Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Me and my Harley


This story begins a long time ago, and while I hope it has ended, I could be wrong.  I did not keep any of the documents underlying this story; this is all from memory. I damn well should have kept some of the documents, as will be clear.

My mother worked for a while for Chase Manhattan Bank. Initially she worked in an office downtown in the financial district, where the bank interacted with traders on the New York Stock Exchange. At the time, before the banks were deregulated, there was not that much that the banks did with regards to buying and selling stocks, but there was some.  Mom was not a trader, but worked with some of the traders. We got some interesting freebies from the traders, such as New York Rangers tickets, Knicks tickets, tickets to Mets games, and even tickets to a BC vs. Army game at West Point, where we sat surrounded by generals. We were on the wrong side of the field, unfortunately.

After a while, my mother took a job, with Chase, at a branch in Bedford Hills, NY, in Westchester.  My parents had purchased a home in Ridgefield, CT, just an easy 20 or 30 minute drive away from Bedford Hills (or 120 if it was snowing). My mother liked working there, until one day the police came and took away the bank manager in handcuffs.  The story, as best I can recall, is that he was being blackmailed by his (male) lover, and he wanted to keep matters secret from his wife and kids, and used some of Chase’s money to help pay the blackmail. My mother was pretty shook up. 

Later, my parents moved closer to the city, and my Mom transferred to a branch in New Rochelle, NY. At that branch, the assistant manager was fired, because he was funneling money to his girlfriend. But he got a good reference when he applied at another bank, probably because his affair was not same-sex, or because the girl was a minority, or because Chase didn’t want the publicity.  At any rate, without working at a bank, I was getting a look at the dark underside of the banking business.

I had a job at an insurance company in New York, making next to nothing, but I needed a checking account.  At this point, a typical retail checking account had a fee per check, or else you had to maintain a sizable minimum balance, which was out of my reach.  My mother helped me get a Chase checking account, affiliated somehow with her employment, that didn’t cost me anything.  With that account came a Visa card, which I threw in a drawer and never used.

Later, I became enamored with the services at Citibank, which was the first company to do ATM’s right. I started banking there, and even after I took a job with a Chemical Bank subsidiary with a free employee account, I would just write a check and move it to Citi.  And I closed my Chase account, or so I thought. Unbeknownst to me, I still had a Chase Visa card.

Mom left Chase when my Dad accepted a transfer to Tulsa, OK. I eventually accepted a position with a company in Texas, and moved there.  Some years later, I am guessing 1992 or so, I got a phone call from someone at Chase. They asked if I was James McDonough, and asked if I lived at (my former address in Dallas). I replied yes to both. I could tell, they were excited – they had me.  They started asking questions about my Chase Visa card. I didn’t have a Chase Visa card.  (Actually, at this point I had completely forgotten that I ever had a Chase Visa card, but I found it in a storage box years later.) They asked again about my former address, and I said I used to live there but I didn’t have a Chase Visa card – at that time the only thing I used was American Express. 

They called over and over and over again. Always Chase Bank, always asking about the debt on the Chase Visa card.

What I think happened is that a renewal card was mailed to an address where I no longer lived, probably not the Dallas address, and instead of the card being returned undeliverable, someone opened it and started using it.

One time the person who called from Chase (her name was Victoria) was actually sympathetic. She told me that whoever had this card had purchased a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with it, and had spent over $400 at a Red Lobster in New York.  And this had occurred in 1984. So, 6 or 8 years later, they were after me.  I said I was not responsible for the debt and would not pay it.  Every time I said that to someone from Chase, the same response would come back: “But didn’t you live at (my former Dallas address)?”  I would say yes, but I did not ever use a Chase Visa card in New York or anywhere else. I had been a victim of identity theft.  Then they would ask had I filed a police report. Well, you have to understand, the event occurred six or eight years before I ever knew about it – the term ‘identity theft’ had not even been invented. And why would I file a police report – I was not out any money.

