35. New York, City

The first time I went to the east in my young adult life I thought I was going to see city everywhere but when I drove through Pennsylvania, upstate New York and northern New England I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t all so different from my own northern Idaho. Ok, the little towns are much closer than out here but it’s still rural, wooded and beautiful. The east coast itself was much as I had imagined—sprawling megalopolis—but I still found myself enjoying the Big Apple and I still do. Anyone who likes lots of open green spaces, however, has to put that aside for awhile because in that densely populated city there isn’t much to be found. But Central Park is there and people swarm to it. While it is a different green space, the observation of people is a thing I rather enjoy. Every variety of person imaginable can be found in Central Park or New York as a whole for that matter.

            When you walk down the city streets the buildings tower over you much as the canyon walls of my own Salmon River. You can set in lawn chairs at Times Square and tune into something on one of the big screens through your cell phone. You can stand in line for Broadway tickets on discount. (We went to The Lion King.) You can catch a ferry to Lady Liberty. You can ride the bus and get snapped at for not having exact change (though that was years ago and now you can probably just use some sort of metro-pass). You can go spend hours at the Museum of Modern Art or the Museum of Natural History or the Metropolitan Museum of Art or any other museum. You can go into Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s and fight off the perfume sellers at they try to spray you with the latest scent. You can ride the elevator to the top of the Empire State building or so many others. (I went to the top of the Twin Towers on my first visit, but alas…) You can chat with the man selling $5 I ♡ NY T-shirts and then buy a couple from him. You can walk through the one really old cemetery at the Episcopal Church to prove to yourself that it really is an old colonial city. You can go into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and light a candle and say a prayer. And you can always go back to that park bench in Central Park and watch the ducks, maybe even wonder where they go in the winter. It’s just one city on a famous Dutch named island but it is America, disarming and welcoming, teeming and lonely all at the same time and I’m thankful for it. (And yeah, I’m pretty thankful I don’t live there either.)

34. The Statue of Liberty

            It’s true that you can enter the United States almost anywhere now in the advent of air travel, but the borders and the coasts are still the primary gateways into the land of liberty. I already wrote about the iconic western gate in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, but it would be entirely remiss of me to not be filled with gratitude for that gracious gift from the French in 1896, the Statue of Liberty herself. Lady Liberty has welcomed immigrants to the country for over 130 years now and she has been a constant beacon of hope for those of us already here. Emma Lazarus wrote a poem of which the last few lines are often quoted and I quote here:

Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.

Send these, the homeless tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.                                                             

I only went to visit her once, but I’ve seen her standing proudly there every time I’ve been to New York since that crazy summer day in 1986 when I was herded onto a tour ferry along with thousands of others to celebrate her 100^th year of welcoming. She’s beautiful not just in her presence but in all her symbolism, this angel of mercy waiting for the world. Often we try to shut her down, equating the ideals with a physical space but you can never squelch ideas. And that ideal lives on, breathing well before a beautiful statue graced the entrance to New York Harbor and the land of the free. And it is for that ideal which I strive to uphold as much as that colossus of copper which immigrated from France that I am grateful for.

33. The Golden Gate Bridge

The United States has always been a country of immigrants, immigrants attracted to the idea of liberty. We’ve also always been a country that struggles with immigration. Yet amidst all that conflict we still welcome the idea and the people who cling to it, and our port cities have come to symbolize all that struggle teeming with the ideals of liberty. Of course New York Harbor has the Statue of Liberty but out west in San Francisco we have the Golden Gate Bridge. I love that bridge. I don’t even claim to grasp much of its symbolism but I get enough of it to know it’s a sign of welcoming. Every time I’ve been there people are flocking to it. It’s no big surprise that many of them are Asian, or that many of them are already American citizens just come to remind themselves of the American struggle: the gold rush, the westward migration, the melting pot, the land of ideas. That crazy bridge that crosses the opening of San Francisco Bay is more than just some architectural wonder, it’s a feeling and that feeling is different for every foot that steps on it. Unfortunately for some it’s a feeling of despair because so many suicides are committed by jumping off that bridge. For me it’s beauty of humanity, American humanity and ideals. When the fog obscures most of the bridge you will still see its heights rising above. It represents goodness to me. And I think, for me, the greatest paradox is that it’s in California which is not by any stretch a favorite state for me. So that probably makes me love that bridge even more. I’m always a sucker for symbols. The Golden Gate Bridge is one of those American symbols that I am thankful for.

