Lower Manhattan is much as I remember it from last year’s visit. Unfortunately, check-in at my hotel is, too. As with last year, I’m at the M Social Hotel (the former Millenium Hilton – and that’s not a typo; it was intentionally spelled with one “n”) across from the World Trade Center. This is a neat hotel and you can’t beat the rates, but getting checked in can be an adventure. The guest lobby is on the third floor. As I get in the elevator, a guy probably in his mid-40s who’s also on the way up says, “How long you been waiting?” I told him I’d just arrived. Turns out he’s been waiting a couple hours to get checked in.

The good news is that this year, the lobby’s not under construction. The bad news is that, like last year, there’s a long line. There’s exactly two clerks working check-in, and there are all kinds of problems: IT issues, rooms not ready, you name it. A lot of people are sitting at tables or on couches waiting for issues to be resolved. At times some of them are vocal about it. There’s a young couple that’s flown in from Turkey, and they’re very unhappy; the female half of the couple marches up to the counter, loudly protesting, almost in tears. Another frustrated guest issues a few four-letter words to one of the clerks about the lack of personnel up front. The guy I was on the elevator with is in front of me, and at times he turns and gives me a sardonic look. I’m tired, of course, and I need something to eat and something to drink, and after about 20 minutes the standing there with my bag’s strap digging into my shoulder gets to me. I start to wonder a little bit if I’m going to be sitting around like some of these other poor souls, waiting and waiting and waiting. Last night’s reading comes back to me. How would Marcus Aurelius handle it? I can’t control the circumstances, but I can control how I feel about it and I can control my response to it, and no matter what happens, this moment will pass. Float with it. 

As it happens, after a half-hour’s wait, I’m up at the counter checking in, and it all goes well. Not only did the “why not?” upgrade offer I took a chance on pay off (to what the clerk promises is a great room), but the clerk throws in a drink voucher to thank me for my patience, and she calls me “dear” three or four times throughout the transaction. (I get the impression she’s very thankful I’m not yelling at her. I feel for her and the other staffers who are having to deal with a mess that likely stems from management issues.)

With happy relief I go to the elevator. The room number starts with 30. The last button on this elevator’s panel is 30. “Top of the house, Ma!” I chortle as the elevator zooms up, Willy Wonka-style. Then up on 30 and to the end of the hall, and I open the door…and have my breath taken away by a corner suite. The sitting room looks north, with views toward City Hall and the Woolworth Building. The bathroom is between the sitting room and the bedroom around the corner. On one side, the view north is toward Midtown. The view west is toward the World Trade Center. I’m overwhelmed. I’m just some kid just up from the country, grew up in a tiny rural town, and here I am with an amazing corner room on a high floor of a fancy hotel in lower Manhattan. It’s too good, too much. I’m too happy.

None of that, however, is going to make up for more urgent needs. I walk a couple blocks up to Walgreens for some provisions, then head back. Before going back to the hotel for the night, there was one more thing. Last year, I visited the World Trade Center memorial and found some names that were significant to me, in particular the flight crews of American 11 and United 175. I’d been haunted, however, that I’d forgotten to find Father Mychal Judge at the memorial. This time, I didn’t leave until I did.

Back in the room for the night, I got cleaned up, scarfed down some food, caught up on things (including the outcome of the Preakness, whose victor made me think of Robert Vaughn), and took lots of photos from up on high. But I also knew I had an early report time next morning, so I didn’t stay up too late. Somehow I eked out about four hours of rest.

Then the day dawned. I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful it would look: the orange glow over the horizon out one window; through another, warm light reflecting off One World Trade Center’s curtain of glass. This huge city, and yet this moment of quiet beauty and wonder. What a blessing to see this, to have this moment.

I didn’t want it to end. But a day was waiting on me. One last check of everything, one more elevator ride. Out in the lobby is the hotel’s flag from September 11, 2001, now preserved behind glass. (Last year I wrote about this hotel’s association with that awful day and how it’s haunted me.)

Then out the door, up to the subway station and Houston Street, then over to Varick and 7 Hudson Square. Into the lobby and the security desk. Why is it every time I check in at ABC, I get nervous and own-goal myself? All set, I wait for my friend Dennis to meet me in the lobby.

It doesn’t take long, and Dennis brings me up to the multi-purpose room where the editing and other magic happens. There’s my friend Gary, who’s happy to see me again. The next four hours or so are a blur, as Dennis does updates and fixes for Good Morning America while Gary manages things, and I observe all of this while devouring one of the delicious cranberry muffins that’s been brought in for our enjoyment. (The guys don’t know this, but what keeps me coming back are these muffins.) They practice their trade the way skilled, experienced hands do them: what seems intricate to the layperson is quickly dispatched with quiet precision, then it’s on to the next task.

Fortunately, there’s not a whole lot to fix today (and when I have a chance to help clarify where a fix was needed, I get this little thrill! Yes! I got to help out in big-time teevee!), and that leaves plenty of time to talk shop. At points visitors drop by, including the weekend executive producer. At another point, we visit the control room to take care of an errand. This, really, has become why I like to visit: the people, all of whom are very kind and welcoming to an interested outsider who works on the fringes of this business. Last year, and in 2024 at the old ABC campus on 66th, so much of why I was there was to see the place and go everywhere we could. Now, it’s different. As much as I like looking around, I’ve seen it. I’m here because Dennis and Gary are my friends and I don’t get to see them enough. And, as I tell Gary, I keep coming back because I learn stuff (including, this time, such valuable life skills as who to channel when leading a labor negotiation). I can then take that back and use it for what I do with the students. It’s an ongoing education, and it’s always worth the effort to get here. 

The morning passes quickly and we have a lunch date to keep, so Dennis and I head out and catch the subway up to Lincoln Center, then cross over to 66th. Two years ago, this was where my first visit to ABC took place. There was a tall office tower in the middle of ABC’s campus. Now, almost everything is gone. There’s about eight stories left of the office tower, and even that’s not long for the world. The site is surrounded by plywood sheets with diamond-shaped Plexiglas windows, but there’s not much to see; just rubble. I see a strangely intact brick and wish I could levitate it over the fence as a souvenir. Dennis takes several photos over the fence and from the opposite side of the street, while I amble down the sidewalk and try to peer between the gaps. In what had been the office tower’s lobby, I see shattered windows and what’s left of an escalator. It’s sad to think that two years ago this place was alive, functional, busy. Now it’s a wreck, and soon what’s left will be hauled away. The old, landmarked portion that once housed Durland’s Riding Academy remains, and I hope it’ll find new purpose, but everything else is gone. Soon the only reminder that anything television happened here will be the street sign reading “Peter Jennings Way.” 

As I wander along, I see an older couple, obviously tourists, looking through the fence and trying to piece together the scene. I don’t ask where they’re from, but their accent sounds kind of German. They see me and ask what was going on here. I tell them that this is where the ABC Television Network used to be. We strike up a brief conversation and they ask me where I’m from. I’m up from South Carolina, I tell them. They start telling me about the places down my way they’ve been, most of them in the Lowcountry. I’m in full Southern charm mode by this point, nodding and smiling and laughing a little. The man goes on in a little bit of detail, gets hung up on remembering where this one place was, and then the wife says in this weary way, “Do you think she really wants to hear all this?” The interplay between them is a hoot. We wish each other well and part ways, I catch up with Dennis, and then it’s off to our lunch date at P.J. Clarke’s. As we’re walking along we’re alongside a family group with a couple pre-teen kids who are trying to top one another with gross-out bodily function humor of the sort pre-teens will do. The mother suggests something that’s kind of a tongue-twister. It’s all I can do to not suggest the “cottonpickin’ finger-lickin’ chicken plucker” routine. Instead, I kind of laugh to myself at a scene that’ll never play out.