The calls went on, and finally Chase turned it over to a collection agency. I wrote the agency, telling them it was not my debt and I was not responsible. They sent it back to Chase, and then Chase got really ugly, wanting to know why I had made the collection agency send it back.  Then the guy said I had to write them a letter, and sign it six times, saying it was not my debt.  I decided to try something different.  By now there was an Internet – so I looked up the names of the senior executives of Chase.  I picked out the name of Arthur Ryan, then President of Chase, and wrote him a letter, explaining how Chase was harassing a son of a Chase retiree and asked them to stop.

So they wrote back, apologized, and the harassment stopped.

About five years later, a couple of months after I had trashed all the correspondence, I started getting calls from the more sophisticated collection agencies.  Chase had written the debt off, and sold it to some bottom-feeders for pennies or less on the dollar. I was back to square one.

I went through half a dozen of these companies, telling them one by one that I did not acknowledge responsibility for the debt, that I could pay the debt any time I cared to, but that I would not because it wasn’t mine.  Usually they would call a couple of times and figure it out.  But then I ran into Portfolio Recovery Associates.  These guys called a couple of times a week for five years. I finally wrote them a letter, and they stopped for a couple of years, then started up again. At least their caller ID identifies who they are so my wife and I know to ignore them.

It has been a few years since they’ve called.  The ‘debt’ is almost 30 years old, beyond the statute of limitations, but there’s no limit on attempting to collect a debt.  I expect to hear from them again.

I’m not paying.

At one point during the heat of the arguments with Chase, I was in a Harley-Davidson shop in Del Mar, CA.  I thought about having my picture taken atop a motorcycle, but thought maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.  I bought a Harley-Davidson coffee mug, instead. 

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Cultural Differences (2)


One evening (May 2003), Jody and I were at Monoprix, a supermarket with a discount store attached.  It's a chain, and this one was on Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris.  We love going into grocery stores in other countries, to see what kinds of things we can find and wonder how in the world you could eat that.  Our objective, believe it or not, was to bring home some French cat food.  Our alpha male cat had some French cat food a few years earlier from our first trip to France, and we knew he would enjoy some more, and by then we had another cat to help out with the project.

We were poking around in the food section.  They had a wine cellar, so I went down there.  After looking around for a minute, I headed up the stairs, only to encounter a small boy pushing one of those little kid size carts.  He was not paying attention and had pushed the cart down the stairs and was toppling down himself.  The cart was full of stuff, including a couple of bottles of wine. The stuff in the cart was now flying everywhere, broken glass was everywhere, potatoes rolling around.  

I caught the cart, with boy attached (he was maybe 4 or 5) and kept him from landing on his head, and slicing himself up on the broken glass.  My wife came running to help, and then a woman too old to be his mother showed up in a panic.  It was quite a scene. 

Naturally, every word of French that we knew was gone from our heads at this point and all we could say was 'are you OK' to the boy.  Then Grand-mere (or babysitter) smacked him. I said 'he’s not OK any more'.  It was just a tap, but it made him cry. At any rate, the woman was very thankful once she realized the boy could have been hurt pretty badly.  I got wine all over my shoes, but it was worth it.

We did find some French cat food.  It made a hit. But subsequently Customs has confiscated any cat food we’ve tried to bring home. C'est triste!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Migraines


I listened to a show about migraines today.  It was a podcast of the Diane Rehm show. I thought I would write about the topic.

Imagine having a migraine and not even knowing the word ‘migraine’, so you have no earthly idea what it is. I first remember having these awful headaches when I was in high school – it would start with a dot of light, similar to what you see from a camera flash. This dot didn’t fade away, but instead it grew, and flickered, and got to where it looked like what you see when you rub your eyes. Eventually, my field of vision was completely blocked, except for a little bit of peripheral vision on the sides. Sometimes the patterns were geometric; other times like lightning or aurora borealis. This would go on for a while, maybe twenty or thirty minutes, before subsiding. I would then have an excruciating headache, and nausea. After I threw up, I would start to feel a little better.