32. No-Li Brewery

            

            While it’s no longer October, it’s still autumn and beer season (isn’t it always beer season?) so I have to tell you about another brewery here in the Inland Northwest that I really enjoy. It’s in Spokane and it’s called No-Li. I haven’t been there too many times but I’ve found you can buy their beer in other places around here. One of my favorites is their March Forth IPA. I always like a citrusy IPA and this one is nice and orange-y and oranges are my favorite citrus fruit. I don’t claim to be a big fan of fruity beers but I don’t really think of those citrus tones in an IPA to be all that fruity, they just add a freshness to a typically bitter flavor and for me the combination is great. But have no fear. At No-Li you can get a variety of beers from my favorite IPA’s to stouts and Hefeweizens.

          The brewery itself is in a kind of strip mall just east of the Gonzaga campus on the Spokane River. It has good pub food that is reasonably priced and, like I said, good beer. Next door to the brewery is also Dry Fly Distillery. (It has nice Gin.) The parking lot area is the typical non-descript suburban strip mall but then you walk into the mall, down a hallway past the distillery into the micro-brewery and it’s almost a world of its own with views out onto the river. Inside there is the bar with plenty of televisions (all silenced) so you can watch a game. I’m suspecting the place is hopping during the Zag games, but I have never been there during any game of particular interest to me. At any rate, the place is a fun spot with good beer and for that I am grateful.                                                    

31. Fairfield County, Connecticut

           

           Fairfield County, Connecticut is the most southwestern county in the state of Connecticut and the most populous. The population density is due to its proximity to New York City—it butts up right against it. In spite of its dense population it really is a beautiful place with rolling hills and a variety of deciduous trees still trying to forest those hills in spite of all the people. When I think of it I think of an established suburbia that in the ancient days of our settlement was sparsely populated by farmers. You can still see many of those farm houses with little historical plaques on them. Someone’s name is on the plaque with the date the house was built, usually in the late 1600’s to early 1700’s. My family owned and lived in one of those homes in Trumbull for nearly 300 years but then they moved west to Idaho when my grandmother knew she was losing her battle to breast cancer. The house was sold, moved a few blocks away and turned into a veterinary office. About 20-25 years ago it caught fire and burned to the ground.
          I don’t know just what took my Puritan ancestors from Massachusetts Bay to Fairfield County and Trumbull, Connecticut but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some sort of religious dissension. You would think we would have kept better track of that if we could keep a house for that many years but, then again, day to day living has always had a way of getting in the way of memory. It doesn’t change the fact that I have a strong attachment to that place even as I live so far away from it and would never actually want to live there. As I have said in earlier posts, this Potatohead is at heart a New England Yankee so it is with great affection and distant familial memories that I have a strong attachment and great love of Fairfield County, Connecticut.

30. Bread Loaf School of English

I have a strong connection to New England because that’s where my dad’s family is from so it should be no surprise that when I got my first chance to go there I jumped at it. In 1986 after completing my second year of teaching I got a scholarship to begin my Master’s degree at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont. I remember driving there from the Connecticut suburbia to the little rural spot in the middle of the Green Mountains. It was like summer camp for book people. In the beginning I was terrified and had strong feelings of inadequacy (all proving to be entirely unfounded) but eventually I came to love the place and gathering of people who had converged there. I am still in contact with the people I met there and I have reunited with them in various places throughout the United States and Europe. Bread Loaf has enriched my life in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain and ways that I can explain.

It is a unique institution that has gathered some of the most famous American writers and their teaching cohorts for the last century. People like Archibald MacLeish and Willa Cather and Robert Frost and John Berryman and Robert Pack and David Huddle and… well you get the idea… have gone there to teach and they have gathered teachers from throughout the country to share their passions and loves so that we could in turn share our own passions and loves with students and colleagues throughout the country. Because of that place I have collaborated with teachers from throughout the country and Britain. I gained the courage to go and live and teach in England from that place. The people there are extraordinary and their ability to collaborate and inspire has spread throughout a warm band of friends. It is a great American institution that I am very proud to be a part of. I am extremely grateful for the Bread Loaf School of English.