There’s a table waiting at P.J. Clarke’s, and already there is our friend Gady. With him is his lifelong friend Joel, whom I met last year when I was up to visit Gady. I knew we were going to meet up with Gady, but I didn’t expect Joel, so that’s very much a treat. They’ve got a lot of stories to tell, since Gady worked at CBS for more than five decades and Joel worked at NBC for a long, long time. A little bit later, Gary joins us. The next hour and a half are a fun blur of stories and history and remembrances of folks from back when, and laughter and the enjoyment of sharing good company over a good meal. I try to take the scene in as best I can, knowing how rare a treat this is, that back home this kind of thing doesn’t happen. Memento mori. 

Regrettably, the time comes. There’s a train leaving Penn Station at a quarter after 3, and my name’s on a ticket for it. There’s handshakes and hugs, a request from Joel to come back soon, and I head off to begin the long journey home. As I wait at the subway station, it’s oddly still. Fifteen minutes ago, there was fun and there were friends. Now I’m alone, and it’s too quiet. My heart is full of love for the guys I was just with, and I ache for having left them; yet I also know there are folks (and critters) back home who need me. It’s an exquisite agony, the simultaneous joy and ache of having people you care about in so many far-apart places, knowing you’re blessed to have them but knowing that blessing comes with an ache, and for a moment I’m verklempt. But soon the train is here, and I’m quickly at Penn Station. There’s a picket line of striking Long Island Railroad workers outside the entrance. Then past the Garden and into Moynihan Train Hall, where I stop in the Walgreens and get a couple supplies for the trip, and then wait for the boarding call.

Soon enough, down we go to the track. This time, it’s a regular train back to Baltimore instead of an Acela, but I’m in no hurry; the nice thing about the trip from here on out is that I have no deadlines to meet. The three hours pass without anything of note, and it’s back to the BWI station. I get Supercar out of hock, program the moving map, and follow the directions south. I’m very deliberately making the transit past the District of Columbia on a Sunday evening, hoping the traffic will be a little less, and the transit east of town works well. Where things do back up is in northern Virginia, and there’s a lot of stop-go-stop for at least 45 minutes. Once we’re past Quantico, things open up and I make Thornburg in good time. 

All was going well…or so I thought. The directions in the moving map were supposed to take me to a Holiday Inn Express. Instead, they take me to a little shopping center in the corner of a Food Lion parking lot. I’m rather perplexed by this, and for a moment wonder if the hotel actually exists. I pull over into a parking space to sort things through and find out that, yep, I’ve been pranked by a whopper of a map issue. (Cue Lewis Grizzard saying “We been ho-axed!”) I figure out where the hotel is, set course, and inside about five minutes I’m there. It isn’t the most inspiring location; there’s at least two semi trucks parked in the small lot, and there’s a lot of clientele between this hotel and the adjacent hotel, but it’ll do. I finally find a place to park, get my bags and stuff, and check in. It takes a couple minutes to get a clerk, and when I do get my room, it’s on the first floor…right next to the breakfast lounge. I can hear the television from the lobby through the wall. At least it’s a short hike, though, and for my purposes this room will be fine. I get cleaned up, eat something, catch up on computer chores, and turn in.

The next morning I’m up bright and early, ready for the rest of the journey home at my own pace. I refuel the car and set out, taking the bypass around Richmond, and then into North Carolina. There’s a brief stop in Fayetteville to visit a hobby shop I hadn’t visited in about a decade, and then on toward South Carolina, resisting the urge to travel east to Kinston and commune, at least in spirit, with Vivian Howard. I content myself with a wave as I fly past on 95.

At the state line, there’s the now-obligatory stop at South of the Border (and by this point in the drive, obligatory because I need a restroom stop), and I amble around one of the shops for a little bit, soaking in the ambience of a bygone roadside era I knew way back when, and buying a couple suitably tacky souvenirs. After that, it’s back on 95, then to 20, and then the first signs of Columbia start to materialize. Then north on 77, a stop for fuel, and then my giant circle closes as I take an exit toward Winnsboro and the last miles home, and the folks and the critters who are glad to have me back. 

Others have ably told Savannah’s story, and this is as good a jumping off point as any for the many resources out there. My own memories are of when the ship was at Patriots Point in the 1980s and early 1990s. The museum had designs on being large back then, and as opportunities came along the museum took them. Savannah was one such opportunity. There were ambitions for parts of the ship to become hotel and recreation space, exhibit space and so forth. For more reasons than I care to go into here, that never happened. Savannah was also a white elephant in a collection of fighting ships, and who’s going to be interested in a big merchant ship when there’s a larger ship next door with airplanes parked on top, right? I remember being aboard Savannah and having the ship pretty much to myself, which was eerie and kind of sad. The ship never got the TLC she needed, which is a shame because hers is a huge, historic story. But, for the kids (big and small) who made up most of the museum’s clientele, Savannah was a plate of broccoli while Yorktown and that collection of zoomy airplanes was a king-sized Happy Meal.

There was yet another wrinkle: Savannah still had a nuclear reactor on board, and that obligated the museum to a carefully-regulated regimen of inspections and other requirements. (I have copies of all that paperwork, so…yeah, it wasn’t small.) When you realize that ships of any size are maintenance hogs as it is and that museums only have so much budget to go around…you sort of understand why, when Savannah was due for drydocking and hull inspection in 1994, the museum gave the ship back. The Maritime Administration did what needed doing, and then Savannah was sent to slumber in the James River Reserve Fleet. They couldn’t just sell Savannah for surplus, not with the reactor and all. To make a long story short, Savannah ended up in Baltimore for upkeep, the reactor was pulled out a couple years ago, and now last details are being worked out so that the project can formally end this December. After that, MarAd can dispose of the ship like any other surplus hull.

The preferred outcome of all this would be that Savannah is preserved as a museum. A lot of interior and exterior work has been done throughout this process that would make it a turnkey project. The reactor is gone, of course, but the ship feels like a living thing again, right down to the ship’s music system being back in working order, playing music the passengers would have heard back in the day. Modifications have been made in machinery and reactor spaces that make them the perfect setting for science exhibits (you can walk through the containment vessel!). Not to mention, there’s so much furniture and art still aboard. The ship’s a time capsule in all the best ways. It’s the polar opposite of what happened with poor old United States, where so much was just gone (and butchered) and the ship was a shell. Savannah‘s ready to go, thanks to a lot of work and a lot of people who have cared.

That’s the most-wanted outcome. Savannah, Georgia wants the ship and seemed like a lock until a wrinkle came up that may or may not be resolved by December. There’s interest in keeping the ship in Baltimore but a permanent berth there will be a couple years in the making. And, unfortunately, the owner of the current pier wants the ship gone in December. Some things need to happen fast to get Savannah an interim berth. Otherwise, it’s entirely possible the ship goes back to the James River Reserve Fleet, a lot of loving work goes to ruin, and the ship ends up sold for scrap or reefed. The Association has a video in which Jim Delgado spells out the stakes, and when Jim Delgado speaks, it’s worth listening. This is important enough that I’ll let you watch it before we continue.

All of this means that all of us have a lot on our minds, including the possibility of the unthinkable…and while I’ve got too many memories of what happened to the Big U for me to not not worry, today is a chance to see the ship again, be amazed by what’s been done, and have a grand time in the company of folks who love this ship as much as I do.

