I could feel it when I saw this huge sign atop a hill along the road in south central Alabama:
Here’s the thought: “Somewhere in town there will be a big sign proclaiming this place to be the ‘City of Opportunity.’
Right?
Well…yes, finally, but almost not.
During my search, I found this:
“Shop Opp.” Not bad.
And this really nice farmer’s market, all decked out for the holidays:
And finally, the one thing I’d been looking for:
There it was, the slogan I’d been seeking. From the obvious age and condition of this huge mural I suspect the “City of Opportunity” slogan had been used for many many years some long time ago and the place just got weary of it and moved on. This was the only use of that slogan I found around town.
According to Wikipedia, the city’s slogan is indeed “The City of OPPortunity” but there’s no mention of that on the city website or Facebook page. The Chamber of Commerce, however, comes through with this logo:
This 25-square-mile burg of some 6,700 souls was named after Henry Opp, a lawyer for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, at one time one of the south’s premier rail lines, operating on 6,000 miles of track in 14 states.
It’s the hometown of three NFL players, Tim Jessie, James Logan and Lamar Rogers, and also of Alberta Martin, believed to be the last surviving widow of a Confederate soldier. She died at age 97 in 2004.
She married 81-year-old veteran William Jasper Martin in 1927, when she was 21. At the time, the healthy Civil War pension checks were said to be a motive for many younger women marrying older, often widowed, veterans. She was one of four such women known to have survived into the 21st Century. The last of them died just five years ago.
I may wander back to Opp one of these days. It’s home to a pretty big Rattlesnake Rodeo, a three-day event celebrating the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake. Coming up from March 27 to 29 this year it features a beauty pageant, snake cooking and handling demonstrations, kids’ rides, a car race, a 5K run, arts and crafts, and musical entertainment. It’s been going strong for 60 years.
I stumbled across the lowest of the highs last month. The lowest high point in all of the high points of each of the country’s 50 states, that is.
It’s a mere 345 feet above mean sea level and it’s near Lakewood, Florida, way up north of me just a couple miles south of the Alabama state line. That’s lower than many buildings in the state.
The high point is atop Britton Hill, named after early 1900s lumber mill baron William Henry Britton. The surrounding Lakewood Park is on land donated by the family in 1976.
Where’s the second-lowest state highpoint in the country? It’s complicated. The official one, marked with a National Geodetic Survey benchmark monument, is the Ebright Azimuth in Delaware, at 448 (447.85) feet.
Later work by the Delaware Geological Survey, however, found a point in a nearby mobile home park to be some two feet higher.
The wording on the official monument sign slides by all this conveniently by stating that “The Delaware Geological Survey through its relationship with the National Geodetic Survey has determined that this bench mark monument is in the vicinity of the highest natural elevation in the state.”
If you’re looking to visit every one of the highest state points in the US (and there are some folks who do) you’ll be happy to know that going to the Ebright Azimuth sign will fill your obligation in Delaware, according to the standards of Summitpost.org, a group that tracks such things. You need not trespass on private property to find the marker in the trailer park, and another on a private road. It is in fact discouraged.
And for a time it was thought that Delaware, not Florida, had the country’s lowest high point, simply because the game Trivial Pursuit had it wrong.
A recent note from a stranger has dredged up some pleasant memories from 22 years ago and solved a mystery to boot!
To set the scene, let’s harken back to Sept. 6, 2003. I was happily paddling through a really sweet spot on my solo canoe trip down the Mississippi River. It was that section between southwestern Wisconsin and the northeastern bit of Iowa, a stretch replete with great river towns to stop at and savor.
There were great midwestern breakfasts, ribeye steak dinners with all the fixings, and yes, cold frosty beers, scattered all along the banks. How could I not take advantage of all that?
In the previous few days I had already stopped at LaCrosse and Victory, in Wisconsin, and just the day before I’d stopped for breakfast in Genoa, Wisconsin, and a late afternoon beer in Gordon’s Landing, also in Wisconsin. It was a tough life, but someone had to do it.
On September 6, still in the sweet spot, I stopped for a pleasant late breakfast in Lansing, Iowa. Back in the boat and barely a mile and a half downstream, I encountered the next Iowa town, McGregor. I wasn’t planning to stop, but the huge, covered veranda and open docks at the town marina beckoned mightily.
Here’s where the plot to this bolt out of the blue tale starts unfolding.
As I walked onto the veranda and wound through the tables, a woman shouted out to me. Her name was Mary Kay and she recognized me from the story about my trip in the La Crosse Tribune. This was back in those quaint olden times when newspapers were still mostly printed and maintained robust regional circulations.
Mary Kay and her brother and sister were in town with their spouses on a family reunion and were more than happy to greet a grizzled river traveler. They had seen me pull up to the marina in my fully-laden canoe and they knew I was the real thing. I was just happy for the instant friends.
We had a great visit and while we were there a cabin cruiser pulled up to the dock. We noticed that the manager and a small entourage from the marina were right there to greet the middle-aged couple that disembarked and escort them inside. Mary Kay buttonholed our waiter and quickly learned that a celebrity had arrived.
The “celebrity” was no one any of us recognized and none of the wait staff knew who it was. But Mary Kay persevered, and she wrote me months later that our mystery boater was Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the San Francisco poet and a major figure in the Beat Generation.
As the co-founder and owner of City Lights Bookstore and Publishing in San Francisco, Ferlinghetti published many of the Beat authors. An acclaimed writer, and artist himself, he died in 2021 just before his 102nd birthday.
After I got Mary Kay’s note, I did a bit of research but never confirmed that he was the celebrity we saw and for decades never even thought much more of it.
Until the bolt from the blue.
