On the road to visit Bam-Bam

A Florida road trip is just not a proper road trip. A proper road trip should take place as much as possible on state or county routes or other two-lane highways. Florida is the ultimate Interstate Highway state. They are everywhere and often it is all but impossible to get from A to B without spending at least part of the trip on I-something.

Going anywhere in south Florida for me demands a run through Orlando that is a one-hour, bumper-to-bumper, 70-mile-per-hour NASCAR simulation on a good day; on a bad day it is a 90 minute slog behind an endless string of minivans and SUVs, filled with kids, driven by Midwesterners and Canadians, each one searching for Disney World, Universal Studios or Bibleland (official name: Holy Land Experience). However, they all intuitively know the one unbreakable Florida traffic law: slower moving traffic keeps to the left.

If you do find a back road worth driving you will find the parts of Florida Tosh.0 describes as “flat, hot and dumb,” not that you can see anything because you will now be behind either an RV, an SUV pulling a boat or jet-ski, a landscaping crew in a king cab pulling a trailer loaded with eight lawnmowers, a full sized pesticide van, an F-150 4x4 jacked up at least 24 inches, or a Ram Heavy-duty with four tires on the rear axle. If you pass it, another will be right there in front of you. If you are the first car stopped at a light, three of them will turn from the cross street into your intended path as you wait helplessly for the green.

Thank God for the blues. I had a couple of Roadhouse episodes on the iPod and heard some good new (to me) stuff including Doug MacLeod and Chainsaw Dupont.

I went down to Ft. Myers to see my former Fortune colleague Bruce McNaughton, now 77 and retired; that’s him above. He may be the most memorable character I’ve ever known and no one I know was ever better able to force a major corporation to shape itself around his idea of how to do his job. I learned a lot from him over the years and I wanted to ask him a few questions for a writing project I’m working on. That’s going to take some time to complete, but you might enjoy a short anecdote that sheds a good deal of light on the essence of the man.

It was 1980 and I had just joined the ad sales staff at Fortune. I was 31 which was then pretty young for the job. One quiet afternoon Bruce’s 300-pound, bald countenance suddenly filled my office doorway.

“What are you doing right now kid?” he bellowed, which was his soft voice.

“Nothing special. Why?”

“Come with me. I want to show you how to treat a customer.”

I grabbed my suit coat and followed him down the hall, down the elevator and through the lobby of the Time-Life Building. We crossed 6^th Avenue past Radio City. Bruce, often referred to as BAM (an acronym for his full name: Bruce Angus McNaughton) carried a gift-wrapped box which I was sure held a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt Whisky.

“Where are we going?”

“BBDO” he shouted over his shoulder as I struggled to keep up. At Fifth Avenue he turned north in front of Sak’s.

“I thought we were going to BBDO” I asked. ”Why are we going uptown?”

“I need to pick up the rest of the parade.”

At 54^th Street there was a busker dressed in full Scottish garb – kilt, sporran, tam – the works -- playing the bagpipes, a tip box at his feet. Bruce handed him a twenty and commanded him to follow us as we turned towards Madison and continued our journey to BBDO.

We entered their building and in those pre-9/11 days there were no ID checks or other formalities. We got in an elevator and Bruce punched 18. At 16 the last people in the car who were not part of our little parade got out. As soon as the doors closed Bruce shouted, “Hit it!”

I simply lack the words to describe what it feels like to be in an enclosed elevator car inches from a bagpiper in full throttle. I’ll just say it’s nothing I recommend unless you’re the sort of person who sits in the first row of the Daytona 500 without ear protection and enjoys it.

The doors opened on the executive floor of BBDO and the world stood still. The receptionist rose half way up and froze in her place. We marched out of the car and past her without a pause; Bruce in the lead followed by the piper and then me. I felt like the guy the Second City cast had pulled out of the audience to be a part of some unfathomable improvisation. I nodded sheepishly to the receptionist who looked right through me.

We entered the office space and time stopped. The pipe’s volume ended all phone calls and conversations instantly. It was as if someone had pushed the ignition button on an F-16 inside the building. Heads popped up from cubes. Closed office doors opened and open doors filled with gob-smacked faces.

We turned down one corridor and then another until we reached a corner office where the object of our visit stood slack-jawed in awe of the approaching chaos. I’ve long since forgotten who he was; he could not have been too important or Bruce would have worn his full Scottish kit as well. This fellow was important, but ranked only a bottle of Glenfiddich and a serenade. When I visited Bruce last week he confirmed that he made this sort of musical presentation a number of times and he did not recall this particular event.