Once you’re aboard, you’ve stepped into another era. Someone once described the ship as a cross between Star Trek and Mad Men, and it’s apt. This ship is alive in a way I’ve never seen before, and members of the Association and people involved in the decommissioning are on hand, telling stories and sharing information. One gentleman is telling stories of his days in the nuclear Navy. When he talks about his own interview by Admiral Rickover, I immediately stop and listen in. This gentleman’s interrogation by the Kindly Old Gentleman wasn’t the wringer that others went through (and there’s tons of Rickover stories here), but no way was I going to miss a firsthand account. 

After a little bit, we’re summoned into the ship’s lounge for a presentation about the ship’s status and future, and then there’s a few moments for some Association business. We get to see the video that I linked above. There’s a moment when a lady whose father served aboard Savannah donated a plaque she found in his collection, commemorating the ship’s port call in South Korea. And then it’s time for lunch in the veranda bar. There’s deli sandwiches, boxes of pizza, what looks like spaghetti or lasagna in big aluminum pans. It’s a really generous spread. I help myself to a big slice of cheese pizza and a can of root beer, then plop down at a table. I never thought I’d have a meal aboard this ship; yet here I am, and life is good. After that, I roam around the deck just aft, then come inside and buy a few things from the souvenir shop, do a little more exploring and take some pictures.

Out aft of the bar, one of the docents is talking with someone and I join the conversation, sharing recollections of the Patriots Point days and how much better things look now. Off in the distance, we can see what’s left of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and after all I’d seen and read from far away, the reality was chilling to see in person. 

The docent and I head down one deck, and we happen into a former crewman who’s helping out today. One thing leads to another, and this gentleman gives me a private tour of the ship. We spend probably the next 90 minutes going anywhere and everywhere, from former cabins and dining areas and the kitchen spaces, to the reactor spaces (including a walk through the reactor containment vessel) and engineering spaces.

There’s also a visit to the control room, where they will let you touch one button, and it’s a lot of fun to mash:

Along the way, my guide’s telling me stories and sharing anecdotes, at one point proudly pointing out a bracket he was told to make and that’s still there. We have the best time going through everything, and I’m listening and asking questions and cracking the occasional joke, and knowing the ship as well as he does, I get to see some things the average visitor doesn’t. It just couldn’t have gone better.

We end up back in the purser’s lounge, resting after more of a workout than we realized, but it was so worth it. After talking for a little bit, it’s time for me to depart. I give him profuse thanks for the tour, then head toward the gangway. As I leave the ship, I pat her on the side and tell her to keep her courage. I seriously want to go aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, moored across the pier, but time’s not on my side right now. I’ve got to get to the train station for the next leg of the journey, and after shotgunning a bag of M&Ms and a Coke Zero, I set off.

Back through the tunnel, toward the airport, to the train station from which I departed last June. I park the car, grab my messenger bag, and head trackside. I park myself on a bench and get caught up on messages. A little wren flits around near my feet, scavenging for little bits of stray food. I talk to the little one for a moment; it’s nice to have a friend while I’m so far from home. A northbound train pulls up, and most of the people waiting trackside board it. A few moments later comes my ride. When I booked this trip, I decided to live a little and try out the next-generation Acela, and here we are.

As it turns out, I don’t have a seatmate on this ride, and so I can sort of relax. We’re slow leaving Baltimore, but out on open stretches we get to going pretty fast, and between that and the pretty nice seats it’s a pleasant ride. There aren’t as many stops with the Acela, and between that and the faster speed you do notice it’s a shorter trip time-wise. Not mind-bendingly fast, of course, but the ride is less of a time sink.

Along the way I write in my travel journal and listen to some music. I hadn’t much been in the mood to listen to music on this trip, but now that some pressure was off, I felt like it. Since it’s a train trip, I had to start with “Driver 8,” and followed it with “Can’t Ignore The Train” – realizing that I’d heard the train and couldn’t resist its call to a wider world, and here I am speeding toward the big city. Then the recently-reissued 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged album took me the rest of the way, and not having listened to it in forever, I’d forgotten how good that record is. Natalie and the guys made my heart full, serenaded me the trip long, until we disappeared into the tunnel leading to Penn Station. From there, guided by muscle memory, I threaded my way to the subway station and a ride to my hotel downtown.

More to come….

How I got here was an adventure in itself. My first two cars were hand-me-downs. When Dad bought a used Oldsmobile as the new family car, I got the slightly younger Chevrolet we’d had since I was 6. It was faded and getting a little wheezy, but it was plenty enough for my daily commutes to and from college. When I went off to graduate school, the Chevy was retired and I got the Oldsmobile, since Dad had bought a used Buick Park Avenue for him and Mom. That Oldsmobile and I went on many an adventure together. It was big and underpowered, its paint was cracking, and it bore suspicious welds that made me think it had been in a really bad wreck at some point before we bought it. That car had been around. But it rode like a cloud.

The Oldsmobile was what took me, and as many of my belongings as I could cram into it, to Florida when I moved there in mid-2000. Somewhere around Palm Beach, the alternator light flickered on. I managed to limp into Fort Lauderdale. A few days and a new alternator later, things were fine again. I saw a puddle of brake fluid under the car a few weeks later, and Midas got a good bit of money to make things right. Not fun when you don’t have a job.

A couple months into my stay, I did get a callback and ended up with decent employment. But the Oldsmobile was having none of it, and more little things continued to go wrong – nothing major, but just enough to tell me I’d best do something soon. I’d been raised in a GM family, and I wanted to stay loyal. So one day in September 2000, I took delivery of a new two-door Chevy Cavalier, a cute little silver job with a little bump on the trunk lid that was supposed to suggest a spoiler. I was so proud of that little car. At the end of the month, I drove the Oldsmobile back home for its formal retirement, and then flew back to Florida.

The Cavalier made the move back to South Carolina with me, and then over the summer of 2001 made a couple trips back and forth as I closed things out in Florida and set things up in my new old home. It wasn’t any great shakes as a car. Its inline-four engine had all the power of a washing machine motor, and the interior was full of plastic that didn’t take long to turn brittle. It was a product of peak turn-of-the-century GM mediocrity. I’d remained loyal to the Bowtie, only to find out that the Chevrolet of my youth had gone the way of the passenger pigeon. But that little Cavalier held together and we went everywhere, it seemed. And few things felt as happy as the day in 2005 that I made the last payment on that car. I was still kind of young, and there was a pride I took in that achievement. Every last cent I paid for that car had been my own, earned with my own work. Nothing about it had been given to me.

It felt good to not have a car payment, and I planned to drive that car forever. In it I drove to conferences in Georgia and Alabama, with a quick jaunt over the Mississippi border just to say I’d been there; several trips to Florida, including a crazy and enjoyable extended adventure on another conference trip in 2014 and a 2008 adventure to see a Shuttle launch; and our biggest adventure, to Indianapolis and then Evansville and back in 2015. There’s a memory I have from that trip, and I cherish it: driving along at speed, somewhere between Evansville and Bloomington on a deserted Interstate 69, on a picture-perfect afternoon in early June, and it seemed like things couldn’t get any better.

Of course, they didn’t. About a month and a half later, the air conditioning system quit working. It was going to be an expensive fix for a car with nearly 180,000 miles on the Hobbs. Before the summer was out, I signed a three-year lease on a shiny black Toyota Corolla sedan. Like the Cavalier, it was a smaller car for basic transportation, but “basic transportation” in 2015 was far better appointed than in 2000. The lease payments weren’t much, and I kept the Cavalier as a utility car until its cooling system finally let go rather spectacularly in 2017. I cried the day it was hauled off. It was like losing a member of the family.

