Or Such a Road

I lost a hubcap last week on my first post-vacation drive on the BQE. The BQE is actually pretty free of potholes at this point. The culprit was an aluminum bar of some sort lying across my lane. By the time I saw it... Well, you can get a hubcap on Amazon.com these days.

Jacek, who does work on our building, told me about a family trip from Poland to Lwow. The potholes on the Ukranian side were so deep people stuck tree branches into them to warn drivers. "It was like a slalom."

On my own recent travels, I encountered a couple of real suspension killers.  One is Old Cemetery Lane in Norwich, Connecticut. It leads, after some 40 yards from Town Street, to the Old Norwichtown Cemetery. I'd never been there, or even noticed it, despite having driven past its entrance perhaps thousands of times in my high school days. There is a parking spot just before the cemetery gates. And many mosquitoes.

It took me a few minutes to find what I was looking for: the Norwich Ovoid Carver.  When I did find one of his stones, it was much smaller than I expected, maybe a foot-and-a-half high, and extraordinary. I found two more scattered among more traditional forms. I came back on my return trip and found a few more.  

The stone at right belongs to Mr. John Post "Who Dyed Nouem 27 1710 Aged 84 Years." Well done, John.

The entrance to the lane is right across from McDonalds, where I would scarf down my burger and coffee in my Vernon Drug days. If you want to skip the Lane's pitfalls, you can park it the Bank of America lot and enter the cemetery directly behind it. 

For more about the NOC, check out the excellent Vast Public Indifference website. Be sure to take the quiz: 18th Century Connecticutian or Muppet? Bathsheba Bird, Algernon Snerp and many others await you there.