My flight out of Montgomery is supposed to leave around 2:30. If all goes well, I should land in Burlington by 11 pm, which means I probably won’t get home until well after midnight. I have no doubt that I will be exhausted by the time I get home, but I will ge glad to get to see Isabella in the flesh. I have a camera set up so I can check in on her, but she doesn’t know that. I don’t try to speak to her through the camera, even though I could. The last time I tried that, it upset her and me because I could hear her crying trying to find me.
I’m ready to be out of Alabama and back in Vermont. This trip, more than any before has cemented in me that Vermont is home. Alabama no longer is, and I am perfectly fine with that. I’m just ready to be home.
I made it down here. God help me! I’m trying not to let them drive me crazy. As soon as we got to my parents’ house, I went straight to bed, although apparently they don’t understand that somebody is trying to sleep. They were watching tv and talking away. However, I was just too tired to let it keep me awake.
The orthopedist’s office finally called about my hand, but not until I was somewhere in the air between Burlington and Washington, DC. I had about a two hour layover, so I was able to call them back. I ended up playing phone tag with them until I was finally able to talk to someone. I have an appointment on the day after I get back to Vermont.
I’m flying down to Alabama today. I have limited internet access at my parents house, and my cellphone barely works, if it works at all. They live too far from civilization for my taste. However, that’s where I’ll be until next Thursday (12/29). I have scheduled “Pics of the Day” through Christmas, but as for daily posts, they may be a bit sporadic, if I can post at all. I will try to post some while I’m gone, but if I don’t, know that I’m okay. I may have to get on here just to rant bit or tell something funny that happened. Right now, I’m looking forward to one thing: eating at my favorite Mexican restaurant tonight.
In about two weeks, I will be heading to Alabama for Christmas. I have not been back since before the pandemic. I knew too many people who had gotten COVID, even if vaccinated, because of the vast number of people who refused to get vaccinated. My sister’s family refused to get vaccinated until my brother-in-law’s employer mandated it, and there would have been no way to avoid them if I had come home for any of those other Christmases. I was safe in Vermont, and I planned to stay that way. My mother, though, insisted that I come home this year, and since she was paying for the plane ticket (though I wish I could have gotten her to spring for First Class instead of Coach—she didn’t realize that I opted for Main Cabin Plus or whatever they call it), I agreed. I could not have afforded to fly home this year by myself. The ticket was nearly $1000! I have flown to Europe cheaper. Anyway, I am getting off-topic.
I have very low expectations for going home. Yes, they will be glad to see me, but I know my father will be an argumentative asshole—he always is, and my mother will make snide nasty comments—she always does. My sister and brother-in-law will be their usual redneck, annoying selves. My niece and nephew will be excited to see me as well as some other family members. It’s what I expect. My mother will try to control everything I do and not want me to be out of her sight. Sadly, she will have some control over me because I will be staying with them, I can’t afford a hotel room for a week, nor can I afford a rental car for the whole time. So, anything I do will depend on borrowing her car.
However, I have already told her I will not be under her thumb the whole time. I have a good friend with whom I plan to have lunch while I am home, and if he can still make it, she’ll have to live with it. She’s not happy about it, but I’ve already told her that she lets me go for a few hours to have lunch with a friend, or I am just not going home. For now, she seems to have relented. If she brings this up again and tries to prevent me, I will flat out tell her, “You either let me do this or this is it—period. Once you take me to the airport, don’t call me, and don’t expect to see me again. We will be done for good!”
My parents controlled my life for too long. I let much of my life pass me by trying to get their love and acceptance. I DO NOT NEED IT ANYMORE! They can love me the way I am and accept me for who I am, or we don’t have to deal with each other anymore. I’ve had all I can take. My mental health has been much better in the three years since I’ve been away from Alabama, and I have no plans ever to go back to the way it was. I have only low expectations for going home. I know it will be awful and tiring and emotionally draining, but I will give them a chance to act like human beings for once. It’s the last chance I will give them. If there are arguments or hatefulness, then I don’t need it. I’ll get on that plan on December 29 and not look back.
Sometimes, especially during the coldest days of winter, I miss the sugary white sands and emerald waters of the beaches on Florida’s Gulf Coast. I especially miss going into a store to pick up a few things and see similar sights to the one above: a hot guy in swim trunks and barefoot doing a little shopping before heading back to the beach. I also used to love sitting on a blanket at the beach and reading a good book. Beach reads were always the best. The only problem with the beach is that you can easily get sunburned if you’re not paying close attention, and there is no way to leave the beach without having sand in uncomfortable places. Not to mention, on a hot summer day, the sand could literally burn your bare feet. Also, I never much cared for swimming in the ocean. It was okay once yo got past the waves, but for the most part, I just loved the scenery. More so than sitting on a blanket on the beach, I preferred sitting on the balcony of a hotel room looking out over the beach and watching all the hot guys. There was always a cute lifeguard or cabana boy to look at.