The Corolla went on a lot of adventures with me, including a completely bonkers trip in the summer of 2017. The first stop was Indianapolis and the museum at the Speedway, and then it was on to Madison, Wisconsin to do some research for the book I was starting to write about Dave Garroway. Outside Rockford, Illinois there was a torrential Midwest storm I drove through, on a crowded Interstate highway. As I started down a cloverleaf, hail started pelting the car and visibility went zero-zero. Only through divine intervention did I not plow into the back of the semi in front of me.

In early 2018 it was clear I was going to run well past the mileage allotment on the Corolla’s lease. A smarter version of me would have just started planning to buy the little one when the lease was up. Instead, I got ambition. I wanted something that felt more like my station in life, a car that made me feel I’d achieved it. Never mind that the Corolla was doing just fine for everything I needed, of course. I got ambition, or maybe ambition got me. And, after serious flirtation with the Mazda 6 after a couple of test drives (and, man, did I love that thing), I swapped the Corolla for a Camry XSE, just off the assembly line. It didn’t have the elegance of the Mazda, but it had things all its own that I liked when I test-drove one. Plus, it was a Toyota, a known quantity with plenty of service opportunities nearby. I was so proud the day I took delivery. Finally, I had a big and sporty car of my own, one that was actually something I wanted instead of settling for.

The Camry started out as a lease. Over time, though, I realized I didn’t want to go through the agonies of buying a car for a long time. On January 6, 2021, I took the car back to the dealership. While it was up on the rack in the service department, I was in the front going through the agonies of paperwork and financing and everything else. When we were done, the Camry was out front, all nice and clean after service and a run through the car wash. It seemed like a great day, until I got home and learned what had happened at the Capitol.

Of course, a buyout meant I’d gotten myself into another installment contract for a few years – on top of my student loans and credit cards. At least with the car, it was going toward reliable transportation that I knew would see me through just about any trip I’d need to take. The many road trips we’ve been on together have borne this out: Maryland, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia are all in the Camry’s logbook. I’ve had family members, students, even two or three sorta well-known people as passengers. I’ve parked that car next to the greatest ship ever built. I’ve seen the Empire State Building through that car’s windows. Yes, we’ve got stories.

In all these adventures, the car’s mechanical soundness has never been a worry, and I’ve been religious about keeping up with service intervals. Of late, I’ve been doing it myself; not only oil and filter changes, but recently I redid the brakes and replaced the struts and shocks. It continues to be reliable and ride well. In fact, the only issue I’ve really had with the car has been with the huge wheels and rubber-band tires on the XSE model. They do not like potholes or road hazards, and I’ve lost count of how many tires I’ve replaced over the years. I finally installed 17″ wheels with more substantial tires, and although this configuration isn’t as sleek as the factory setup, it means a lot less worry. (I also replaced the doughnut spare with a matching wheel and tire, which means even less worry.)

Through all these years, I’ve continued to make that monthly payment, steadily paying it down, getting ever closer. Until that magic day this week when the payoff was close enough that I could goose my regular payment with some money from my savings, and the magic words PAID IN FULL appeared.

It reminded me of how I felt almost four years ago when I paid off my student loans. I’d dreamed of that day for more than 20 years, remembered how it felt when I got that first invoice. It was like telling me to climb Denali. But how do you climb a mountain? One step at a time. And, so I did. Came that glorious day in August 2022, when the last payment went in…and I remember wishing there were fireworks or flashing lights, like the pinball machine in “The Time Of Your Life” (or the scoreboard at Old Comiskey that it inspired). Instead, my great achievement was marked with a whisper.

There weren’t fireworks, but there was instead a feeling of quiet accomplishment. I did it. I didn’t begrudge the people whose student loans were being forgiven around that time; heck, if I’d had a higher balance at the time I’d have applied too. (In fact, I had seriously looked into the public service loan forgiveness program, only to learn that refinancing my loans through an eligible program would have taken as much time as just paying them off as they were.) I don’t wish student loan debt on anybody, and I don’t begrudge anybody who got forgiveness or other help, not at all. But there’s something I feel when I look at my payoff letters: the knowledge that this big thing I overcame was mine. It’s how I felt then, and it’s a feeling I had again this week when those three glorious words appeared on my computer screen.

It’s not like I can suddenly go nuts with all this money that will no longer go toward a car payment. There’s still a couple or three consumer accounts that need to be retired and a mortgage that’s creeping toward payoff. All the while, I need to build up my savings and get some other things going so I can prepare for my next act, once I’ve had enough of teaching. (Not retirement, mind you, because I’ve long known that if I don’t have something to do, I’ll go stark raving mad.)

But even with what’s ahead, this is a moment to enjoy. I did, the other day, as I walked out front and saw that sleek blue machine in the driveway, and thought to myself: “This is my car now.”

It took a long time, but it was worth it.

The first of my many adventures came the day after graduation. A friend of mine who spent a half-century at one of the big television networks has an amazing collection of rare materials that he collected throughout his career. He’s now at the point where he has to figure out what to do with it, and I agreed to come up and have a look.

But there’s a catch: he lives near New York City. And right now, I don’t feel like flying anywhere. To make a long story short, I drove to his home not far from Manhattan. It was a long drive, yes, but the drive through the New Jersey suburbs wasn’t anywhere as bad as I thought it would be, and the time I spent with my friend and his wife, and lunch at a local diner with one of his lifelong friends (another network veteran) was most enjoyable. When it was time to leave, I could not believe it when I looked out the window of my car and saw the Manhattan skyline off to my left. It was surreal, but it was really happening.

One of the better parts of driving versus flying is that it let me do things my own way, not tied to any schedule but my own. This gave me a chance to spend the night in Camden, where I could wander around the refurbished RCA factory that evening, and spend part of the next morning wandering around the battleship New Jersey, now very nicely preserved as a museum ship.

Across the Delaware were some stunning views of Philadelphia. It’s a city I love, for a lot of reasons. But a couple times I looked down the waterfront and thought of a landmark that’s no longer there, and my heart ached just a bit. Afterwards, it was over to Bala Cynwyd and a quick visit with an old friend, and then back home, with one more night en route to give my aging carcass some rest.

I didn’t have that long to be idle, for late the next week I was off to Huntsville for further business: a meeting with a former student who’s now one of the senior folks at a television station there, and a visit to the Space and Rocket Center the next morning with a couple friends. It was my first visit to Huntsville since 1988, and a lot has changed at the Space and Rocket Center since then. As long as I could stop thinking about how long it had been, it was an enjoyable visit.

A couple of weeks, themselves full, passed before it was time to set out yet again. My friend who works at ABC in New York invited me up to spend another morning with him as he worked on Good Morning America. As if that wasn’t enough, ABC has decamped from its longtime West Side campus to a new facility at Hudson Square, and my friend offered to show me around the place. How could I say no?

This time, I wasn’t doing all the driving. I’d only have to take myself as far as Baltimore, and Amtrak would do much of the rest. So last Friday, bright and early, I made the I-77 to I-81 trip for the third time in 11 months, and it never gets any shorter. Happily, I was spared lengthy delays en route and made much better time than I anticipated. The next morning, I packed a smaller bag for an overnight trip, drove to the train station next to the Baltimore airport, and prepared to ride the rails.

I’ve traveled by rail a few times before – the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to Anchorage, and New Jersey Transit from Port Jervis to Penn Station on my first trip to New York a long time ago – but it’s the first time I’d traveled by Amtrak. On a whim I bid on an upgrade and, for a few dollars more, ended up in a Business Class car that was less than half full. The trip was about three hours and went without incident. Had I not been kind of keyed up, it would have been a good chance to take a nap. Instead, I listened to some music and wrote a little in my journal, looked out the window and occasionally took some video footage of the passing landscape, footage that I may edit into a little film if I can get myself to follow through.