Of course, in a class at a Jesuit high school in Manhattan was not an ideal place for all of this to be happening. I did not know what it was, and I did not have the vocabulary to describe it accurately to anyone else, including my parents.

Once I felt one coming on while I was sitting in the gym at school watching a lunchtime intramural basketball game. I had figured out that, sometimes, I could fight it off, if I could just get away from any light. All I could do at this point was to sit there with my hands blocking my eyes and my eyes closed.  I felt a tap on my shoulder, and looked up to see the headmaster, Father McDonald, looking at me, very concerned. He didn’t ask me if I was all right. He just said, “Son, go see the nurse”. I went to the nurse and described as best I could what was going on. She decided to send me home (thanks a lot – 45 minute commute) but called home first to let my mother know I was coming. Those were the days when moms were home to be called.

Well, having been sent to the nurse by Father McDonald and having been sent home from school changed the situation. This could no longer be ignored as some whining from a malingering kid. But it didn’t matter – we still didn’t know what this was.  I was taken to see an eye doctor, an ophthalmologist, thinking something might be wrong with my eyes. The exam revealed I had 20/10 vision. I really did, and it stayed that way for years. When I was in the Coast Guard, I often could make out objects that others could only see with binoculars. But, that meant I didn’t need glasses, and there was nothing wrong with my eyes. So, no treatment options presented themselves.  One time I recall I was driving (with a learner’s permit) on Dune Road on Long Island, which I loved to do, and I stopped the car and said I was getting one of my eye things and couldn’t drive any more. That was pretty drastic.

I don’t recall exactly when, but at some point I read about someone who was afflicted with migraines, and from the description, determined that was what I was having.

I continued to have migraines while I was in college, but less frequently. After I got out of college, I stopped having migraines at all, until one day in April 1996, when I stumbled while jogging, fell, dislocated and broke my shoulder, smashed my face into the pavement, broke a front tooth, cracked some ribs, etc. A couple of hours later, I had a migraine in the emergency room while awaiting treatment. The dislocated shoulder was excruciating, and I assume there is a connection between that and the migraine, although it could have been the morphine they gave me. I’ve had them maybe once every couple of years since then. One time I woke up in the morning with one, which seems exceptionally unfair.

However, the migraines that I get now, thankfully not often, are different. There’s no headache, and no nausea; just the aura. I feel out of sorts for a while after the aura goes away, and still shy away from bright light, but I’m otherwise fine.

From listening to the Diane Rehm show, I learned that migraines are thought to be a brain disorder of some kind, not fully understood. In prior years it was thought to be a vascular disorder, and the treatment was a medication to constrict the blood vessels, which worked for some people but not for many. If I catch it in time, Excedrin Migraine seems to help. There are still relatively few treatment options, but there are at least a few doctors around who make migraines a specialty.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Cultural differences


Our first trip to France was in 1998.  As international travelers, we were completely clueless. One of the things I did wrong was to bring my jogging stuff. Honestly, who goes to France for one week and wastes time jogging?  Well, I did. With those pastries and desserts, it probably helped, but not much.

We stayed at a condo in Port Cogolin, with my parents. Port Cogolin is a little harbor off the Gulf of St. Tropez, about halfway between St. Tropez and Sainte Maxime, on the Cote d'Azur. The furnishings were spartan, with the most noticeable problem being the absence of screens on the windows, in a somewhat marshy area. Mosquitoes were a problem, but they must have sprayed around there some because it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The condo was close to a park, with a trail that was excellent for jogging. I would run there in the mornings, while everyone else was cleaning up. One thing I noticed is that there were lots of people with dogs. And for the most part, the dogs were unleashed. As a jogger, just about nothing bothers me more than encountering unleashed dogs; I think I’d rather be caught in a downpour. But these dogs were all different. They ignored me. When has a dog ever ignored a person running? These did.

After a couple of days, I sort of got used to it. The dogs weren’t leashed, but they were trained not to chase people.  We also noticed that dogs were allowed in restaurants.  The dog would sit at the owner’s feet, and sometimes the restaurant would put out a water bowl for the dog. And it seemed like everybody had a dog, and the dogs were exceptionally well behaved. My Dad even came up with a business idea - 'Rent a Dog', for Americans who want to pass as French. A cigarette and a cell phone would seal the deal.