I remember one winter, my parents and I went down to Navarre Beach, which is about halfway between Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach. (All of these places are in Florida, of course.) I don’t remember where my sister was, but she was not with us. We stayed at a nice hotel on the beach, and I think it’s one of the only times we went the whole trip without arguing about something. I think this was just before Christmas and we did some Christmas shopping at the outlet stores in Sandestin. My fondest memory though was going to this little restaurant near our hotel. It was winter, and we mostly had the restaurant to ourselves. The food was good, but what made it so wonderful is that we laughed, talked, and had a great time having dinner that night. There weren’t many times like that. My father could be mean to my mother, and he and I often argued. My mother and I always got along much better than my father and I. However, this night, there was no fussing or fighting. I don’t remember what we were laughing so much about, but it was a very happy memory.
Like many of us, I have not traveled very far since the pandemic began. I went home to Alabama the Christmas before the pandemic started. In fact that holiday season, I took a cruise from New Orleans to Mexico with some friends of mine, then flew home to Alabama before returning to Vermont just before the New Year. I could not have guessed back then that I’d be spending my second Christmas in Vermont away from my family. I don’t completely miss traveling to Alabama. I know that probably makes me a bit of a bad person, but when I go home, I basically still have to pretend to be someone else and suppress my sexuality. I don’t miss doing that. I also have zero alone time when I go home, and I like my solitude at times.
While I may not miss going back to Alabama too much, I do miss traveling. For Thanksgiving and my birthday in 2019, I went to New York City to see my friend Susan, and we had a very lovely Thanksgiving dinner, and she took me to see Chicago, one of my favorite musicals, on Broadway. I got to see the Stonewall Inn and the Freedom Tower among other famous Manhattan landmarks. I would love to get to spend more time with Susan in person, whether that is her coming to Vermont or me going to Manhattan to see her, but that won’t happen until COVID-19 becomes as routine and as seasonal as the flu.
I also want to get back to Montreal, which has become one of my favorite places to visit. New Orleans used to be my favorite place to visit in North America (Italy, especially Florence and Rome, still beat out everywhere else), but while New Orleans is fun, it’s also kind of nasty; it stinks, and it’s filled with drunk tourists. Montreal is a much cleaner city. The Village (formerly the Gay Village) is much larger than New Orleans’s gay area in the French Quarter, and Canadians are much nicer than Louisianans. I just always have more fun and feel safer in Montreal, so I’d really like to go back when the border is easier to cross again.
When you are like me and enjoy traveling, it’s hard being somewhat confined to central Vermont. The farthest I’ve been is Burlington to the northwest of me and Lebanon, NH, to the southeast of me. Both cities are about 45 minutes away. I guess I got spoiled working at my museum. When I first started as the oral historian, I traveled all the time to conduct interviews all over New England. Then, we had the traveling exhibit which took me to places all over the eastern seaboard. It all came to a sudden halt when the pandemic began. At some point, I do believe we’ll get back to normal. Vermont thought it was ace enough to return to some sort of normalcy, and now we have the fifth highest percentage of COVID cases in the country. All we can really do is stay vigilant and keep up with our vaccinations. If we do that, then maybe we will return to normal sooner or later.
Six years ago today, I arrived in Vermont. It had been a hellacious trip up here from Alabama. My plan had been to drive to Blacksburg, Virginia, the first day to see a friend who was a PhD student at Virginia Tech. Then I’d drive to Albany, New York, for the second leg of my trip getting up the next morning and drive to my new apartment in Vermont. The trip did not go as planned. In Knoxville, Tennessee, while blocked in on both sides by semi trucks, I had no choice but to run over something in the road. Whatever it was punctured my gas tank. I pulled over on the side of the interstate and watched as gasoline poured out from under my car. I had to call 911 and they sent police and a fire truck to make sure everything was okay and put some type of absorbent over the leaked gas.
Close to tears, I called my dad. All of my possessions to begin my new life in Vermont were inside my little car. One spark or a lit cigarette from a passing car and it would have all gone up in flames. My dad called the insurance company and they found me a mechanic, a hotel, and a rental car because it was going to take at least several days before the mechanic could get a new gas tank. The police called a tow truck who loaded up my car and drove me to the mechanic. The tow truck driver was kind enough to wait as the mechanic and I did whatever we initially had to do, and then he drove me to my hotel. He was so nice and kind; he made the whole thing a little more bearable.
I checked into the hotel and waited for my rental car to be delivered the next day. Only one restaurant was nearby, a Mexican restaurant, so that’s where I ate dinner and had a huge margarita. Luckily, I got a call from the mechanic saying they’d been lucky and were able to locate a gas tank at another mechanic in town. They were able to get it late the next day and install it the next. I was stuck in Knoxville for two and a half days, but my car was ready around 11 am if I remember correctly.
