Breakfast is, to me, the big American meal. But since I am now going regularly to the same breakfast counter, I have no chance to experiment. By the time the door has closed behind me, the short-order cook has my "regular" breakfast under way.
It's just as well, really. In my carb-free Octoberfast, I should be avoiding what is appearing on the other groaning platters going across the counter. The main ingredients of these vast repasts are pancakes and biscuits. As far as I can see (in all these months, I've never had the nerve to try them) pancakes are pretty much what I'd be used to, except they use buttermilk, but they are swamped in what they call "gravy", which looks kind of like porrage, but is, I'm told, a white meat sauce. Biscuits, again with buttermilk, are what I would call "scones", and are also usually smothered in gravy. I usually stick to hash browns (fried mashed potatoes) and toast, but, of course, they are foresworn for the month.
I guess the diet must be taking effect if I'm beginning to obsess about food.
There is, or rather was, a canal here, the Sandy and Beaver, which ran to the next Glasgow, just across the Pennsylvania border. It was a rather ill-fated venture, falling foul of the great financial panic of 1837 (nineteenth century America seems to have been punctuated by financial panics, all of them "great"). Anyway, development stopped for about 10 or 12 years, and when it restarted, it was really too late, just about to be overtaken by the railways. Coupled with that, it had technical difficulties with water supply at the highest (and, unfortunately, middle) section when a reservoir dam burst. It struggled along in two halves for a while, but eventually it was sold off, mile-by-mile, to pay off the creditors. They even dismantled all the locks, to use as foundations for other things.
One lock survives to this day, and is much publicised. I find engineering feats of this scale interesting, so I thought I would take some time out to look at it. Except I couldn't find it.
It never occured to me that something like this would be difficult. I asked Dulcie, and she came up with the Lusk Lock Road, so I told her to take me there. t turned out to be a gravel road, passing a few isolated houses with large numbers of rusting vehicles in the yards. As luck would have it, Dulcie had chosen the wrong end. I drove quite a long way, and the only sign of human life I saw was a man burning something in his yard. In fact, I saw the plume of thick black smoke some time before I saw him.
I say "human" life, because I came across a field of extremely truculent looking bullocks. I remembered how we'd treated the bullocks in Montana in the early summer, and wondered if they remembered too, so I thought maybe it was time to turn back and ask at the fire. When I got out, there was the usual cacophany of barking dogs. The fire tender came rushing towards me, and I decided it was wise to stay close to Rozzie.
But he was extremely affable, and reassured me I was on the right road. A long way past the bullocks, I reached another main road, with a sign on the other side saying "Lusk Lock": I'd made it. But this took me along an even narrower and more potholed road, till I was beginning to think I needed a four-wheel.
Then I got to the end of the road.
[n0294]It was on foot from here on in. And the sign was not encouraging:
it reads "Public Hunting Area", which, if you think about it, is, at least, ambiguous. But I ploughted on for a bit, determined, since I'd come this far, to do the last bit. When I'd scrambled over a couple of fallen trees, I thought maybe I needed to be better shod and dressed. Then I decided this was not the sort of expedition one undertoook unprepared and unadvised.
So I went back. And I never saw the lock. Oh, well!
Later that afternoon, coming out of the library (my only source of WiFi), I saw the great plain tree outside being seen-to. They were drilling small holes all the way round it at the base, and inserting syringes. "To help it grow", they said. This is possibly the biggest tree in town, but I think I know what they meant. They were also filling in the knoles (is that the right word?). I have to say I've never seen tree-surgery like this before. I just have to share it with you.
[n0293]
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