STL DPB ON THE ROAD - PARTY WITH THE CROWES

 

When my extended family gets together there is enough wine on hand to serve an emperor's banquet (and only the good stuff, please). My brother brought this from his town in Massachusetts. Although it lacks an E, it was refreshing but failed to get me on my feet.                      

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - FAMILY TRADITION

Every Fourth of July my sister and brother-in-law in New Jersey throw a massive backyard barbecue party - cheeseburgers, hot dogs, steak, chicken, cold macaroni salad, green salad, fresh Jersey corn, watermelon...it seems  endless. An indispensable element is her Fourth of July flag cake. Yum yum yum.

 Home later today.                   

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - JERSEY WILDLIFE

 

We are in Ridgewood, New Jersey, with a crowd of family, from baby to octogenarian, hiding inside from the heat. My sister-in-law noticed two fawns outside the window. Mom was off wandering somewhere, but these two were remarkably calm.                                                

STL DPB VISITING FAMILY - THE CROWE SIBLINGS

My sister has a big house in the New Jersey suburbs of New York. For years and years, we would all get together at her house over the Fourth of July holiday, and before that at the home of our father who lived in the same town. The tradition was disrupted by Covid and grandchildren but we made the effort to get back this year.

We turned out pretty well. All prosperous. All on our first marriages. Four undergraduate degrees and assorted graduate degrees. Three out of four bad spines. Seen a lot of the world. From left to right, John, Suzanne, Mary Beth and your humble blogger. I hope we can keep it up. 

Home this afternoon and then no more airplanes until Saturday.               

RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY

It is very warm and damp here. The orange boat is the Staten Island Ferry. The background in the first picture is Jersey City, New Jersey, not New York.  The third photo is lower Manhattan shrouded in mist.

Your Moment Of Zen, From New Jersey Transit

On the commuter train from New York to the town where my sister lives in the New Jersey suburbs.       

My Strange Family

Weird Crowe family tradition: this ornament has hung over the Christmas dinner table for 40 years, first at my father's house and now my sister's. Someone spins and spins the string, then lets go. When the ornament stops turning, whoever Santa faces will have bad luck in the new year. Everyone calls him Evil Santa. Did I say we go through a lot of wine in this family?

Below, quality family time - a niece, spouse and brother sucked into their iPhones.

Every family has ups and downs but this one has had less than its share of bad luck. I am the oldest of four siblings. We are all still alive. We are all still on our first marriages. Everyone graduated from college, and there is a Ph.D., an M.B.A. and a J.D. sprinkled around the group. We all still like each other and make an effort to get together a couple of times a year. We turned out okay.

New Jersey Transit

So we got a taxi from LaGuardia Airport to Penn Station with amazingly little traffic, then got a train to the town in New Jersey where my sister and her family live. Easy. The New Jersey Transit trains we took had a rather nagging nanny state tone. Do people actually clip their nails on the commuter trains? Do people need to be told not to jump off moving trains, particularly when the door is closed?               

Liberty

Liberty Tower on the site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, seen from the Secaucus Junction train station in New Jersey.

Lots of good pictures in the big city yesterday. Going back in today. More to follow.         

Oh Hell, Oh Hell

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Yow, we weren't singing Christmas carols yesterday.

Plan A was get on a plane in St. Louis, fly to New York's La Guardia airport, pick up rental car and drive about 45 minutes northwest to my sister's house in New Jersey.

Plan Q(4)(f)(iii) turned out to be get on the last plane from St. Louis foolishly allowed to take off for the northeast; get 3/4 of the way there when the captain tells us La Guardia just closed from heavy snow and we're going to Hartford bloody Connecticut; captain tells us New York's Kennedy International Airport just got plowed and is allowing some landings and we're going there; land at JFK in heavy snow an hour after the scheduled arrival at La Guardia; wait an hour for the bags to come up; find that the taxis have all fled; take a big, safe-looking bus to Penn Station; get kicked off the bus at Grand Central Station in the midst of thunder snow and put in a tiny van with way too many other weary souls to the other train station cross-town; get out in blizzard chaos at Penn Station; get on a train to New Jersey; can't find the &^%^%$ next platform at the transfer station until a kindly transit policeman takes pity on us and shows us the way; get on the next train only to be stuck a few minutes later at a frozen switch; eventually get to Ridgewood, NJ, where my brother and brother-in-law meet us in an SUV; fail to get up the last steep hill to my sister's house and hike up the last quarter mile in blizzard conditions.

And now here we are, warm, fed and safe. There may be 2 feet / 61 cm of snow here before it all ends on Monday. Oh, and hurricane force winds here and there overnight. And so to bed.

Above, the view at the Park Avenue South bus transfer point looking toward Grand Central Station. Below, ominous security sign on the NJ Transit train to Ridgewood. Both iPhone photos.

STL DPB On The Road: A Last Picture From New Jersey

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We are back in St. Louis as this post goes up Monday morning, but this is literally the final image as we left my sister's house in New Jersey. What monsters lie there? The family keeps a wreath on their front door year-round. This summer a robin built a nest in the center. Mom went off looking for food while this little peeper, two or three days old, waited for chow. A couple of siblings were in the back of the nest, all of them with their beaks resting on the edge.