Off I was again to see how far I could drove that day. The remember driving through the Shenandoah Valley and thinking I’d never get through Virginia. Finally, I did and continued north. Late that night, I was so tired, I could not drive any further than Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I pulled over at a hotel only to be told there was no room ar the inn. In fact some major convention was in town and few hotels had any vacancies. I finally found one, checked in and quickly crawled into bed and fell asleep. I got up early the next day and drove the rest of the way to my new apartment. That last eight hours and 500 miles was rough, but I did it.
October 7, 2015, I started my new life in Vermont.
Other than anywhere in the state of Maine (the only New England state I have not visited), I have wanted to visit Mount Washington in New Hampshire, which is called Agiocochook by some Native American tribes. Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at 6,288.2 ft. and the most topographically prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. The mountain is notorious for its erratic weather. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, the Mount Washington Observatory recorded a windspeed of 231 mph at the summit, the world record from 1934 until 1996. Mount Washington still holds the record for the highest measured wind speed not associated with a tornado or tropical cyclone. The mountain is located in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, in Coös, New Hampshire.
A few years ago, I read Jamie Fessenden’s Murder on the Mountain, a gay mystery novel that takes place on and around Mount Washington. Here is the publisher’s summary:
When Jesse Morales, a recent college grad who aspires to be a mystery writer, volunteers to work on the summit of Mount Washington for a week, he expects to work hard. What he doesn’t expect is to find a corpse in the fog, lying among the rocks, his head crushed. The dead man turns out to be a young tourist named Stuart Warren, who strayed from his friends while visiting the mountain.
Kyle Dubois, a widowed state police detective, is called to the scene in the middle of the night along with his partner, Wesley Roberts. Kyle and Jesse are instantly drawn to one another, except Jesse’s fascination with murder mysteries makes it difficult for Kyle to take the young man seriously. But Jesse finds a way to make himself invaluable to the detective by checking in to the hotel where the victim’s friends and family are staying and infiltrating their circle. Soon he is learning things that could very well solve the case–or get him killed.
Fessenden lives in New Hampshire, where several of his books take place. Murder on the Mountain is a mystery and gay romance, which is always fun. It is also my favorite of Fessenden’s books. I rarely read books more than once, but this one I have. It’s always enjoyable, and it got me interested in Mount Washington.
The Mount Washington Cog Railway, also known as the Cog, ascends the mountain’s western slope. The Cog is what attracted me to want to visit Mount Washington. I’ve always loved trains, and the Cog is a historic and interesting locomotive. Built by Sylvester Marsh between 1866 and 1869, the Cog is the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway (rack-and-pinion railway). The railway is still in operation. It uses a Marsh rack system and both steam and biodiesel-powered locomotives to carry tourists to the top of the mountain.
The steam locomotive above is the Waumbek built by the Manchester Locomotive Works in 1908 and is still in operation. In the picture above, you’ll notice how the boiler is tilted to compensate for the steep mountain grade of the tracks going up the mountain. The boiler needed to be even, so they tilted the boiler to compensate. The original locomotive #1 Hero (nicknamed Peppersass) first reached the summit in 1869. While it was primarily designed to build the railway, Peppersass saw passenger service until it was retired in 1878. Until 2008, the Cog was a steam railroad. As more locomotives were added over time, the wood-fired engines gave way to coal when the railway began to operate biodiesel engines. These engines were more economical, easier to maintain, and environmentally friendlier. The biodiesel engines take anywhere from 18-22 gallons of biodiesel fuel to complete the nearly 7-mile round trip; by comparison, the steam locomotives consume 1000 gallons of water and a ton of coal to make the same trip.
Five years ago today, I was stranded in Knoxville, Tennessee. I had headed out the day before for my new life in Vermont. I had everything planned. I was going to drive that first day to Blacksburg, Virginia, to see a friend of mine who was a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech. Then I would drive the next day to Albany, New York. I had reservations at a historic hotel in downtown Albany. Then I would spend the third day of my trip driving the rest of the way to Vermont. Life has a way of throwing a wrench in your plans because none of those plans happened.
I set out that Wednesday morning on October 7, 2015, and things looked like they were going so well. Then while driving down I-40 just outside of Knoxville, I hit some large piece of metal (well about the size of my head) in the road. It punctured my gas tank. I had no choice as semi-trucks flanked me on both sides. Luckily, no sparks were present, and I could pull off to the side of the road and call 911. The local fire department arrived and neutralized the gas, and my car was towed to a local garage. The tow truck was kind enough to take me to a hotel. So, I was stuck in Lenoir City, Tennessee, in a hotel. My insurance company provided me with a rental car while mine was being fixed, but it would not arrive until the next afternoon. Luckily, there was a Mexican restaurant next door to my hotel, so I could at least get something to eat, but emotionally, I was as wrecked as my car. I had called my new boss and told her what had happened, but she insisted that I had to be there by a specific date, and I could not be delayed. Luckily, I did make it to Vermont in time.