The scenes outside got busier, the skyline I’d seen from my car last month came into view, and before long we disappeared into darkness and emerged into the station. Up an escalator and into Moynihan Train Hall, a lovely adaptation of an old building for a new use. I’ll never know what it was like to emerge into the old Penn Station (although I do know what it’s like to emerge into the depressing current one), but what I saw as I came up the escalator gave me an idea of what the old one was like. I got a quick bite to eat, and then realized I had to kill a couple hours before my hotel was ready for check-in.

You would think I’d be resourceful enough to figure that out. Unfortunately, it’s mid-June. Prime tourist season. On a Saturday. The sun is out. And it’s hot out. Hot. We were in the throes of the heat dome, in a concrete and asphalt canyon. I tried to figure out where to go and what to do, and decided to default to what I knew. Thus began an ill-advised hike the 15 blocks to Rockefeller Center, where I knew I could fritter away the time before my 4 p.m. check-in. At 42nd Street, I took a side trip to pay my regards to Patience and Fortitude.

This was made all the more interesting by a very large tour group of teenagers from another country, and I had to weave my way past and through them to get to my next stops. Seven blocks later, the Channel Gardens beckoned, and ahead of me the familiar monolith of 30 Rock.

I wheezed through the revolving doors into that dark, glorious lobby with all its glorious air conditioning. Down into the concourse, I hoped to find a place to sit and rest…only to find there were none, except for the patrons of various eateries. After a while I gave up, figured I could catch the subway downtown, and vamp there until 4 p.m. But the subway entrance I was promised on the map wasn’t there; construction on that corner blocked off the entrance. After running myself ragged, I took shelter in a building’s public concourse, and then bought a bottle of water in the building’s coffee shop. A cheery barista rang the sale up for me, and we traded lighthearted comments about the hellish conditions outside. It didn’t take me long to drain the bottle, and I soon yielded my seat to a family and headed onward.

Finally, a subway station! Unfortunately, the entry area was cramped, with few turnstiles, and some of the folks exiting the line weren’t exactly using situational awareness. I didn’t realize I was standing in the path of the cashier’s window, and a guard instructed me to move away. By this point, tired and fed up, I semi-hollered that I was waiting for the people leaving the turnstiles to figure out what they were going to do. I paid my fare and went onward. It was the first time I’d lost my temper with anyone while visiting Manhattan, and I felt kind of badly about it. On the other hand, it’s Manhattan, the place where the F-word is used the way most people use “and.” In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor sin.

The E Train took me south, and after my stop, I emerged at a place I’ve known about all my life, but whose meaning forever changed one awful morning.

My hotel was right next to the World Trade Center site. Professor Mondo had mentioned it after his visit a few months back, and when I saw some surprisingly good rates I booked my stay there. After a little homework, I realized it was a hotel that’s etched into my memory for another reason: on the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2001, CBS aired some footage from inside its ruined, dust-covered lobby, showing the abandoned computer screens still going, and the flashing warnings at the control consoles near the check-in desk. That scene, its own version of Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” has haunted me ever since. (You can see that footage at approximately 15 minutes into this link. It’s not in the original context in which I saw it, but it’s the same images.) And now, here I was, in the very building where it happened.

As it happens, the hotel is being renovated. The lobby was closed, and we were shunted to a side entrance. The check-in desk was now on the fourth floor, in what looked like a repurposed meeting room. And there was a line out in the hallway. The two clerks on duty were obviously swamped, and not all the rooms were ready; the two men in front of me were very unhappy about this, and were trying to demand some kind of compensation. I braced for similar news and was already trying to figure out how I would handle it, but my room was ready to go. Back around to the elevators I went, and I punched the button for my floor…only to realize it was an elevator where you have to present your keycard to select your floor. I realized this just as the other passenger in the elevator was about to help me. We kind of chuckled about it, and I used my standard line about “they do that just to cross up those of us who are up here from the country.”

Once inside my room, I collapsed on the bed. I was soaking wet, sore, tired. But the view out my window was not what I expected. Directly ahead of me was the Oculus, One World Trade Center…and the first of two giant square holes, their outlines ringed in black. There weren’t any words for it, and throughout the evening I’d keep coming back to that view.

After cooling down for a while, I changed shirts and set out again. The memorial was my first stop…all the names along the outlines. It really reminded me of my first visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, and how nothing about the scope of the lives lost had ever really got to me until I saw the size of the Wall and how small the names were. That’s all I can compare this to. You have to see it to really get it.

Down into the Oculus I went, both to look around and to find a bottle of water, which I finally found at a Hudson News store. There wasn’t much time to drink it, or much of a place to relax with it. (Tourist season, remember?) Instead, I hoofed it back up and out. I’d wanted to visit the Brooklyn Bridge, since a very dear friend of mine grew up in Brooklyn, and…well, I was nearby. Unfortunately, everybody else in the entire world had the same idea that afternoon, and the pedestrian lane of the bridge was solid humanity. I noped out and headed for a Duane Reade store, where I bought provisions for the evening.

Then it was back to my room for a much-needed shower that almost made me feel like a human again. I spent the evening looking out the window at that unforgettable view, doing a lot of thinking about what happened there, and how everything forever changed that day. I was simultaneously amazed by what was before me, and haunted by the horrors that had played out here nearly a quarter-century ago. And since Fate has a wicked sense of humor, just before bedtime I learned that we’d bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. Tomorrow was going to be interesting. But I got out a book I’d brought and did some reading, hoping to get my mind off things. It worked well enough.

I had a decent, if truncated, night’s rest, beating my alarm by about an hour, and was up and out by 5:30. My friend was expecting me at 6:30, and I wanted to give myself some extra time in case anything happened en route. I left the hotel, wandered through the World Trade Center site and took some photos, and then started walking north. Even in the early morning hours, it was getting hot and sticky, and by the time I got to Hudson Square I was spent. The front desk checked me in, my friend came down and greeted me, and up we went to start the day’s fun.

For the next three hours I got to see professionals at work, and there’s kind of a vicarious thrill that comes with it. You’re watching this stuff happen in real time, and yet the people you’re with have done this so much and for so long. It makes me think of really good doctors performing surgery, responding to the unexpected with calm wit and trained hands. The breaking news from the night before threw a curveball into the proceedings, and it was interesting to be there when the network went to a special report. But it got done.

After the morning’s duties were done, my friend and I went just about everywhere we could inside ABC’s new facility. To say it’s impressive is an understatement, and in some places I felt I’d stepped ten years into the future. It made me wish we had something similar where I work, but since I don’t have anywhere near the resources Disney could pour into this facility, it ain’t happenin’ soon. Oh, well. But as much fun as the tour was, it was as much fun to spend time with some of the folks my friend works with. I learned long ago that the people who like what they do are eager to share what they know with you, if you’re genuinely interested in it. It’s opened many a door, and many a friendship, for me, and this trip reminded me of how valuable that is. Now, when I come to New York, it’s not for a tour so much as it is to be with friends again, friends who happen to work in the teevee business.

Noon came and went, and we had to part ways. For me, it was one more ride on the E back to Moynihan Train Hall, and then the train to Baltimore. I had a quick bite, spent some time writing in my journal, and then off to the very full Amtrak 87. It was scorching hot outside, and our take-no-crap conductor reminded us all at every stop to be safe and stay hydrated if we were getting off. The heat also messed with our progress, and outside Aberdeen, Maryland we were stopped for about 20 minutes due to heat issues. In due course, though, we were on our way, and I was back at BWI soon enough. From there, it was a not-too-lengthy drive to my hotel for the night.