Near where we were staying was a ‘hypermart’, called Géant. It was a short walk from our condo. This store had everything imaginable except cars and boats, and called to mind De Gaulle’s complaint about trying to govern a country with 400 kinds of cheese. It seemed like they had a lot more than 400.  My wife and I were just looking for some stuff to bring home as gifts. This store was like a League of Nations, with so many different languages being spoken. A few Brits, but no other Americans. After we were done, we crossed the street, and came to a bus stop where there was a line of people waiting for the bus. In the line was a woman with a young boy, maybe nine or ten years old. The boy was being hateful and giving his mother a hard time. Evidently it had been going on for a while.

She hauled off and smacked him in the face.  We were shocked – if this happened in the States, someone would probably have called the police. Maybe everyone would have called the police. But there, nobody even looked at her. Well, the kid was asking for it, and he got it. It's what would have happened when I was a kid.

As we walked on towards our condo, I turned to my wife and said “I love this country. Their dogs behave and they beat their children.”

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Adventures in the Mayflower Hotel



Back in the 1980’s, I used to travel on business to New York. Often, I stayed at the Mayflower Hotel, on Central Park West. This hotel is no longer in existence.

The building was pre-war, with very high ceilings and large rooms. Many rooms were suites, with non-frost-free refrigerators with the old style ice cube trays, and sometimes a kitchenette with a hot plate. Some people stayed for a long time – it was popular with people performing on Broadway, for example.

The thing I liked about it the best was that I could run in the park after work. I would not run in the park after dark, but during spring and summer and until the end of daylight savings time in the fall it was fine.

I had good experiences at the Mayflower for the most part, but once or twice some strange stuff happened.

One night I woke up after midnight. My room was in the front of the hotel, overlooking Central Park. The person in the room next door had the television on very loud, and was watching some kind of a Western, with lots of loud music and gunfire.  I could not go back to sleep with all that noise. I beat against the wall; I got dressed, went into the hall, pounded on the door.  No effect.  I called the front desk to complain, and they called – I could hear the phone ringing, but he didn’t answer.

Suddenly, it was quiet. He must have awoken, and turned off the television.  Finally!

But, the shooting continued.  The shooting was going on in the park, across the street. I put my lights out (!) and peeked out, and saw a police car down there, and evidently the police were shooting at someone, probably a drug dealer or something.  Okay, try to sleep through that!

The second strange thing that happened was while I was working on a system implementation that was seriously late and over budget.  I was the main guy on-site, but I knew there was no way I could accomplish all that needed to be done and had asked for more help. There were four of us on site, working on the project, and I was feeling pretty good, but one by one they fell away. One guy became simply physically exhausted and appeared to be at the end of his rope, so the boss sent him back home to Dallas. Another had to leave suddenly due to a death in his family, an accidental death that was completely unexpected. Finally, my boss had to leave because his wife was having suicidal panic attacks.

So I was back where I had started. The client company was sympathetic, and let me have pretty much unlimited use of the computer, but it was on ‘second shift’, or roughly from the time people would normally go home until midnight.  So I would work usually from about noon until two or three in the morning, go back to the hotel, try to sleep in late (not easy in a hotel, certainly not in New York), and come on back the next day.

One early morning I was totally wiped out. I walked back to the hotel, unkempt, my tie hanging loose, clothes a mess, raincoat hanging open, and when I pulled on the front door, it was locked. Now what?  I stood there for a moment, and then someone opened the door. I explained that I was staying there, and fumbled around for my room key to prove it.  He said he recognized me, and explained that they were locking the front door at this time of day to keep out, well, to keep out people who looked like me.  I pretty much resembled a homeless person, I guess. 

