Let's see. Where we last connected, I was on the way to Massachusetts to explore the Berkshires, a Western Massachusetts "mountain range." By "mountain range," uh, Mount Rainier thinks these are more like speed bumps. Well, if a mountain could think (it can't). They're really some exaggerated hills that turn glorious colors during fall. Its not fall. But this region possesses much charm even without a lot of red and orange foliage, and in fact, a few trees here and there have begun to change color.
I got into Great Barrington late evening and stayed a couple of nights at the Wainwright Inn, just close to the town center. Great Barrington seems to be the area's informal capitol. It sits close to several area small towns and other attractions, and on Route 7 (which runs almost from New York City to the Canadian border in Vermont). The Wainwright Inn is an old three story home originally built in the late 1700s, which has functioned as an inn since the mid-1800s. It's a B&B, and it features truly excellent breakfasts. They responded to my gluten free prissiness, making gluten free breakfasts just for me. Hence, gluten free chocolate cake (from scratch), gluten free bagels, gluten free waffle, gluten free cranberry pecan muffin, as well as ham and eggs, poached pear, mango and banana smoothie, bacon, orange juice...the proprietor, Marja, a stern looking but friendly, towering woman, was European and tried to stuff me like an Italian mother. I had a fairly large room with lots of power outlets (to recharge all my devices) and plenty of sitting room. No TV though. So, I went into the town to the one and only one sports bar and watched the Broncos-Ravens game. A bunch of Peter Griffins and their Rubenesque women had the same idea, unfortunately (BTW, its not that I judge people based solely on their appearance, but, yeah I pretty much judge people based on their appearance, if they look like morons at least...can you still say "moron"?). This one drunk and getting drunker guy kept going on and on about "Tawm Brady" and how he could make anyone an all pro "at the slot." This guy took the Ravens and gave 7 points. The Ravens got beat fairly convincingly, so this guy will have to pay. Idiot. Anyhow, the guy asked me if I followed the Saints or Texans or Cowboys, "because you're from the South, right?" Weird. No one in Texas thinks I'm from Texas, but because I don't sound like Cliff Clavin on Cheers (modern reference), here I'm Robert E. Lee. Without the slaves and stuff, of course.
The next morning, after Marja tried killing me with food, I took her travel tips and headed down an alternate road running along the Housatonic River to the Berkshire Botanic Garden. I passed the first of many old industrial/mill brick buildings that just stood abandoned. More on this in a later post, but nearly all these small towns through which I'm driving have one or more such spaces. Several larger towns have managed to redevelop or at least reclaim these buildings, but in many others, they stand vacant, like ghosts of more affluent times where they provided plentiful, high paying unionized manufacturing jobs. I've seen photos of the same thing in Detroit; long idled auto factories that once provided jobs to thousands throughout the area, now standing vacant and decaying. Just like Michigan. But, back to the Garden. Yes, I like wildflowers and trees and shrubs and grasses and all that pretty crap. But in a totally macho way, obvi. The fact that I'm nearly 50 and have never been married has absolutely nothing to do with liking flowers. So SHUT UP, OKAY? I'm TOTALLY not sensitive about this. Anyway, now that I'm back from Crazytown, this was a photo op day; the sun was shining brilliantly and I enjoyed the slight chill in the shadows. Too bad all the rest of you had to work. The Garden, just outside Lenox, Mass, features dozens of different native wildflower and other plant varieties, planted alongside Route 102 running into Stockbridge. Among its many features, it has a children's garden where local street urchins and gang members (right?) learn how to garden. I took a picture of every flower there, I think, so you can see them on all on my flickr site.
Next I went on to Lenox, one of the older and more prosperous towns on today's tour. I'd say its a big small town. Lenox includes several blocks of shops, a large town center, a numerous big old homes. I'd say this is Range Rover/Country Day School territory. Since I'd only eaten about a thousand calorie breakfast, naturally it was time to eat again, so I had an arugula and tomato with chicken salad at Haven, one of those places that thinks Whole Foods Market is a bunch of hicks. That's not true of course. They're a bunch of pretentious hicks, but that's beside the point.