The final morning of this trip, I was up in plenty of time to get ready, and then I headed east to Norfolk and a visit to the battleship Wisconsin, now moored as a museum ship at Nauticus.

There’s not as much to see on the self-guided tour as there is aboard New Jersey, but I also got to see some areas aboard Wisconsin that I couldn’t see aboard New Jersey, either. It was already getting really hot, and less than an hour later I was headed back across the river for Newport News and The Mariners’ Museum.

This was kind of a sentimental journey. The last time I was at The Mariners’ Museum was August 1991, when my family took a vacation to Newport News so I could do some research about s/s United States. As will tend to happen, a place gets frozen in your mind as it was the last time you saw it. Since then, the museum has changed a lot, and it’s going through some renovation now. It’s not a bad thing, and indeed there were a good many things I remember from back then that I was happy to see again. Maybe, though, it isn’t the changes that sadden you as much as the realization of how much time has passed. What seems like yesterday was nearly 34 years ago.

Driving through Newport News itself reminded me of this. I remember when we crossed the James River Bridge that first day back in 1991, and how I looked down the river at Newport News Shipbuilding and then down the waterfront, to the Big U languishing down at the CSX coal pier. USS Enterprise was in the shipyard, in the midst of an overhaul, and that I wasn’t expecting to see. Now Enterprise is at that yard again – that huge cube of an island can’t be mistaken for anything else – but this time, it’s the long goodbye. A few hundred yards away, though, a new Enterprise is under construction in a graving dock.

It wasn’t the ships that I was really thinking about. It was the time that had passed, how 34 years is the blink of an eye, and how no one knows where the time goes. That’s what was really in my head as I took one last look behind, then set a course for Emporia and then the long drive back to home, and the future. I got home later that night, much to the gratitude of two cats, one of whom was relieved to finally have his Emotional Support Human back home.

And after a month or so of travel, I’m thankful for all I’ve been able to do and see, but I need the rest. There may be short trips here and there over the next month, but none of the multi-state extravaganzas for a while, although I am hoping there will be a conference in the cards for me come September. For now, though, I need a break, and there’s plenty for me to see after here.

As I write this, I’m in a hotel room in Athens, Georgia, a stone’s throw from the University of Georgia’s main campus. Tomorrow morning, I’m meeting with an archivist who works with the huge media library over here, hoping to get guidance on some projects that some associates and I have in the works.

The fact I’m over here on business makes this visit an exception. Most of the time, I’m over here for my own purposes. Many times it’s been to visit my friend Bobby, who now lives just a short drive from downtown. Other times, though, I’m over here to chase some ghosts. And every time I come over here, there are that many more ghosts to chase.

Once upon a time I wanted to live here. For some reason, I decided during the first half of my junior year that I wanted to go on to graduate school. I’m not sure I knew why. I think a friend and I had talked about it, and I wanted in, especially since it would give me a chance to get out of the nest. I still remember the night I told my mother, as we browsed in the housewares section of a massive hardware store during a particularly enjoyable shopping trip a couple weekends before Christmas. I started planning from there.

There were several universities on my mind. The most obvious was the University of South Carolina. I mean, it was right there in the middle of my home state. However, my mentor and unofficial adviser at Lander told me that going to my home state’s university for graduate work could confine my prospects. He said I should expand my horizons, and suggested Vanderbilt and Wright State, among others. Intrigued, I sent away for information and added those to the roster.

But somehow my heart got set on the University of Georgia. Location had a lot to do with it. I knew of Athens, and my dad often listened to a country station from there (WNGC, which provided us with our weekly dose of “Leonard’s Losers” – get me outta here, Percy!), but had never been there. It was far enough away for me to have independence (important, given that I was spending my college years still living at home, with most every move benevolently but still carefully watched by my parents, if not the whole tiny town) and yet not too far away. And, to be honest, the town’s reputation as a haven for independent types, artists and oddballs appealed to me. Now, granted, the Athens of the mid-’90s was nothing like the Athens of those not-so-long-ago days that spawned R.E.M. and any number of others, but it still appealed to me.

So, plans got made. I started getting things lined up, taking the Graduate Record Exam and having my scores sent to the appropriate places, getting applications in before deadline. And in the summer of 1995, not long after I graduated, my mother and I drove over to Athens for the day, just to look around town. It was a long drive through rolling hills and beautiful countrysides before we got to this odd city that seemed to be on top of a hill. We parked and wandered around, going into quirky little shops, stopping in an art gallery where several photographers (including Michael Stipe) had their works on display, having lunch at a neat sandwich shop across from the university campus. We went over to campus and I spent an hour or so in the massive stacks of the library, making photocopies (remember those?) of sections of books that I never knew existed, on topics that fascinated me. I couldn’t put my finger on why Athens held me in thrall, at least not in a way I could express that others would understand, and at one point my emotions boiled over into a flash of impatience toward my mother that, though I will always regret it, is typical for someone who’s in their early 20s and feeling frustrated. I was caught, I suppose, between being in a place that represented possibility and being in the company of someone who represented the world I was trying to escape.

The year after I finished college turned out to be what we’d now call a “gap year.” It wasn’t planned that way, but that’s what happened. I didn’t have any job prospects or anything lined up. (It turned out to be a good thing, for I spent much of that time off fighting a case of depression that, now that I look back, I’m amazed I made it through with my mind intact.) But one day the phone rang. It was a professor in the history department at UGA. They were looking at applications. Was I interested in starting in January? Oh, was I ever. But I knew so much would have to happen in a big hurry. The finances would have to get squared. I’d have to find a place to live. I’d have to move a couple of mountains. I had to conclude that although I would love to, I wasn’t in a position where I was honestly prepared to do it, and I declined with regret. So, on I went, with Georgia as my primary focus and South Carolina as my safety school, with visions in my head of moving off to Athens the next August to start my new life.

Well, not so fast. In the mail one Saturday arrives a letter from Athens: thanks, but no thanks on admission for Fall. I was heartbroken. I’d just been offered a slot a few months before, and now I’m chopped liver. What gives? My mother took me to lunch, and in our booth at the Huddle House the next town over, I stewed and considered next steps. The next week, I wrote back (by postal mail – remember, this was the mid-1990s, and e-mail had yet to make it to our tiny town) and expressed my displeasure over this perceived inconsistency. Why was I okay for January but suddenly no good? In full early-20s righteous indignance, certain that I was getting the shaft (and blissfully unaware of how admission processes actually work in high-demand programs), I demanded an investigation. Which, obviously, did not turn out in my favor, as a very polite letter a few weeks later explained.

South Carolina did want me, though, and I made my peace with that. In August I moved to Columbia and started graduate work at the big university. And it’s funny how life works: you don’t get what you want, but you end up finding what you really needed. That first semester, I met people I’d never have met otherwise. I built some friendships that last to this day. I had faculty members whose example showed me how to do the job I have now (and at least one faculty member whose example showed me what to never let myself become). This was doubly so when, after a year in the graduate history program, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in journalism instead. As I quickly found out, it wasn’t as easy as changing majors as an undergraduate, and I’m still boggled by how naive I was to think it could be. Be that as it may, the folks in the J-school were kind enough to help, and the basement of the Carolina Coliseum, with its windowless offices and classrooms, became my new home. I’ve often felt those were some of the best days of my life, and some part of me will always yearn for those times. Those were days when I was with classmates with whom I seemed to click, when I had professors who really saw something in me that I had yet to see myself, and when things just felt happy. And to think: had I gotten in at UGA, I’d have never had that. (Heck, I might not have survived it.)