I went to my room and tried to sleep. Then the noise started.  Beep . . . beep . . . beep.  A slow but steady beeping noise. There was no way I could sleep with that. I couldn’t identify the source. I thought it might have something to do with the phone. There were two beds, so I took the phone and put it underneath a pillow on the other bed.  The sound continued unabated, so it wasn’t the phone.  I just looked around, and realized that the smoke alarm or CO2 detector on the ceiling was making the beep.  I pulled a chair underneath the alarm and climbed up.  With the ceiling being very high – prewar building – it was all I could do to get a hand on it, and I couldn’t turn it and I couldn’t get it loose. I stretched as high as I could . . . and got a charley horse in my hamstring.  Excruciating pain!  As I floundered around trying to get down from the chair so I could massage my leg, the thought passed through my brain: I’m going to fall off this chair, hit my head, and die in this hotel room, and no one will ever know why.

I managed to get down, and ease the pain in my leg, but the beeping continued. I got back on the chair, reached up, and before my leg could spasm again, ripped that damned thing right out of the ceiling.  I got back down and took the batteries out, but not before noticing an identical hole in the ceiling a foot or so away from the one I just made. Some other poor bastard had done the same thing. Now I have one more thing to observe when checking into a hotel – the location of the smoke alarm.  It’s happened again.

When I finally came home after that implementation, I had a hard time finding my house.  When I had left, there was a vacant lot across the street, but when I came home there was a house on it. 

Monday, August 13, 2012

My piece of the Rock


A long time ago (1999) my Mom sent me an email about a little policy they had taken out on me when I was born. The policy was paid up in 1968, and she had the policy number but no other information. They would not release the information to her because when I reached adulthood I became the owner.

She had a toll-free number to call, specifically for old policies.

I called the number. They asked for my name and SSN and found my policy within 30 seconds! I was impressed.  I still wonder about the SSN – unlike today, when I was born, children did not have to have Social Security Numbers. You got your Social Security card the first time you got a job, which in my case was when I was sixteen. So how did they get my SSN?

At any rate, they sent me a statement, which I can’t find, about the policy.  In 1999, it was worth around $2500. 

Later they sent me a document indicating that Prudential was going to demutualize, and as a very very tiny ‘owner’ of the mutual company, I was entitled to some stock. Okay by me. So I got some stock in Prudential, 35 shares I believe, just for making a phone call.

I was quite surprised to get a 1099 from Prudential after a while. I couldn’t imagine why they had done that, until I realized that the 1099 was attached to a check. The stock paid a dividend. I had never owned a stock that paid a dividend and I didn’t recognize it.  After a while, I got a letter from Prudential offering to buy back my stock, or for me to round it up so that it would no longer be an odd lot. I could buy shares to make my holding 100 shares, with no brokerage commission.  So I did that.  I’ve been getting dividend checks ever since.

I wondered what the policy was worth the other day, so I tried to navigate the Prudential.com website to find out. I was completely unable to create a user ID, so I called the help number.  A man who sounded Irish helped me, and he said that the type of policy I had was not supported on-line, but he gave me a number to call for information, and transferred me.  The number was the same number my mother had sent me in 1999.

This time, I sat on hold for 20 minutes before giving up.  I wasn't so impressed.

I’ll have to try some day other than Monday.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Sad how things go

We used to vacation nearly every year in Maui. One of our favorite places to eat was a small Italian restaurant in a strip shopping mall, a very unappealing (no view of the water) location, but wonderful food. I'm not sure how we found it - probably a recommendation from a guide book.  It's long since gone.

One evening we were having dinner, when this enormous red extended cab pickup truck pulled up.  Everyone in the restaurant was buzzing around excited.  The truck belonged to Randy Travis, the country singer who is in the news these days, not for any good reason.  He had, at that time, a home on Maui somewhere.

Randy and his group were seated at an inside table; we were dining alfresco.

After Randy got there, nobody working in the restaurant paid any attention to us. We were finished, but nobody offered us coffee or dessert, or cleared the table, or refilled the water glasses, or brought us a check. I was just sort of sitting there, when I realized Randy Travis was looking at us. He said something to the owner, and we were promptly taken care of. Obviously, he noticed that we were being ignored on account of all the fuss over him and got it taken care of.