I walked around the town a bit, then moved on to the Mount, novelist Edith Wharton's summer mansion, just outside Lenox. She designed it herself, and built it in 1902. Wharton came from a prosperous New York family that hobnobbed with the likes of the Roosevelts, and married into the Lenox Whartons, so they had plenty of money to live a Victorian society lifestyle. Wharton, however, wrote prolifically, both fiction and non-fiction. For example, she wrote a leading work on home design still used today, and books on gardening. She designed the Mount's gardens as well. Like many of the Newport "summer homes" I mentioned a few posts back, the Mount occupies extensive grounds with attractive gardens, even art installations. And the Mount itself possesses ample size befitting its builders' social status. Unlike its Newport contemporaries, the Mount embodies a relatively austere design concept: no Venetian art collections, tapestries, cherubs, lions wrestling alligators statues, stained glass ceilings, and the like. Rather, the Whartons opted to design the home simply, and relatively modestly. Edith Wharton detested the Gilded Age design to excess style, and consciously designed a home lacking those trappings. The tour guide, a history graduate student with quite the dramatic flair, explained all this to us. I couldn't tell whether I was listening to a tour guide or watching a performance. It reminded me of how my brother might lead a similar tour. To think of Pee Wee Herman's catch phrase, I think this guy WOULD have married Edith Wharton if he could.
Leaving the Mount, I headed to Stockbridge. This smaller town features some excellent homes from the 1800s, as well as the locally renowned Red Lion Inn, an English style hotel and restaurant/bar on the main square. The Red Lion was buzzing at happy hour ("buzzing" at "happy hour", get it?), as the tourists mingled with locals and everyone enjoyed a delicious cocktail at sunset. I also wanted to see whether I could find the famous Alice's Restaurant from the Arlo Guthrie song, and I did. Though its now known as Theresa's Restaurant, its right there on the town square "just a half a mile from the railroad track."
I made it back to the Wainwright, changed (my clothes, not the precious snowflake that is me, that is), then drove out to Bard College at Simon's Rock. As near as I can tell this is one of those places that admits 10th graders whose parents are too cool or socially connected to admit they shipped their kid off to military school. Anyway, its a bunch of Doogie Housers. This place totally looks like it doesn't give grades. Probably just participation ribbons. Though with a bunch of teenagers, the parties may not be as epic. Or, these days, maybe they're even better. It does have the feel of a place where no one watches TV or know anything about baseball. Anyway, its the anti-Yale. The buildings sit secluded from one another, tucked into and among the trees. Small paved roads link them together, sort of like at UC-Santa Cruz (Go Banana Slugs!). They allow the public to use the fitness facility for a fee, so I did. It was ok. Better than most hotel fitness rooms and because mine had no fitness room, it beat moving my bed across the room to create an open space, and hoping no one thought the noise was me committing several felonies.
BTW, how does anyone go to a school that lacks a real college football program? What do you do on Saturdays during football season? Study? That's hilarious. Really, what do these kids do? Go to the rowing match? Join the Sudoku team? I understand going somewhere like Smith or Williams (see a couple of posts from now) or Texas Tech might stimulate you intellectually, but don't you miss not following a football team?
After working out I had to go by the drug store to pick up some things (no not those things), and the cashier said she wanted to hear me keep talking. Honey, if I had a nickel for every woman who's told me that...I'd have seven nickels. Weird how these things work. They'd have totally freaked out if they'd heard Miss Birdie talk.
That night I had a nice dinner at Fiori in Great Barrington, an excellent Italian place, of brodetto. I'd never heard of it, but it seems like bouillabaisse with Italian seasoning. Actually it had scallops, shrimp, calamari, mussels, and tomato in a wine-based seafood broth. Maybe, because a bunch of guys who haven't worn a tucked in shirt in 10 years weren't crowding me, it seemed better than it was, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Its turned pretty cold here the last few days. The Wainwright didn't have much of a heater, so nights were pretty cold. Like, it the lower 50s cold. That's cold. Everyone in Austin no doubt has grown weary of upper 90s temperatures. But I came here to get away from that. I've been wearing my rain jacket and trying to get in and out of buildings as fast as I can. And its still early September. How do these people survive January and February? Hey, here's a pro tip: move to where there's never any ice on the ground. Actually, a lot of Rust Belters have done that, which is why they're losing population and Texas, Arizona, Florida, and other southern states are gaining it. That, plus, we have jobs because we don't tell people how to run their business. Well, mostly. And we have guns. Lots and lots of guns.
OK, well, there was my tough day of flowers and home tours and working out and Italian restaurants...maybe I should re-evaluate some things.
NEXT-western Massachusetts and into Vermont.
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