But I can guarantee you that the recipient never forgot it, or the man who brought the magic to his door.

Mini road trip

I'm heading down to the Gulf Coast tomorrow for a few day to visit relatives and to interview Bruce Angus McNaughton for my book project. Those of you who know Bam-Bam should feel free to suggest questions for the interview, although I'll be lucky to get a question in edge-wise.

FYI, it is forecast to be 78 - 80 and sunny in Ft. Myers and Naples this week.

Also, I'm still laughing over a line from Gail Collins last week where she compared the Republican budget cuts proposal to a someone who is 50 lbs over weight deciding to cut down on their intake of kale.

Chillin’ in Chile

Happy New Year everyone. I’ve just spent two-and-a-half weeks in Chile with my family and if I had the descriptive powers of a travel writer I’d make this a long love letter to that country. I don’t have those skills but I’d like to give you a few reasons to put Chile on your list of places to visit someday.

To give you a little perspective, the population is about 17 million, a little smaller than Florida’s, and it is a little bigger than Texas in size; a good deal of the land mass takes the form of the Andes Mountains that run the length of the country along the eastern border and the Pacific Ocean borders on the west. On average Chile is only 110 miles wide.

The population of the capital city of Santiago is nearly 7 million but it feels much smaller and less dense than New York which has 8 million people. In fact Atlanta feels bigger to me. I mean this in a good way. The city has an open airy feel to it. There are historic areas with 18^th and 19^th Century European influences, but Chile grew tremendously in the late 20^th Century and much of it has a very modern appearance with very hip architecture and lots of small, attractive parks and wide streets. Traffic is bad, but no worse than most big cities, and they have a modern, clean and efficient subway system that we used quite a bit. The bus system is also said to be good but I didn’t try them. Taxis are plentiful and cheap.

Santiago has lots of modern hotels and interesting restaurants and both are comparable to the cost of visiting a large American city. They are said to have an honest and professional police force, although I had no experience in that area either. The population is almost entirely European, native people, or a racial mix of the two; we saw almost no people of obvious Asian or African descent.

Santiago sits right at the base of the Andes. It was the beginning of their summer when we arrived and, like many basin cities, Santiago is occasionally plagued with smog issues. But we had a nice clear week there. Every day was sunny, about 75-80 degrees with zero humidity. Absolutely lovely.

Our son Joe is spending his junior year at the University of Chile and has been there since last July, so we had a fluent Spanish-speaking guide. A few words of Spanish go a long way there and it is pretty easy to find English speakers if you need one. That said it was great having someone with local knowledge to show us around.

Our daughter Charlotte joined us a few days into the trip and after a couple more days in Santiago we made our way to the coast, stopping along the way at one of several notable wine-producing areas within the country. It’s only an hour-and-a-half car ride from Santiago to the Pacific, but we took a looping route that took us through Viña del Mar on our way to the village of Cachagua.

Our old friend from New York, Jon May, who has lived in Chile for more than 20 years, told us that Viña was the Jersey Shore and Cachagua the Hamptons of Chile; the analogy was pretty good. Viña was a large beach town with tons of hotels, restaurants, bars, shops and a casino. It was also very crowded and hectic. Absolutely worth a visit, but at least three of the four of us were glad to have picked the more sedate Cachagua with its miles of uncrowded beaches broken up by stretches of rocky coast.

The beaches were fantastic but better suited to the sea lions and penguins that populate the area. While the air temp was near 80 the water was below 60 and the only people in it were surfers in wet suits.

These beaches were for lying or walking upon. They alternated with very old stone paths through the rocky stretches so that it was possible to walk for miles though a string of similar small villages along the coast. The stone paths were typically at the bottom of tall cliffs upon which sat large, old homes belonging to the Chilean elite. We saw a couple of helicopters sitting on their beachside pads.

The sandy beach areas were also dominated by beautiful homes, more often of the Chilean modern style, which I like very much. The analogy to the Hamptons is good to a point, but I don’t think I saw a home over 10,000 square feet. While that is certainly a very big home, there were no mini-Hyatt-Hotel-personal-dwellings on these beaches, and I estimate that more than 90% of the homes were less than 3000 square feet. My point is that the area scored pretty low on the mine-is-bigger-than-yours scale. This extended to automobiles; we saw far more Subarus than Mercedes.