As I was finishing packing my car before beginning my journey to Vermont, a good friend of mine wrote to me to give me this advice:
I’m so excited for you starting off this new adventure and, more importantly, putting the past behind you. A friend once told me to not just look ahead but to metaphorically turn a corner because then if you should ever glance back, you won’t be able to see what’s behind you because it’ll be out of your sights. Good advice to go and never look back. This poem reminded me of a song on the radio. Every time I hear it, I smile and think of you. Play it as you hit the gas and drive like hell out of the south.
He then sent me the Andy Grammar song “Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah).” These days, I have a really hard time listening to this song because I had no idea that by the end of the next month, my friend would die in a car accident, but today, I don’t want to dwell on that. Today, I want to say: Hallelujah, it is good to be alive. I can’t help but wish my friend was also still alive. He would be so happy with the way things have gone in my life since. Yes, there have been ups and downs, but overall, I do have a new life and a life that I love.
I’ve written a fair number of serious posts in the past week or so mainly because a lot of serious events have been happening. I’ve tried to remain silent on politics and just be mostly a lighthearted blog, but I’ve realized I cannot be silent anymore. Today, however, I want to be a little bit lighter, but I need your help. Many of us dream of living someplace other than where we currently are while some people are exactly where they want to be. They cannot imagine living anywhere else.Â
I used to think I wanted to live in the mountains until I moved to Vermont. That dream had been to live somewhere in the Great Smokey Mountains. I never dreamed it would be in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Some people want to live on the beach. I’m not one of them although I enjoy visiting there occasionally. If I had to choose a beach, it would be one on the Gulf Coast somewhere along the Florida panhandle between the Alabama-Florida border and Panama City Beach. Unfortunately, it’s just too damn hot down there, and the sand constantly gets stuck in places where sand should never be. Also, that area is known as the “Redneck Riviera;” the politics are far too conservative for me. I love the emerald beaches and sugary white sand, but to visit only.
Another dream was to live in Florence, Italy, but I’ve realized now how tough it is living so far from my family. Instead, I will settle for wishing I could visit Florence, or Italy in general, on a regular basis. I’ve been to Florence twice, and it’s still one of my favorite places. Some people claim it’s too touristy, but I loved it. First, the city is beautiful. The art museums can’t be beat except maybe for some in Rome or in Paris. Second, the food is fantastic and always so fresh. Then there are the streets where you can almost get lost except you can usually see the Duomo from anywhere and can navigate your way back to the cathedral and get your bearings. I loved getting a gelato to cool off then walking into a store and buying a bottle of wine. They give you a glass so you can wander around the city at night enjoying the street performers and various forms of entertainment that are seemingly everywhere. My only issue was I was alone and didn’t have anyone with whom to enjoy my time there.
My one constant dream, though, has been to live in a relatively quiet area of the New Orleans French Quarter. The picture above reminds me of Tennessee Williams sitting on his balcony in the French Quarter watching the people pass by and dreaming of new and entertaining stories to tell. New Orleans has its characters, and the food is to die for—so tasty but also so rich you’d be happy if you died after eating one of their sublime meals. I know New Orleans has its drawbacks. The smell when you first arrive is off-putting, but eventually, you don’t notice it. Then there are the masses of drunk tourists, the rampant crime that is prevalent in the city, and the bright lights and noise of Bourbon Street. But…I love the Gay District that begins at the intersection of Bourbon and St. Ann; Bourbon Pub, Oz, and Good Friends are always so much fun. Also, there is my favorite straight bar, Pat O’Brien’s, where they make one of my favorite drinks, a hurricane. And always, there is the wonderful jazz music wafting down the streets. In many ways, it’s like the easygoing feel of a European city; the culture and history are unique and awe-inspiring.
Perhaps one day, I could live in New Orleans and travel to Florence during the craziness that is Mardi Gras. That would be ideal. Plus, from New Orleans, I’d be close enough to visit a favorite Florida beach, and at other times, I could drive up to the Great Smokey Mountains. These are my dream places.
So, here is where I want your help:If you could live anywhere in the world and not worry about money or working and just be carefree and enjoy life,where would you go? Where are your dream places? And why?
I don’t often get a lot of comments, but I know a good number of people visit my blog each day. I would love for you to comment on this post. Maybe you’ve lurked around my blog and not commented for whatever reason. Please comment now. Perhaps you comment regularly then by all means please comment now. Or this could be your first time here so why not comment now? I really love getting to know my readers, so tell me, where would you love to live?
Joe
The Closet Professor 