Aesthetic Snafu

Last month I went home for the first time in a long while. It was the first time I’d been there since I started playing super tourist, pretty much the first time I’d ever played tourist there.

One of the things that I did was play “find the vampire grave” in Woodstock VT, a quaint town of quaintness about 45 minutes away from my sister’s house.

I grew up knowing, vaguely, that there was some sort of story about a vampire buried in their green. A New England note, all towns are centered around a green of some sort. The story I knew or thought I knew involved the “vampire” being dug up and buried in the crossroads with a stake in its heart and garlic in its mouth.

A couple years ago I was reminded about the vampire by this fantastic article in Smithsonian magazine about New England vampires. Seemingly vampires were a New England “thing” just like pineapple décor and apple-based products. It was a combination of the ravages of consumption, which was killing of a significant slice of the population, and economic problems as poor towns lost population to the easier-to-farm Midwest, cities and mill towns, and well, to consumption. Additionally, there was actually a time when New England was considered the superstitious and behind-the-times area of the country. Backstory recently re-ran their podcast on it for this Halloween; it’s definitely worth the listen if you have the hour for it. It’s worth noting that much of the proof of vampirism – such as an unexpectedly well-preserved corpse can be blamed on the cold climate and rocky soil of the area.

It turned out that Woodstock was the site of not one but two vampire incidents – although neither followed the story as I knew it.

The first was that of Frederick Ransom who died on Feb. 14, 1817. He wasn’t the only sick one in his family, and fearing particularly for the health of his younger brother, his father had Frederick’s body dug up, his heart burned on the anvil of the local blacksmith, and then fed to said brother. The Ransom case is particularly interesting as far as vampire stories go because unlike other incidents, the Ransoms were upper class and fiscally sound.   Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, this didn’t save the Ransoms – Frederick was followed by his mother, sister, and two other brothers over the next 15 years, although his last brother lived into his 80s.

The second story is a bit less well documented. While we have Frederick Ransom’s younger brother’s recollections, the data on the second vampire comes from a newspaper story written 60 years after the fact.   While various organizations including the Woodstock Historical society have verified certain facts, the simple fact remains that no one can place the family or the death. However, Sledzik and Bellantoni cite three additional sources for the story in their paper “Brief Communication: Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief” so perhaps there’s more to be found  that isn’t available online.

The story is such: in June 1830 (or maybe 1829 or 1834) the Corwin family, also suffering from consumption, dug up a son who had died six months earlier to determine vampirism. After they and other local townspeople determined that there was “fresh blood” in his heart his body was also taken to the green and burned. In some versions his ashes were fed to his brother, in others they were buried in the crossroads of the green in an iron cask or caldron and potentially under a granite slab.

This is particularly interesting since the green was redesigned to look as it does now around the same time.

One factor that brings this story into question is that he was supposedly buried in Cushing cemetery but there are not any Corwin graves in Cushing. However, if you had just dug up your vampiric family member perhaps you would avoid using the same cemetery.

Sadly Woodstock, perhaps because the focus on high end fancy tourism, doesn’t have any marker or information about the vampires in the green. There’s nothing to see but scruffy grass, a closed info booth, and dirt paths.

I went on my trip over a month ago and haven’t written about it, i.e. the opposite of my goal. I didn’t really think of how little I would want to write after tumbling into a motel at 9, 10, 11 pm, that I would be too busy directing and experiencing to write in the car, that I’d be trying to make coffee in a travel mug sans brewer instead of a few quiet hours in a coffee shop to think and reflect.

I did have three hours to myself once. I wrote part of a blog post but then gave up and looked at the internet instead.  The other thing that I didn’t think of is how difficult it would be to put so much experience into words. I could write every day for months and still not be able to get it all down. And where even to start? I came home with thousands of pictures, six states under my belt, two different giant whales as different as they are alike.

But you have to start somewhere, and I’m choosing Route 66. While we didn’t generally drive Route 66 we stayed close to it, on the major highways that superceeded it, veering back to see giant things, tiny museums, and the constant search for a good ghost town.

One thing I learned preparing for this trip is that Europeans love traveling Route 66 and, for some reason, many Americans hate this fact.

I get it, though – the European perspective that is. There is something so American about Route 66, that we built a giant road so you could drive halfway across a continent because why not. It’s a way to see the US that isn’t just New York and Hollywood.

