No 1 - The Battle of Port-a-Loo and other skirmishes

    

 Autumn is a glorious time of the year to drift along the colourful back-roads of North Eastern USA; not only is the countryside ablaze with the brilliant colours of Birch and Maple trees, but it's also the time to find restaurants and diners decked out with quirky and ghoulish Halloween themes, each serving delicious pumpkin or hot cinnamon apple pies.  
        We came upon such a diner in the township of Front Royal, Virginia; We were puzzled by its name and asked the waitress during dinner how the town came to be so called. 'I graduated high school six years ago and I have forgot all that stuff, but I know there's a lot of history in these parts' she replied. We later discovered that during the Civil War, troops used to parade in front of a large Royal Oak tree and often the command was "Front! Royal!" On another occasion we called into the Amish township of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, but thought it best not to ask the waitress how it got its name.

        At the small historic town of Winchester, Virginia, we stopped to stretch our legs along the picturesque cobbled Main Street  It was a cold damp Sunday morning as we scuffed through drifts of colourful autumn leaves, past beautifully maintained white clapboard stores, homes and a snow white church. We found a diner serving Bavarian cream donuts and steaming mugs of coffee; just what we needed before heading off to Berkeley Springs where we had been told that an 'Apple Butter Festival' was in progress.

Apple Butter, stirred but not shaken.

     It took a 40-mile detour to track down the tiny spa town of Berkeley Springs, It lay in a damp hollow in the back hills of West Virginia and was once owned by Lord Fairfax. Its two streets were overflowing with craft stalls, folk music and people warming themselves around open fires upon which cauldrons of Apple Butter simmered.

         I am not sure whether it was the cold or the coffee that prompted my desperate need for a toilet. Mercifully I spotted a row of port-a-loos leading off the main street and with relief pulled open one of the doors. I already had one foot inside when I realised I was face to face with a very, very, large, over-weight, grossly obese, half naked lady, whose body was well and truly wedged within the walls of the thunder-box, her modesty was well covered by multitudinous folds of a Michelin tummy which cascaded over where her knees should have been.

       Boy! Was I surprised to see her! But not half as surprised as she was to see me! We were both speechless. The whole street seemed to be watching.  Should I wait for the fat lady to sing or leave before she found her voice and let rip with a rant at me? I decided to forgo the formalities of an introduction and just raised my cap as I closed the door.  Did I do the right thing? I wonder what Miss Manners would have advised? What would you have done? Answers on a post-card please.      

   The once elegant city of Troy NY sits upon the banks of the Hudson River, it's renown for two things, which I shall tell you about; thus saving you the time of ever having to drive there; First of all it has scores of unmarked one-way streets and numerous large signs pointing to a 'Visitors Centre' that doesn’t exist. It was only on our third trip around the same block that we stopped and were informed that a sturdy trestle table with leaflets was usually set up on days when visitors were expected, unless it was raining. The day we arrived was raining and I doubt we were expected. Second of all; during the American Revolution a butcher by the name of Sam Wilson built up a nice business as a government supplier of meat to the American Army, he stamped the letters U.S. on all his barrels of meat to indicate United States, this was before the states were even united, people however thought is meant  'Uncle Sam' - the term stuck and passed into common usage to mean the government. I bet you are glad we saved you the journey. 

       We stopped briefly at Bennington to view the enormous Obelisk which commemorates the day in August 1777 when the revolutionaries fought off the British who were trying to steal their cache of food. The locals, on hearing our British accents, took great joy joshing with us about the day they ‘kicked our butts’. I think the irony of their remark was lost on them, considering they were third and forth generation Italian, German and Swedish immigrants. Anyway, I rebutted by pointed out that hanging onto their lunch box was hardly justification to built a 306 ft. granite obelisk, and that any further insolence from them would be reported to the Queen when we returned from our inspection of the colonies. That really got them going.

No 2 - Don't mess with nature