We had a really nice, spacious, modern apartment walking distance to the beach, but facing west over the countryside. Rooster crowed at dawn. No alarm needed.

Dogs are everywhere in Chile. The authorities pick them up, vaccinate and spay and then release them. Everyone feeds them. In Santiago they stand patiently at street corners and cross with the pedestrians when the light turns in their favor. My son told me one walked him home one night after he’d had a few beers, warding away a couple of other strays he didn’t like the looks of. When Joe got to his place the dog walked him to his door and then left.

In Cachagua they’d lead us done the stone paths or accompany us to the market. Between walks they laid in the dirt streets in a sunny patch; cars and pedestrians worked around them. They didn’t beg and they mostly appeared to be well fed and clean. They were charming.

We ate very well. Chile is not noted for its restaurants, but there are some good ones and the local fruits and vegetables are excellent. Avocados (called paltas there) are served with everything and were delicious. My new favorite food may be something called “pastel de choclo” which is a kind of chicken and onion soup served in a heavy croc over which is layered something like corn pudding. It is baked until the top has a golden crust. Fantastic.

The local chorizos are very good, although they like to serve them “Italian style” with avocado, tomatoes and mayo, so-called because it resembles the red, green and white of the Italian flag. We had a nice kitchen and a grill in Cachagua, and Joe likes to cook. I preferred the chorizos with his homemade salsa served on a particular type of Chilean bread called marraquitas. I’d go to the paneria every morning for a supply hot from the oven; after ten it was gone replaced by another type we liked less.

On a one day visit to Valparaiso we stumbled across an empanada shop that served nothing but five kinds of empanadas, three kinds of soda, and tea, the traditional accompanying beverage with Chile’s version of the hamburger. They were fresh from the oven and delicious, and we had the satisfaction of being the only non-Chileans in the joint, which is always a fun feeling – like we were in the know.

We had several spectacular seafood meals near Cachagua. One at Punta del Mar in Maitencillo, and two at Chiringuito in Zapallar. The food was similar at both; traditional Chilean treatments of basic shellfish and fish taken from the ocean that morning. It was fresh, simple and tasty beyond my limited vocabulary’s ability to do the food justice. They were both very nice places but Chiringuito was truly special. It sits on the beach in Zapallar, which is a small horseshoe shaped cove – partially sand and partially rocky. We sat in carved wooden chairs outside under a perfect blue sky while pelicans dove for their own lunch as we ate ours. Multi-colored fishing boats bobbed in the gentle waves. I’ve never eaten in a more perfect setting.

As anyone who has been in a wine shop in the past few decades knows, Chile makes some very fine wines and we sampled many of them. They were terrific and cheap. Finally, on the food front, if you go to Santiago, be sure to eat at my friend Jon May’s place, the Tortilla Factory, one of Chile’s few Mexican restaurants. It’s better than any Mexican restaurant I’ve eaten in in New York and they serve the world’s best smoothies. It’s in Las Condes, one of the nicest parts of the city.

I didn’t think this post would be so long, but I wanted to do justice to a lovely country we enjoyed so much. I haven’t even mentioned how friendly the people were, and after all, that’s what really makes any place special. I’ve left out too much. For anyone who is interested you can see photos from the trip on my Facebook page.

Was it perfect? Well, the only downside of a visit to Chile that I can think of is that it is a long way there and relatively expensive to get to. It was ten hours of flying from Orlando plus a three-hour layover in the Panama City airport, not something I can recommend as a good time unless you enjoy unlimited “duty-free” shopping at prices about 20% higher than those at your local mall.

But that was a small price to pay for a wonderful travel experience, and there is so much more to see. We didn’t even get up into the real Andes, or to the southern end of Chile which has some of the most spectacular land in the world, often called “the Yosemite of Chile.” Northern Chile has one of the largest deserts on earth. Maybe next time.

Adios.

Vamos a Chile

Merry Christmas everyone. This will be my last post for a while as we are leaving tomorrow for the final road trip of 2010; 2-1/2 weeks in Chile including a week in Santiago with the rest of the time at the Pacific Ocean village of Cachagua. As I’m sure this highly sophisticated crowd knows it is summer down there now. My son is attending the University of Chile this year and my daughter is flying down too, so we will have a family Christmas at the beach.