So, I didn't meet him or shake his hand or anything, but he took care of us in a small way. Sad how things go.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Vermont - days 2 through 8



Day 2

We had breakfast at Henry House Sunday and Monday. Nancy fixes a hot breakfast only on the weekends, so we had French toast on Sunday. On Monday we had a choice of bagels, English muffins, fruit, cereal, etc., and she brought us some cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven.

The French toast was really good. Better than Trader Joe’s frozen.  














We visited a couple of sites in the Bennington area.  The first was the Bennington Battle Monument, a tower reminiscent of the Washington Monument, but shorter. For a fee, you can take an elevator to a viewing station a couple of hundred feet up, and have a view of three states (VT, MA, NY). The monument memorializes a Revolutionary War battle where militia mainly from New Hampshire, but also from Massachusetts and Vermont defeated two detachments of Burgoyne’s (British) army. The battle was actually in New York, about ten miles away, but the British target was a store of weapons and food at the monument’s location. It’s pretty cool for history buffs.  
View from 200' up

View of most of the monument (305' tall)





















The second site was the Bennington Museum, a small but eclectic collection of historical artifacts, one old car, a lot of Rockwell Kent paintings, and a whole wing dedicated to the work of Grandma Moses (no photography allowed there).

Toy train
Surgical Instruments (!)


The Wasp - made in Vermont
Rockwell Kent painting
Rockwell Kent Painting












































The afternoon we spent wandering around Bennington, just gawking at how green everything is. We even went to the Covered Bridge Museum, and saw a video describing the terrible flooding in 1927 that wiped out so many covered bridges.  The video is out of date, because it doesn’t mention anything about Hurricane Irene in 2011 and all the damage it caused.




North Fork of Long Island Wine
I was concerned, as always, about finding a place for dinner where Jody could have something vegetarian, and I had noticed a place the night before when we were looking for Kevin’s, and checked it out on the web. The place is called Pangaea, and it’s in North Bennington. It has a restaurant (closed Sunday) and a lounge (open every day). We reserved a table and ended up having a wonderful meal in an outdoor setting. This place is really good. The menu had items marked with a little carrot, which were vegetarian, and items marked with a little tomato to indicate they could be made vegetarian on request. They even had some wine from the north fork of Long Island, where I spent a lot of my summers growing up. It was quite good. 


Incredible ravioli
I had a ravioli stuffed with boar and brie and served with a balsamic reduction. It was incredible. Our waitress told us the staff drooled every time they put it on the menu.


Day 3

The next stop for us was Stowe, and we had a pretty long drive to get there. Google maps wanted us to head over to I-89, but we decided to stay on VT 100, which skirts along the edge of part of the Green Mountain National Forest. There was very little traffic on this road, and it is incredibly scenic. We did see some very sad remnants of the destruction caused by Hurricane Irene, which sat over Vermont in 2011 as a tropical storm and dumped prodigious amounts of rain, causing some serious flash flooding.

VT 100 took us to Waterbury, where we stopped for lunch. The meal itself was unremarkable, but what was interesting is that nearly all the customers were speaking French. We saw a number of cars with Quebec license plates parked nearby.  After lunch we went to Montpelier, where I showed my wife where I stayed when working there, and where the company is located. The company has a building which is really too large for Vermont.

We also visited the Vermont State House, and just wandered in at the right time to take a tour of the building. 


Vermont State House
Constitution chair
The tour was very interesting, and the building is extremely well taken care of.  It is pretty tiny for a state capitol but it has a lot of interesting artwork and in the governor’s office there’s a chair called the Constitution Chair, named not after the U.S. Constitution, but the USS Constitution, or Old Ironsides, where the wood for the chair originated. 






Haddock
We had dinner that night at a place in the Stowe resort called Crop Bistro. It had started to rain just as we left, and was pouring when we got there. The Bistro was just okay – I had a haddock dish which was kind of strange – baked fish on top of some soupy vegetables. The restaurant itself had no tablecloths but steel-top tables and lots and lots of echoing noise.  




