July 19, 2001
Glenside, Pennsylvania — Glen Cove, New York
Our last day before returning to Maine. Hard to believe. Our thirty-second day since our departure from Freeport with no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We had one more family stop ahead of us, but first, my grandfather had a treat for us before we left Philadelphia.
We awoke to a proper breakfast, reminding me of waking up with Win’s grandparents in Grand Blanc four weeks earlier. We got to spend the morning chatting with my grandparents, again showing off our road trip exploits to attentive veterans of cross-country travel. But before we left, we got back in his Cadillac and headed south, back to I-76 along the Schuylkill River, opposite the rowing club houses on east bank. We crossed the river into Philadelphia proper, eventually dropping south to the intersection of S 9th Street and E Passyunk Avenue in South Philly. Why this spot, where two diagonal streets meet? Two reasons: Pat’s and Geno’s. If you’re not familiar, this intersection is the home of Philly cheesesteaks. The cheesesteak mecca. And quite literally the birthplace of the medium. Pat’s opened in 1930 as a hotdog stand, and is credited with inventing the Philly cheesesteak three years later. Geno’s opened in 1966 as a challenger, across the intersection, and the battle has been going ever since. When we arrived in 2001, totally ignorant of all of it, it was one of the most famous food spots in the country.
I honestly have no idea which of the two we chose, but the experience is said to be the same at both. You look at the menu before getting in line, deciding what to order. And you’d better be ready, because when you’re up, you’re really up. “Whatya want?!” comes the request, and if you don’t do it right you might not get what you want. Provolone or Whiz are the acceptable way to start, and then with or without (or in real life, wit or witout), which is whether or not you’re having onions. And that’s it. Off you go, wait for the order, and get out of the way so someone else can order.
Philly isn’t the most polite place on earth, and especially not South Philly. As we drove in on the utterly insane one-way streets, my grandfather let a few people have it, and more than one did us the same. It was an absurdly dense area that truly is for the locals. Pat’s and Geno’s have become tourist spots, which seemed to make everyone in the neighborhood extremely pissed off.
In retrospect, it was amazing, a perfect way to see Philadelphia up close and, given some of the insults hurtled to and from our car, very personal. But once we got out of the car (how my grandfather found a spot nearby I’ll never know) it was all good. We picked one of the two, stood back from the line so we could see the menu, and my grandpa told us how it works. Was I nervous when it was my turn? You’re damn right I was! But we’d been schooled correctly, and it went way more smoothly than I expected. I’d been to The Varsity in Atlanta while working at Sports Camp, and their “What’ll ya have?” was so much more southern, while being less intense but equally, hey, c’mon, order already. But this was another level. We ate our steak sandwiches, as they’re known locally, and laughed about the intensity of the process.
After this tremendous experience, we needed to go back to the house and get in the van, as we had one more leg to go on our last night before returning to Maine. We hugged my grandparents, thanked them, and got back on the road. We were two hours from our target…ha! We absolutely were not. But it was only 130 miles north and east to Long Island where we’d be spending the night.
Unless you’re driving at three in the morning, you can forget about making any assumptions about how long it’ll take to drive north on the New Jersey Turnpike, cross into New York City, and then pop out on the other side on Long Island. And even then, it might take forever. And just to be clear, it took us forever. I can’t remember now which route we took, though likely across the George Washington Bridge into the Bronx, then down to the Throngs Neck Bridge, reaching Long Island in northern Queens. From there we’d need go another twenty miles around three bays in Long Island Sound, to Glen Cove, not terribly far from Connecticut. As the crow flies anyway.
What was waiting in Glen Cove, New York? It was Wes’ mom’s hometown! And her aunt, Wes’ great aunt, still lived there. She’d offered her place for us, and as we weren’t quite ready to be done with our trip, we’d taken her up on it. We spent hours in traffic, especially once we crossed over from New Jersey. But we didn’t mind. We were enjoying the van, knowing there wasn’t much time for us left in this stage of our lives.
Eventually we arrived at the house in Glen Cove. I don’t know if we knew this ahead of time or not, but Wes’ great aunt was not around. She was at her other place in Florida. Which meant we had the run of the guest house to ourselves! One last silly, fun night to enjoy without the attention of others. This was not like kickin at the pool outside our dumpy hotel in Modesto, 108 degrees and desperate. The high in Glen Cove had only been 76 and so we eased into a comfortable night where the pool was for fun, not necessary for cool down. We’d gotten there too late to go to the water, thanks to the traffic, and our steak sandwiches, but that was alright, as we arrived at an incredible house, the nicest of our entire trip.
Even better news for us: the cook was still around, so we ate meals befitting kings, at least as far as we were concerned. We’d just spent three nights with family, so it’s not like we were lacking, but hey, a home cooked meal is a home cooked meal. And as were no longer children, we didn’t have to wait for the food to settle before we attacked the pool for our nighttime entertainment.
Our game of choice at the time was a diving competition. I have no recollection of the depth of the pool, but I expect we wouldn’t have gone for it like we did if it was five feet. Win’s parents had a pool in their backyard, an amazing perk of a ranch house built in 1955. It was there we’d perfected the craft of diving over chairs into the deeper end, escalating to two chairs, and eventually two chairs with people in them, over our senior year. We were in incredible shape in those days, I’d played football and Win was a runner on the cross-country team. Wes was an excellent athlete as well, especially as a skier, with an extra-long frame promising top shelf leaping ability, but also a need to lift those feet on the back end, lest he clip the chairs on the way into the pool.
In the end it was me who should’ve heeded that caution. After round and round of ever more complicated dives, someone was bound to slip or clip the chairs. And yep, that was me. Trying to glide over an especially high and long combination of chairs, my plant foot slipped out from under me, sending me sliding directly into the lead chair, crashing both into the pool and rendering me unfit for further competition. We had a big laugh, but that was definitely it for me. So glad we were doing this twenty years ago and not now, so there is no evidence other than our memories. That and a left foot in need of a couch for resting.
So inside we went, knowing this was our last night on this trip. We needed something to do, as we obviously weren’t ready for bed, and knowing we only to cover three hundred or so miles the next day to get back to Freeport. So what did we do? We found a tv and flipped on The Real World. Now I wasn’t a seasoned follower of the show, but it was their tenth season and they’d filmed in Manhattan’s West Village earlier in the year, so we were into it. The third episode had aired two days prior, and MTV must’ve been showing the first two episodes as well, as we watched for several hours before finally succumbing to the sleep we’d been putting off.
Tomorrow we were headed back to Maine, back to something like real life, or at least a non-van version of it. The guest house in Glen Cove was a perfect way to conclude our grand adventure, not too different from our epic night on White Lake, four weeks prior, to the day. We’d been fortunate to have family who trusted us. We’d been fortunate to avoid any trouble on the road. And we’d been fortunate to do this trip together, the perfect combination of personalities, interests, and friendship.