Just this week a gentleman named Nolan Rosencrans dropped this comment on my website account of my visit to McGregor:
“I came across this while researching a 2003 copy of Quimby’s Cruising Guide owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He did, in fact, do a voyage down the Mississippi River in 2003 and took detailed notes throughout. Per his notes, he was in McGregor on Sept. 6, so your information was almost certainly correct that the celebrity in town was Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Thought you would be interested in getting belated confirmation.”
Quimby’s, for the uninitiated, is a printed guidebook used by folks who cruise the Mississippi in large boats, cabin cruisers and the like. It is updated annually and lists marinas, boat repair shops, restaurants, hotels and other attractions along the way. It also has lots of space to take notes as one travels along. I in fact had, and often referred to, a years’-old edition that was given to me by some boater friends I met at a marina in Burlington, Iowa.
For someone to actually have Ferlinghetti’s 2003 edition of Quimby’s and then to see my little entry in my river trip and drop me a note is coincidental beyond belief. I’ve asked Nolan for the story of how he came to have this book and if he gets back to me I’ll let you know.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to get back in touch with Mary Kate and give her the news that her sleuthing so many years ago produced the truth!
I noticed today that a reader of one of my blog posts came to me because he or she had clicked on a link in an article on the website of The Cambridge Historical Commission called Practical Patents: 19th Century Cambridge.
So I went there and scrolled through the whole thing and there at the bottom was a list called Sources. And by golly there I am in the following citation:
Makes me feel almost erudite, or something. Like magic, my words have become something someone else cites. Perhaps I am a sourcerer. And yes, it’s the first time, so I thought a little bragging was in order.
I hit a nice sweet spot this weekend in Connecticut.
It all came together on a relaxing paddle on the Salmon River down in Moodus, just a few miles above where it meets the Connecticut River at Haddam.
It was sweet for several reasons.
For one thing, the weather cooperated. That’s something that hasn’t happened very often during this year’s northeast paddling season. So far, I think I have cancelled more paddling events than I attended.
Secondly, the venue is delightful. There is very little open water, which I find boring. Instead there were lots of narrow bits and overhanging trees that provided a lot of shade on the warm clear day we had. And there are two tributaries, the Moodus River and Pine Brook, to explore a bit. My favorite part is always the narrow passage upstream to the dam just beyond the Route 151 bridge at Leesville. Even the launch area is pleasant, nestled along the river in the quiet, undeveloped Sunrise State Park, the site of a former resort. It’s a totally relaxing, leisurely trip of about seven miles.
Among the dozen of us who gathered for this there were plenty of friendly, familiar faces. The icing on the cake for me was that there were a few treasured ones that I was seeing for the first time this season. That gives you an idea how tough it’s been getting a decent paddle event off the ground this year. Here it is August and there are paddle friends I’m just now seeing. Usually I’ve touched base with nearly everyone within a month of being here.
And all of the dribble above was an excuse to post some photos. Enjoy them.
All it takes is a couple quick trips from Connecticut to New Hampshire and a 10-day jaunt to Wisconsin and bingo, another 5,000 miles on the car.
Time for another oil change, tire rotation and alignment check, the latter especially important after all those potholes on Chicago streets.
New Hampshire Part 1: July 4
My July 4 tradition continued with a visit to Contoocook, home of sister-in-law Ginni Haines, for the small-town holiday festivities. The kids’ parade kicked off as usual, but neither my granddaughters nor any offspring of brother Rick’s family were involved, so I did not take any photos. Go here to see the collection from other years.
Instead of the longish but pleasant trek to downtown for the kids’ event, we only needed to make it to the end of Ginni’s driveway and set up some chairs to watch the adult parade roll by. I confess I took the car; that’s a lot of chairs to carry. Here we all are, mostly the Houston clan, waiting for the parade:
Lead by a policeman on an ATV and the band-on-a-trailer, without the usual tarp shading them on this coolish day, it trooped on by and the tossed candy rained down on the spectators. There were the usual old cars and fire engines, but missing this year were representatives of a few civic associations.
A notable entry were the tractors from Pine Lane Farm, which is celebrating its 94th year. That’s the dairy farm operated by the Houstons, Ginni’s family.
New Hampshire Part 2: Ogontz Resort near Lyman
A couple weeks later I was back in New Hampshire at the Ogontz White Mountain Suzuki Institute music camp. Daughter Jennifer and company do a week up there and recently I have been dropping by the last day or so and combining that with a visit with my paddling friend Leslie, who lives in nearby Bethlehem. And of course I always go along with the Fords for the stop at Chutters on the way home Saturday afternoon.
This year I got to meet just about everyone in Leslie’s family he’s talked about since we’ve known each other. It was nice to put faces, and start friendships, with folks I’d only heard about.
The music photos, including Ryan (bass), Margeaux (violin) and Simone (cello) are below. Go here to see the photos of the Ogontz Resort from 2023.
Leslie and I went canoeing with a friend, Debbie, on a quiet stretch of the Connecticut River. I can say canoeing instead of the generic “paddling,” because both Leslie and Debbie, instead of their kayaks of the past, now own brand new Hornbeck canoes, the same model as mine only shorter. And, as you can see from the photos below, they are much shinier than mine, which is now ten years old and looking its age.
On to Wisconsin
This was a trek to look at some sites related to the Amberg family, ie, wife Sue and brother-in-law Michael. Michael’s wife, Kim, also came along. They flew up from Florida and Sue and I drove over from Connecticut and picked them up at Midway in Chicago. We proceeded to leisurely explore three Wisconsin towns: Amberg (founded by great grandfather William A. Amberg), Baraboo (where young Sue and Michael vacationed with family) and Mineral Point (to poke around a house that’s been in a wing of the family for years).
The Urge to be Someplace Else 