Day 4

The next day it was still a little rainy in the morning, but cooler. We decided to see if we could find a boat ride on Lake Champlain. And I showed my wife how easy it is to completely miss the Burlington Airport, which is as poorly signed as anything in the world. We had no problem finding the boat ride, and a helpful lady in the parking lot suggested we go see the aquarium while we were waiting. The aquarium, called ECHO Lake Aquarium andScience Center, was inundated with young folk, summer campers, and the exhibits seemed mostly of interest to that age group.

Unsinkable
We took the noon cruise on the Spirit of Ethan Allen, which included lunch. The lunch and the cruise were both pretty good. There’s a narration that tells you what you are looking at, and the ride was very smooth. There is a lot of history on that lake, and it’s fun to hear about how the British fired cannon balls at a rock, in the fog, thinking it was an American ship. It’s hard to sink an island. 





That evening we had dinner at Hen of the Wood, a small restaurant but one of the harder to book dining spots in Vermont. This place is hard to find, tucked away on a cross street to Vermont 100 just north of I-89, in a building with no indication as to what it is. Our table was in a very dark room.  The service was very good, and the waiter was quick to make recommendations. 

Hen of the Wood - cheese plate
We split a cheese plate for an appetizer.













Hen of the Wood - short ribs
I had one of the nightly specials, short ribs.  














while Jody had a goat cheese gnocchi dish.
Goat cheese gnocchi - Hen of the Wood















We split a bottle of Vermont red – it was drinkable, but it was a bit harsh.  
Yes that really is Vermont wine




All in all it was an excellent evening. After we were finished, we poked our heads out to see the spectacular outdoor seating they have.  

Back yard of Hen of the Wood




Day 5

From Stowe we headed north and east, to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. We were visiting an old family friend, Paul Gruhler, an artist whose works have been shown all around the world. Paul has a house in Craftsbury Common, although it might actually be in East Craftsbury, on an unpaved road surrounded by mostly nothing but green. Paul was not confident that we could find his house, so he met us in Craftsbury at the general store. 

Craftsbury General Store & Post Office


Paul gave us a quick tour of Craftsbury Common (the actual town) and then brought us to his house, which looks small from the road but is actually quite large, and well decorated with his own and others’ art works. Later, Paul fixed us dinner as his lady friend came over to visit. That night I had my first good night of sleep in Vermont.

Sweater in July!
Paul's house
Paul and Jody at Craftsbury Common
Day 6

The day was dull and raining. Paul fixed breakfast, which we ate on a protected porch. Vermonters go outside in the summer, no matter what! Later we decided on taking an excursion to Canada – Paul had a good lunch place scoped out. So we drove about 40 minutes or so and crossed into Canada. We had our passports, and had to check in with the Canadian border people. Lunch was at a place called Le Tomifobia – I am not making up the name. I tried to research the name – there is a town by the same name – but did not come up with anything.  At any rate, the people working there speak French and a little English, and we enjoyed crepes similar to what we get in France, except, this being North America, just a little bigger. 

Garden at Le Tomifobia

Salmon crepe


The restaurant is in a town called Beebe Plain, which extends both sides of the international border. One interesting thing was a gas station on the U.S. side, with six or eight pumps, all being used by cars from Quebec. Evidently, fuel is 30% more expensive on the Canadian side of the border. The restrictions on border crossings since September 11 have had a devastating economic effect on this area. People used to be able to move easily across the border for shopping or dining, but now access is restricted to controlled entry points, and delays are common.

That evening we attended a concert at the Historic Hardwick Town House, of chamber music, played with marvelous talent and enthusiasm by some well-traveled performers. Prior to the concert, we had dinner in a wildly eclectic restaurant in Hardwick called Claire’s, and after dinner we poked around in a railroad museum while waiting for the concert.  But the surprise of the evening was when my old friend from college, Jack Sumberg, appeared. I had not seen him since maybe 1970 or so. He looked old, but recognizable. So we took some time to try to catch up – as if it were possible to catch up 42 years – but it was enjoyable. I had spoken to Jack a couple of times, but it was only coincidence that led me to mention his name to Paul, only to find out he lived nearby.  