None of that stopped me from driving over to Athens every now and then, though. Maybe I couldn’t get in as a student, but it was a nifty day trip and I could visit favorite haunts: not only could I spend hours in the library, but I could browse at Wuxtry Records and Jackson Street Books, enjoy a sandwich at Yudy’s, visit any number of the interesting little shops along the streets, and generally indulge the latent bohemian inside me for a little while. It was all of the pleasure of living the daydream without the reality of actually living there, and it was fun. You get to know the landmarks, and you love it while you have it, and you hope it can stay that way forever – for the heart is sentimental, sometimes foolishly so.

At the turn of the century, life took me to another part of the country. I was back a year later, to take up the job I now have, but it took four more years for me to get back to the little town with the big university. AEJMC was having its regional conference in Athens, I needed to attend conferences to build up my tenure and promotion portfolio, and so it all came together. In early March of 2005 I drove into town for the first time in nearly six years. Athens had been fixed in my mind as it was the last time I saw it. But as I drove along Broad Street, things…well, they didn’t look right. Yudy’s was gone; on its exterior was now the logo of a nationwide coffee chain. So too were gone a number of the quirky little taverns and shops I remembered. Slowly, the eccentricity was giving way to the chains. At least the Holiday Inn, which was hosting the conference, was still on that weird split-level lot. I pulled in, got my room, and then hiked up the hill to a pizza joint on Broad Street. After that, I walked over to Jackson Street Books, where I happily prowled the shelves and brought back a couple of treasures, and I spent the evening reading away, happy as could be.

If being away for five years was a shock, it was far more so when I came back nine years later. Bobby had invited me over for a visit to his home, back when he lived a few miles over, and then to dinner in Athens with a friend of his, a former network correspondent who now taught at the university. So much more had changed, so much more had become streamlined and franchised. There were signs, still, of the old Athens – Wuxtry Records remained, proud and unbowed, exactly as I remembered – but the town I had known was slipping away, ever more.

Every time I’ve been back, something else has been missing. Jackson Street Books closed in the middle of the last decade, as the realities of the weird new world of commerce proved too much for an independent bookstore to overcome. The Holiday Inn that I stayed at two decades ago is now an empty lot, soon to host yet another of the gigantic construction projects taking place around town. (I’m writing this from the Holiday Inn Express a couple blocks west, which replaced it.) Tall hotels and apartment complexes now flank the uphill approach to Broad Street. The Varsity, which used to be just outside town, is closed. The university itself, as all large universities seem to these days, has expanded its footprint and huge new buildings have appeared in places I remember as sleepy blocks of town. (Although Wuxtry Records remains – bless them – and it’s become a ritual for me to buy another t-shirt when I’m in the store. I can never have enough Wuxtry t-shirts.)

I know it’s progress. I know that you can’t want a place to remain the same forever. I also know that a place rightfully belongs not to the sentiments of those who cast their hopes elsewhere, but to the people who live there now. It belongs to them, and not to the “remember when” types.

It all comes back to that line about “I’m going over there to chase some ghosts.” I think I mean it not just because I miss Yudy’s or Jackson Street Books or any of the other places that amazed and amused back then. I think I also do it because, inside, I miss the times that those places represent. I miss the optimism of the kid who loved visiting those places, and a time in my life when it seemed all things were possible. Or maybe I over-romanticize those times because, when you know how the story turns out, memory becomes a luxury. Time and sentiment can sand the rough edges off the past’s realities and uncertainties. Plus, when your present reality has its own uncertainties and scary moments, it provides a distraction. (Memory is both blessing and curse, isn’t it?)

But I have to remember, always, that what didn’t go my way three decades ago made possible all the wonders my life has now. Change one thing – no matter how insignificant you think it was – and it doesn’t play out the same. It’s possible that if UGA had let me in three decades ago, I’d be a best-selling historian or some media darling, dividing my time between my homes in various parts of the world. Or it’s just as likely that it could have gone the other way and I’d be working in a box factory somewhere. And yet I wouldn’t want to trade that coin flip for what I have now: a life that, for all its weird angles and worries and things yet to be fulfilled, still provides a lot of contentment and contains an awful lot of love. It feels the way an honestly good life should, and it all happened because things didn’t go my way.

The rest? It’s a nice place to visit, and in my reveries I often do.

But I’m not sure I would live there.

The ocean liner United States has been a long-standing fascination for me. It started innocently enough, during my senior year in high school. I had befriended the head librarian as soon as I started attending the school and became a library assistant during my senior year. (It tells you everything about me that I had closer relationships with some of my teachers and with the librarians than I had with most of my classmates.) During my senior year, she let me and a friend eat lunch in a work room in back of the library.

Along the back wall of this room were bound volumes of most of the original run of Life magazine, and several years of Time from the late 1940s and early 1950s. More often than not I’d spend part of my lunch hour with some of those volumes pulled down, and I’d happily leaf through these little time capsules, losing myself in another era: not only the stories of what was in the news then, but the photography and the ads. Spend enough time immersed in those ads and you find yourself longing for products that haven’t been offered in forever.

One day I was looking through the June 1952 issues of Time, and one cover stuck out: a ship’s captain, brow furrowed with responsibility, watchful gaze fixed on something in the distance; behind him was a porthole with frolicking vacationers visible, as bon voyage streamers fluttered by, a mildly surreal mash-up of the sort Time covers of the day specialized in. “Commodore Manning of the ‘United States,'” the caption read.

As I looked inside to see what the story was, I couldn’t feel the hook being set. I started reading about this amazing ship and all the modern features, including some the Navy didn’t want to disclose (and which, I’d learn in time, had to do with more than just claims of national security). Then throughout other issues, the advertisements, breathless with anticipation, from United States Lines about the ship’s entry into service. Then to the coverage of the ship in Life.

Inevitably I started wondering: what happened to this ship? It’s what I tend to do when I find out about marvels from the past; some itch makes me wonder what became of them. Nowadays, you could just pull out your smartphone and have the ship’s entire story at your fingertips. But in 1991, a “smartphone” would have meant Don Adams talking into his shoe.

Somehow I found out the ship was still around. There had been plans to convert the ship into a cruise liner, but nothing had happened. The ship was languishing away in Virginia and hadn’t been to sea since 1969. I got interested in writing about the ship and planned to go to Virginia to do some research at the Mariners’ Museum, and hoped to get some photos of the ship while I was there. But since I was the baby of the family, my parents said no. Eventually we worked something out (oh, was that a story) and it became a hastily-arranged family vacation that turned out to be pretty nice, probably the best vacation we took together. We took a harbor cruise and I saw the big ship with my own eyes. I’d been aboard big ships before, having been to many a ship museum, but there was something about seeing this ship up close, in person. The ship was still powerful, looked fast and majestic just sitting there, but so sad: faded, rusted, abused, neglected.

I got involved in the nascent efforts to save the ship from being scrapped, which really picked up when a federal court put the ship up for auction. There were all manner of strings being pulled, but to no avail, and in April 1992 we prepared for the worst to happen at auction. Instead, a Turkish-based group bought the Big U. Two months later the ship went to Turkey, and from there to Sevastopol for drydocking and to have the asbestos-laden interiors stripped out.

Well, the plans went nowhere, and the owners had begun selling parts of the ship for scrap (which is why, among other things, the lifeboats and davits were gone). Another eleventh-hour rescue and the ship ended up in Philadelphia in 1996. The following year, a friend and I went up over Memorial Day weekend to see the ship. When her dad retired from the Air Force in 1962, they got to travel back home from England aboard the ship. She still remembers watching Birdman of Alcatraz in the ship’s theater.

