After a summer sojourn in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, on our way south we booked into a hotel off Interstate-95 in the northeast corner of North Carolina to wait out Hurricane Irma as it tore through Florida and the South.
With all the scrambling, dire warnings and dislocation from the storm, fellow travelers seemed frantic. Even little children sharing our table at the hotel’s complimentary breakfast dug into their Lucky Charms and waffles and hazarded an anxious, “Be safe!” to strangers who walked by.
Venturing out to explore the area on Day 1, we came upon a bleak city center – a mid-century commercial hub abandoned in favor of an obligatory Walmart, Target and lesser chains. Five days passed into night as we hunkered down in a tidy suite with our slumbering cat, a deck of cards and the TV remote, flipping between the Weather Channel and cable news. At night, we went in search of dinner, only to marvel at the options we encountered.
According to TripAdvisor, Best-N-Burgers is rated 2nd of 100+ local eateries. This was jaw-dropping news because its mush-in-a-bun was the kind of alarming mouthful that defies description. Hamburger? Ah, no.
The nearby Cracker Barrel Restaurant & Country Store, with what one reviewer called, “great, reliable comfort food,” failed at basic math. After quite the wait one night, I went back to the hotel and uncovered the takeout dinner of - not the promised six - but three grilled chicken tenderloins – paltry ones at that.
A comic once described Cracker Barrel Country Store as “a toxic cute dump," crammed as it is with tottering knick-knacks, frilly dolls, jewelry, clothes and seasonal candy, its air thick with competing scents of candles. Perhaps Cracker Barrel restaurant employees figure customers will be so overwhelmed by the challenge of getting out of the place we won’t notice pesky meal details. Given home-burned broccoli and sad mashed potatoes, I noticed.
“People are parked in hotel rooms around here, waiting to learn if they’ll even have a place to go home to,” I said to the restaurant manager in a phone call requesting money back. “It’s not very hospitable to send me out into the night with half a meal.”
Forget about what awaited us at Bojangles or Chili’s.
Too much time on my hands, that’s what it was, or maybe I wouldn’t have cared. But culinary shocks cannot go unnoticed so soon after the chilled oysters and boiled lobsters and sweet corn and tomatoes of New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
All in all, we were fortunate travelers caught up in a weather drama. But, we feel for the America that took to southbound Interstate-95 after the brutal storm, in some cases their vehicles packed with cranky babies, sullen teens and earthly possessions and crawling along the road at five miles an hour. Time and again, we all queued anxiously at gas stations and stood in long lines at restrooms and fast food counters as road crews filed in from their convoys of power-company trucks, and we watched them march by like troops. Indeed, they were our trusty storm troops.
Arriving in St. Petersburg, we found our home intact and power on. It was such a relief, we nearly danced a jig; our enthusiasm tempered by concern for those lacking intact homes, dry land and electricity. Now, we see twice-hit Puerto Rico faces months without any power and leveled Caribbean islands are equally devastated.
Our country has so many issues to tackle. So many struggling towns and families. As Americans, we should at least be urged to see each other. So, I cannot fathom why the occupant of the White House felt compelled to shoot off 17 nasty tweets this weekend condemning black football players taking to bended knee over social injustice when he could have acknowledged the struggles of storm-tossed citizens. Surely, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there looms an unnatural disaster-a-day affecting us all.
As always, the tweeter distracts and inflames those who express loyalty to country without acknowledging what needs fixing. Reading comments in The New York Times complaining that players shouldn't irritate fans with their pregame protests, I responded to one man:
ReggieM
Florida 1 day ago
Sir, this is not about you. If players stopped the action during a game to express their resistance to injustice, you’d have a legitimate gripe.
Black neighborhoods are patrolled like war zones and videos reveal disturbing police violence in black neighborhoods. In too many instances, wary officers are equipped for civil disobedience but not trained to forge relationships in communities, especially when the nation’s leaders egg them on to violence, as does the calculating troublemaker in the White House.
Words and intent matter. If we are to sing a pre-game battle song to honor our soldiers and veterans, let that be the stated goal. To many black Americans, we are yet to be the land of the free. If high-paid black football players feel compelled to show their solidarity with fellow blacks, we the people who seek a more perfect union, justice, domestic tranquility and the common welfare should be bowing our heads with them.
At Saturday’s Global Citizens Concert in Central Park, the incomparable Stevie Wonder got down on both knees.
We’re all holed up, waiting out the latest unnatural disaster. And with no trusty storm troops around to make things right.
Stormy