First time since 1970?


Day 7

After blueberry pancakes (with a little cayenne pepper) at Chez Paul, we reluctantly left the Northeast Kingdom on our way to Woodstock, VT, although we didn’t ever really get that far. 



Blueberry pancakes at Chez Paul
Our first visit was to the L.L.Bean store in West Lebanon, N.H. We knew the exit from the interstate, but finding the store was a chore, and when we got there it was really just a tiny subset of what you find in Freeport.  In fact, I called it ‘L’ instead of L.L. Bean. From there we went to the Quechee Gorge, a canyon cut away by glacial activity many years ago.  The Ottauquechee River runs through it today. The gorge, and the waterfall from the dam at the top of the gorge, are very impressive, and the park alongside is beautiful. We spent an hour or two wandering up and down, and taking photos.  I understand there are occasions where someone slips and falls into the gorge or into the stream, and I was concerned about a family whose dog was getting close to the main current, but the dog clambered out with no problem.

Lowest part of the Gorge

Some white water

Jody with the dam in the background


We ate lunch in a place called the Quechee Diner, and the less said about it the better. We also visited the Cabot store next to the diner, where they had some tasty Cabot cheese samples available. We learned that Cabot cheese is sold in Trader Joe and in the Walmart stores that carry food.

By this time we were getting used to finding things without signs or good directions, and we managed to find our next B&B, called Apple Hill Inn. This place was definitely a step up in class (and in price) from our prior B&B’s, in a large house with elegant interior spaces. We had a king size bed, and a huge room, with everything new and immaculate. There was sufficient cross-ventilation, which was important because the thermometer had been creeping up again.  

Apple Hill host
Apple Hill Inn



Day 8

The owner of Apple Hill Inn fixed us a very nice breakfast of pancakes with pears and almonds. Breakfast was not until 8:30 AM, which is kind of late, but there was coffee available from 7 AM. We had a flight out of Bradley International at 6 PM, so we had plenty of time – it was about a 140 mile drive – two hours in Texas, somewhat more in New England. We stopped a couple of times.  The first stop was at the Vermont Country Store in Rockingham, VT.  This store has lots of older stuff that you don’t see in the stores any more, such as Tab (diet soda)., and lots of knick knacks and other treasures  from the area. They were giving away a lot of munchies of different kinds, which is always welcome.  I would say the Vermont Country Store is worth one (01) visit.  


But the real, unspoken, purpose of our trip was to come home with two delicacies that are widely available in the Northeast but not available anywhere else.  These are Thomas’ Toast ‘r Cakes and Sandwich Size Thomas’ English Muffins. So as we traveled south on I-91 we were trying to figure out where there would be a town big enough for a supermarket. Our efforts were hampered by an absolutely torrential downpour that made I-91 nearly impassable. The last time I drove that road, the same thing happened, so I’m not planning to go there again, ever.

We found a promising exit somewhere north of Springfield, and after some driving around we found a Stop & Shop.  We went to the bread section, and took all their Toast ‘r Cakes, and all the sandwich size muffins except an ‘Everything’. We left them with nothing but Everything.

After that we had a relatively uneventful drive to the airport, and after security we stopped in the Black Bear Saloon in the airport, where, sort of a final farewell, they screwed up Jody’s order, giving her chicken in her quesadilla instead of cheese. Fortunately, we had plenty of time.

It continued to rain off and on through our departure.  We got home to 100 degrees at DFW airport, and we sure haven’t seen any rain since! 

We had a good time in Vermont. It's beyond green, and it could hardly be more different from Texas. There is so little traffic, and everything is slower paced and people take more time with you. It was very entertaining.  I don't know if we'll ever go back, but if we do, we won't commit to so much driving and try to focus on one area.