Here is a list of my 2010 road trips in chronological order: Yonkers, New York to Arlington, Virginia. Arlington to Charlotte and Wilmington, NC and on to DeLand, Florida, my winter base. DeLand to Tampa. DeLand to Memphis and Clarksdale, Mississippi. DeLand to Myrtle Beach and Charleston, SC. DeLand to Yonkers for a month with a visit in Winston-Salem, NC along the way. Yonkers to Boston for daughter’s graduation. Numerous trips to NYC. Yonkers to Westhampton, MA, my summer base. Day trips to Pittsfield, MA (Melville’s home), Hartford (Twain’s home) and Boston. Westhampton to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Westhampton to Erie, PA, Warren, Ohio and Detroit. Westhampton to Erie, Warren, Greenville, PA and Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio. Back to DeLand via Arlington. DeLand to San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Sonoma and Napa Valleys. DeLand to Miami. And now to Chile. That was fun but I plan to dial it back a little in ’11.

Happy New Year!

I'm back

Well, I’m back in Florida and more or less settled in. I’m working on a political post, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a recent road trip story, which I found rather heartening. I drove more than 7000 miles between May 15 and September 15, all without incident until my right rear tire blew out when I was about 200 miles from my Florida base last Sunday. I was on a two lane country road. There was no real shoulder, so I pulled into the grass and called for assistance. It was late afternoon, 94 degrees and humid, with threatening thunderheads on the horizon. There wasn’t a building in site – hadn’t been for miles. I leaned against the completely packed truck of my car and waited for the service truck, hoping he would arrived before the rain. If not I’d be forced to take refuge in the Dutch oven that my car was quickly becoming.

In the 45 minutes I waited, four vehicles stopped to ask me if I needed help, and a Hollywood casting director couldn’t have picked a more interesting mix of people. The first car, a late model, upscale SUV held a 60-ish couple who looked like they were on their way to a church social. They couldn’t have been nicer and promised to stop on their way back in about an hour to see how it was going.

Next, a 10 year-old F-150 pickup driven by a young Hispanic man who spoke broken English, stopped. He offered to change the tire for me. Third came a minivan so bland it could have been any age or make, occupied by a couple who were closer to 80 than 70. The wife was driving and she actually made a U-turn to see if I needed anything.

Finally, an 80’s era Firebird (or was it a Trans Am?) pulled up, driven by young white man wearing a backwards ball cap over a Florida mullet, a sleeveless tee-shirt and grimy blue jeans. If you’d seen him I suspect the label that would have come to mind would have been either “red neck” or “white trash.” I confess, with some shame, those were my first thoughts. But he made sure a truck was coming and then pointed out a path that leading through the woods to his house where he told me I was welcome to wait for the truck if it started raining.

Sometimes the world seems like a cold place, but there are a great number of good people among us.

Road notes

It took me seven days to drive from Central Florida to New York last week, and it’s a good thing because I needed a whole week to mentally prepare myself for the final leg of the journey – the Cross Bronx Expressway – America’s worst road and anything but an expressway.

I played a few rounds of golf in South Carolina, and visited a couple of friends in North Carolina along the way. I made at least 50% of the trip on non-interstate highways, which added a little time but still made the trip go faster. This included most of the 105 mile stretch of the Skyline Highway through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I think it looks like the photo above, but when I got on at the southern entry point it was drizzling and I couldn’t see much out in the distance. There are only a few exit points along the way. I skipped the first one and shortly thereafter the drizzle turned to a steady, hard rain, accompanied by a dense fog that made even the 35 mile per hour speed limit impossible to reach. But I saw a lot of pretty trees and stopped at a couple of lodges operated by the National Park Service, which look to be worth a visit some other time. You can still actually see some local character in America if you get off the I-roads.

Road music was, as usual, heavily focused on the blues. I listened to several recent Roadhouse podcasts for the second and third time, as well as “Soul Monster” by Rod Piazza. The blues comes in so many styles I’m sometimes not sure how to characterize a group. Rob in a harp player in the Chicago style, but also plays a little jump blues and does a great cover of the old Sunny and the Sunglow’s song, “Talk to Me.”And I’ve probably heard half of the new album by the Mannish Boys and have to get the whole thing. They really rock. Woody recently gave me a couple CDs by Guitar Gabriel, a real-deal old-time Delta bluesman who was once a patient of his, but who has since gone to his reward. (I’m certain these last two facts are not related in any way.) He is well worth a listen.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi are surely the funniest guys on the radio. I download “Car Talk” episodes and listen to them on my i-pod while driving. You don’t have to be a car nut to love Tom and Ray; you just have to enjoy laughing. They crack each other up with cornball jokes and old stories about the cars they owned, their families, crooked mechanics and anything else that pops into their heads. Both are MIT-trained engineers and have run an auto repair business in Cambridge, Mass for many years.