Route 66 is the prosperous 1950s but also the dust bowl. It’s some of the country’s richest cities but also so many small towns left to rot and age. It’s friendly people who love their homes and want to share and save them, who were delighted that our party consisted of someone from (kind of) each of the endpoints. It’s a road full of retro-restored gas stations, all with their own electric car plugs.

It is fantastic and so worth the trip even to drive a little bit of it.

Epic Road Trip.

8 Days.

Chicago to Tucson

via St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Santa Fe, and the Petrified Forest.

With my high school best friend, Tory, who specializes in driving across the country for practical purposes. Her job? To drive and make sure we don’t get lost or die of dysentery. My job? To make sure we don’t miss a bit of Route 66 or other wackiness along the way.

To say that I am ridiculously excited is an understatement.

I’ve never been on a road trip longer then two days; never been on a trip where the drive was more important then the destination.

It’s almost my dissertation and defense in finding unusual things to do.

I had quite a bit of practice last week. My in-laws were in town so I made a Pilsen mural walking tour for them, then we all drove up to Detroit, and I could cross a few lingering things off my to-see list: Hamatrack Disneyland, the mold-a-ramas at the Henry Ford Museum and in Ann Arbor, a few of the fairy doors and the Liberty Street Robot Store

(incidentally, all of them are worth it!)

I’m still firming up our trip list, but once I’ve got it down and binderized (yes, I’m making a binder because, well, dork), I’ll update again. I’m hoping to blog about each day as we go along – if we have wifi – to challenge my boundaries, but we’ll see how well that goes.

As you read this, I have probably started my world-wind 72-hour trip to New Orleans, stock full of things that I am super super excited about. I get a lot of comments on my travel-fu, so I thought it was only time to share my process.

First, if you know nothing about your location, look it up on Wikipedia or other basic knowledge-providers. It’s weirdly helpful to know the basics of what you should be excited for. It’s even helpful if you think you’re in the know; anyone trying to plan a trip to Chicago based on reading The Jungle will be severely disappointed.

After that, there’s a few websites I like to hit: Atlas Obscura, Roadside America, the Lonely Planet, weirdly Yelp, and even Pinterest. At that point I’m just brainstorming ideas and places to explore more thoroughly.   This is a great time to also Google for things you’re generally obsessed with; for me that’s vending machines, which lead me to the Musée Mécanique in San Francisco.

There’s also knowing what you like. I, for example, am not a huge fan of tours, but some people really love them. Meanwhile, I love window-shopping weird stores – it feels almost like a free art gallery – but a lot of my friends do not (until they end up in the store full of fossils or a candy store demonstration using 100 year old molds).

There’s also asking people you know or even asking people you don’t know. One of my best travel suggestions was given by the owners of an Irish knitwear booth at the Kriskrindlemart (a German Christmas market in Chicago). You may get a lot of suggestions that are eye-roll-worthy, but it’s a good way to find new things to do. I also like taking out travel guides out of the library for the same reason.

Don’t automatically rule out the super touristy. Sometimes things are popular for a reason – the Art Institute in Chicago – other times they can be fun in a kitschy way. When we went to Louisville last summer we did the tourism board’s Urban Bourbon Trail. Go to five bourbon heavy bars, get the world’s most elaborate “passport” stamped at each, get a free t-shirt and certificate, and get to keep the overly fancy passport. On the other hand, do not just do the tourist. No one will be impressed with your trip, it will be overpriced, crowded no-matter the time of year, and it’ll weirdly feel just like being a tourist anywhere else.

Now that you have your list, it’s time to prioritize. It can be as simple as jotting a few things on a post-it or as complicated as… well… this:

(in my defense, my travel buddy did the color coding).

It helps to know what’s near what else and to make sure you don’t forget that one thing or two that you really really want to do. However, don’t over plan either. I’ve gone that route and it almost never works out. There’s always a random street that needs walking down, an emergency coffee or beer stop to make, or, sadly, transit problems.

My goals for New Orleans? Bars like the Carousel and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop; beignets, proto-tiki (?) and Cajun food; the ‘tit Rex and Chewbaccus parades; the Pharmacy museum, architecture, and cemeteries; and plenty of wandering around enjoying the 40+ temperature bounce I’m about to enjoy.