29. Sage Brush

I live in the west. Out here there is a very distinctive plant that is unique to the western parts of North America. It is sage brush. It’s so common out here that people seldom even acknowledge it. I’d say it’s everywhere but that’s not true. You won’t find it in the high alpine climates or the rain forests of the Northwest but it is in every western state. It has a pungent odor that is as present as the smell of pine on a hot day. I find I love how it covers the vast expanses of open plains often no higher than the mid shin of a man. Other times you’ll find it to be quite tall, almost tree like. It makes for a great camp fire, though it does burn rapidly as the smoky skies of this past summer can attest. Our western wild fires are more often range fires than forest fires and sage brush is a primary fuel.

            I know that when people see the vast expanses of sage brush on the plains and mountains of the west they more often than not equate the land to a worthless pile of weeds (why else would there be so many bombs tested in Nevada?) but I consider it a sign of unfettered beauty open to so much discovery. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t prefer the verdancy of a beautiful forest, but no one from the west who really loves the west can deny the power the silvery sage has over them. The west could be a true wasteland if it wasn’t for that abundance of pungent sage holding the vast open plains and mountains together in its lining of silver. I am ever grateful to sage brush. 

28. Pike Place Brewery

Another Northwest microbrewery that I really enjoy is Pike Place Brewing Company in Seattle. Like its name suggests, it is in the Pike Street Market Place—that rabbit warren of shops that sits above Eliot Bay. It has all the charm of an English Pub and the congestion of that famous tourist trap, Pike Place Market. But while you wait you can peruse all the collections of beer coasters hanging on the walls. Once you get seated (I’ve never waited more than 20 minutes) there is a good menu and all the variety of obligatory Northwest microbrewery beers. I you haven’t figured it out, I’m partial to the IPA’s. I like a citrusy bitterness. I learned to love beer in my time in England and it’s always a pint of bitter for me when I’m there. I think that also might be why I am enamored of microbreweries. At any rate, Pike Place is one of those craft beer places worth dropping by if you’re ever in Seattle. It’s another American place for which I am thankful.

27. Buddy's Restaurant, Pocatello, Idaho

There’s this little Italian restaurant in Pocatello that I like to go to. Years ago when I lived in Southeast Idaho my wife and I would go there fairly often. At that time it was more of a dive on the inside but since that time it has been remodeled retaining that cozy atmosphere with a little more hip interior. Of course anything in the eighties that hearkened back to the fifties or sixties was probably considered run down. The exterior still has that mostly flat roof with the mid 20^th century neon light that now gets the moniker of classic instead of run down. But it’s always been the food that draws people there. It’s just good Italian food. You can buy Buddy’s Italian dressing in all the local grocery stores of Pocatello because it’s that good. It will never go bigger than the Pocatello area because its fame is to remain local. But if you get there remember to order the salad. And one salad for two to four people is plenty, especially if you plan on eating anything else. It’s still good and it would probably be fine to eat nothing else besides the salad. Anyway, if you ever get to Pocatello be sure to eat at this little gem at 626 E. Lewis Street. Buddy’s is just another one of those great local places to eat that has its own unique character. That’s the America for which I am grateful.

26. Lardo's

Since I’ve started this little chain of praising local breweries and restaurants, let me tll you about one of my favorite little stops in McCall, Idaho called Lardo’s Grill and Saloon. It’s been there forever and I remember it from my childhood to now. Since McCall is Idaho’s mile high town winter is the predominant season of the year. Lardo’s brings comfort and warmth to the cold of that seemingly endless Idaho season. It has a huge pot bellied wood stove that blazes so much warmth that sometimes they have to prop the doors open. You will shake any chill in that old fashioned restaurant with the polished wooden tables and benches. The food ranges from the typical bar fare of burgers to the comfort foods of home—pot roast, pasta dishes and almost any kind of soup, but that, of course, is du jour. The bar offerings are not why I have ever gone there, probably since it’s a place looming from my childhood. But I know they have a good beer offering and that’s enough to satisfy me.

            In adulthood Lardo’s has become a kind of welcoming reminiscence of home as it used to be. It’s a stop I make when I’m travelling south. In my mind it always has a parking lot hidden from view by huge snow banks and skiers and loggers come together in that cozy place for a great meal, warmth against the cold and a moment of enjoying friendships. I’m thankful for that little place on the south end of McCall known as Lardo’s Grill and Saloon.