If you’ve never heard them try the April 17, 2010 episode in which we hear a very funny story about how Ray was sick and got left behind when the crew went to South Beach for a little R&R this winter. Then a wealthy grandma calls in to complain that her grandson doesn’t want to drive the Mini Cooper she offered to buy him because it is a “chick car,” which leads to an interesting sociological debate. Finally, a nebbishy Washington bureaucrat suffering from DMLC (delayed mid-life crises) calls in with a question about preserving the top on his Miata convertible. This leads to the funniest bit of all when Tommy tells him about his 1974 Chevy Caprice Classic convertible, and weaves a philosophy of life into his insistence on putting the top down in May and never raising it again until October – rain or shine. It was raining as I listened to it, but it didn’t stop me from laughing.

Random road notes and this week’s picks

A thousand miles from home in a dumpy hotel bar, but it’s been a fun trip. Crossed the GW Bridge on Tuesday. The Caddy had a full tank and new shoes. The day was sunny. On the seat next to me were a loaded i-Pod, a bottle of water, an E-Z Pass, a Captain Beefheart CD, two pair of sunglasses, and a box of Montecristo White Toro Grandes, courtesy of my old mates at Time (gracias amigos!). Ready for a road trip.

The Captain was a farewell gift from Hankster. He and Doc and I had an herbal cocktail in the Village a few days earlier. I’d planned to listen to it on the way out of town, but contemplating the NJ Turnpike to a Capt. Beefheart soundtrack was just too frightening, so I held off on the CD for a while.

First stop – Arlington, Virginia and dinner with Birdman and KGWhit (whom I’d not met before). We went to “Ray’s the Steaks” (get it?) – corny name but great food. We talked mostly politics and had a fine time, although I also had a triple double beverage evening (see-throughs, red wine and Remy) which made for a late start the next morning.

Hauled down I-95 until I hit North Carolina, then turned onto US 17. It was beautiful for quite a while but civilization eventually took over. Love the back roads but some parts of the country only deserve to be seen from an interstate highway.

Stopped in Wilmington, NC and met up with my Bro – the other db. Had dinner with him and the GM of the local Cadillac dealer. (Told him my Caddy joke, which he of course, loved.) Talked cars. (Did you know more cars were sold in China than the US last year?) Had an awesome meal at a local joint – Hieronymus Seafood. Fabulous oysters, the best scallops ever eaten and ridiculously cheap. That’s one of the great things about leaving NY – everything seems cheap.

Got up early and emailed Fenway for a restaurant suggestion in Charleston. She sent me to Harmony Grill. What a find. Sesame crusted catfish. Fried cheese grits. Unbelievable cornbread. Chocolate pudding, and an unpretentious little chardonnay. Fired up a Monty and walked around south of Broad and along the Battery on a sunny afternoon. What a fantastic city!

Popped in the Captain and put the pedal to the metal in order to make up some time through lower SC. It was the perfect combo. The Captain is trippin’. (Other road trip music: Murphy’s Saloon podcasts, Roseanne Cash, Ray Davies, The Insomniacs, and Watermelon Slim – all good to great!)

A couple more hours on 95 and it got real dark fast, and the big trucks own the road. Got off in Brunswick, GA and found a Comfort Inn that will never be mistaken for a Ritz Carlton (I do miss one or two things about working). Tomorrow: Florida.

The playoffs: Well, I was 2-2 last week, which is good enough to be Secretary of Homeland Security. I’m getting my picks for this weekend in early so all you second-guessers can stick your necks out this round.

Dallas over Minnesota by 7. The ‘Pokes are hot and the ‘Vikes are not.

Jets over San Diego by 3. I’m picking with my heart over my head on this one. The “same old Jets” will show up eventually, but not this weekend.

New Orleans will beat Arizona by one. The over/under on this one is 137. Jack Tatum is coming out of retirement to play d-back for NO.

The “Battle of Baltimore” is the one I really want to be right about. I’ll be happy to be 1-3 if Indy can take this one by 10, leaving Ray Lewis humiliated, prostrate, and crying like a little girl at the gun.

RIP Teddy Pendergast. Whatever you thought of isco, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes were awesome.