I try to offer a kind word and express gratitude in situations like this. But this time it might have been a mistake. I was dozing when I was startled awake to find the flight attendant telling me she had just spoken to the co-pilot, and we were about 45 minutes from Chicago.

When you are tired, looking forward to a bed, knowing that your sleep time will be limited, everything is liable to go wrong. It is times like these, when I am tired, when I am most prone to make mistakes. I considered my options carefully and selected the hotel closest to the airport to minimize the travel time back and forth. I was told in Harrisburg that I would need to retrieve my luggage in Chicago and recheck it the next morning. Baggage claim was a long walk, obscured by confusing signs, and discovered that it was not true. My bags were going to Portland without me. Had I known, I would have bought toothpaste and a toothbrush in Harrisburg. After a short bus shuttle ride, it took fifteen minutes to check into the hotel. First, because I did not have a reservation, the airline just sent my name, the desk clerk had to create one for me. When filling out the reservation, the clerk inadvertently made the reservation for the following year. But it took quite a bit of time for everyone to figure out why the system would not allow me to be checked in (because my reservation was for a year hence). Then, of course, as if fate was aligned against me, there were no toothbrushes at the from desk. They would send someone to the room with one. A short delay, but I thought I should wait until it arrived before I got undressed. The nice gentleman who delivered it did make me feel good by saying, “there you are young man.”

Even though not quite six hours of sleep, waking up meant a new day. After a quick shower, an email check, and a perusal of the news, I was back at the airport. Rather than waiting in line at a fast-food place and trying to find a corner to stand and juggle coffee in a paper cup with an overly sweet bakery item, I opted for a sit-down breakfast. I deserved it after the previous night. It was a decidedly American breakfast, even though the café touted itself as Tuscan. The server, a woman about my age, had a distinctly German accent, while Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “Ain’t Misbehavin” was playing in the background. Deciding when it is proper to remove one’s mask while eating is still weird. Nevertheless, coffee in a proper mug portends a new beginning. Optimism restored.

Kings Gap: Boundary Trail

 

Boundary Trail (March 2022)

More to come