Years passed and various plans came and went, and the ship dodged various brushes with doom. At one point it seemed tantalizingly like the ship would get converted to go back to sea again, but that didn’t work out. At another point, plans for the ship’s refurbishment and preservation seemed so close. But that, alas, was not to be. And then, the owner of the pier where the Big U was moored got tired of this big ship being there, and more legal wrangling ensued. Alas, we know how it ended; with sale to a Florida county that will scuttle the ship as the world’s largest artificial reef.

Back in July, we didn’t know how this was going to turn out, although since January, when the word about the pier situation really started getting dire, I had been bracing for the final act happening sometime this year, and I had a feeling the ship was running out of lives. The e-mails from the ship’s preservation organization were sounding more concerned than usual.

There had been occasional opportunities for guided tours aboard the ship, but they often involved more money than I had available, or they required some kind of “in,” such as being a former passenger. But in mid-year, the Conservancy opened things up: for a minimum donation, you could go aboard. I thought the odds of me getting a slot were long, but I figured I’d regret if I didn’t try, and so I sent an inquiry. To my surprise, I got the first date I requested. All I had to do was make the donation, which happened moments later. Then came all the logistics: oh, crap, I gotta plan a route, book hotel rooms, get a timeline together, etc., etc. Which, all of that came together, but since I do tend to fret, it got interesting.

The morning of July 19, I loaded up the car and set out. On any trip this size, I’ll usually spend about the first 20 minutes wondering why am I doing this crazy thing? and then, at a certain point, something will shift and I’ll ease into travel mode. Certainly by the time I was on I-77, I was ready to go. My trip followed much the same route my friend and I had taken in 1997: I-77 to I-81, and then on to the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Philadelphia. It was hours and hours and hours of travel, with TCM’s splendid podcasts about Pam Grier and John Ford keeping me company much of the way. Since I had started out early, though, I was able to make it across the Pennsylvania line and spend the night in Chambersburg. The next morning, I was up early, got on the Turnpike and it was on to Philadelphia. Mission-driven person I am, I was there at 9:15 for the 10 a.m. report time, and killed a little time at a Lowe’s near the rendezvous point. Across the busy four-lane street from us, there was the Big Ship. It had been so long. I was glad to see my old friend again, even if my heart broke a little more.

There was a group of about 20 that morning, from various places; some of us were experienced with old ships, while some were just curious about this big old ship they kept seeing from the Walt Whitman Bridge. One was an artist who had become fascinated with the ship and was making a repeat visit to take pictures for her projects. Eventually all were accounted for, and we made a convoy over to the pier, and parked where we could. I was finally up close with the ship, and I could scarcely believe it. There’s my car, all of a sudden, parked alongside s/s United States.

We got out of our vehicles and stood pierside, then walked around for photo opportunities. I was overawed. This is so big, I kept thinking. But that cut two ways: yes, the ship was a marvel, but only up close could I really appreciate how much damage the years had inflicted: the mangled railings, the busted portholes, the streaks and pocks of rust. In a heartbeat, my awe turned to sadness: This is so big. The vastness of the job was suddenly so apparent, like a giant hole had consumed me and all I had to dig out with was a toy shovel and pail. I had the feeling you’d need probably a billion dollars to truly do this project right. It was a billion dollars I didn’t have.

Every so often, the inevitable becomes heartbreakingly clear and you have to brace for it. It’s a feeling I knew in early 2019 when the veterinarian at the emergency clinic told me that our senior cat’s heart was giving out and that I was about to lose my bestest buddy of 15 years, and I suddenly had to make one of the most heartbreaking decisions I’ve ever made. It’s a feeling I knew not two weeks into this year when I got the phone call that my mother, who had been in the hospital but seemed okay when I visited two days before, was in the ICU and was crashing quickly. It’s the feeling that you’re about to have to let go of something you have loved so dearly for so long, that last-minute happy endings don’t exist outside Hollywood, and even the first glimmers that maybe it’s all for the best, that the unforeseen costs of answered prayers could end up worse than just doing the right thing and, as a friend of mine often says, letting go and letting God. It’s the coldness of reality grabbing you by the collar.

Now, granted, this is different because a 990-foot ship will never love you back. But, still, when you’ve invested 33 years into caring so deeply about something…yeah, this hurt.

In time our tour guide led us down the pier to a metal gangway. After all these years, it was about to happen. Up and over, and I’m aboard. “We meet at last,” I tell the ship, giving a gentle pat as I step aboard, into a crew area called Times Square. A couple of men who help take care of the ship greet us. There’s some paperwork we have to sign (of course), and we’re all given flashlights since there’s a lot of areas without lights ahead, and after a briefing we set off.

(Side note: Some of what I’m about to cover was also covered by Steven Ujifusa, author of A Man And His Ship, in this post a few days ago. Check it out, as Steven got coverage of a few areas I mention here but didn’t get pictures of.)

First we have to climb a spiral stair up, and then we emerge into…vast emptiness. Where passenger cabins once were, now there are outlines of where walls used to be. Light streams in from the cabin ports. The stubs from where the toilet and bath plumbing used to be stick up from the decks. The ship’s decor and many other artifacts were auctioned off in 1984 and are now scattered among hundreds of museums and private collections, and good luck ever getting all that stuff back; much of what was left, notably the marinite asbestos panels that made up walls and other interior divisions, was gutted in 1994 during the yard period in Sevastopol. For the most part, we’re touring an empty hull, communing with ghosts. Here and there, there are signs of what once was – the different patterns on the decks that corresponded with which class you were in (first, cabin or tourist). It’s like finding little traces of a lost civilization. It made your heart hurt. At one point, in a now-denuded lounge, I embraced one of the countless structural stanchions that shoot up through the public spaces like trees. Very quietly, I whispered: “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” If it’s true that ships have souls, I hope that ship heard me.

There’s something else I haven’t mentioned. If you’ve been aboard enough ships, you know they have a distinct smell. Just about every ship I’ve been aboard has had some variant of that smell, even active Navy ships that are well-maintained. It’s a mix of grease, fuel oil, sweat, stale air and who knows what else. It’s hard to describe, but the closest thing I’ve found is the smell of old color-printed magazines that have sat in storage for a long time; a pungent, slightly mildew-y, slightly ashy smell that gets your attention. Now imagine that on a ship that hasn’t been climate-controlled in decades, neglected and open to the elements. Even through a KF94 mask I could pick up that smell. It soaked into my hair and my clothes, and even days later I could detect the smell in that mask. It became poignant.

Some of the public areas were evocative. At one point we went into a little room that looked out over what had been the first class dining room, where everybody who was anybody would have dined back in the day, wearing their absolute best, the truly important folks getting invited to sit at the table with the Commodore (or with the captain when the Commodore wasn’t at sea). The tables were long gone; only the sockets remained from where the table legs were secured to the deck. The little compartment we were in, one deck up, was a loft where the musicians had once played. And now we looked out over an empty dining room; the best we could do was reconstruct the scene in our minds.

Elsewhere on the tour, we visited what had been the first class lounge. You could still make out where the musician’s platform had been, and the circular dance floor, though worse for wear, was still evident. I was likely to never get another chance, so when no one was looking, I did a quick Natalie Merchant twirl on the dance floor and rejoined the group.

Eventually we emerged on deck. Once upon a time we’d have been walking on green-colored weather decks covered in Neotex. But over the years the Neotex gave up, crumbled away. Some of it rests as little gray-green flecks of gravel collected in nooks and crannies, while some larger pieces hold on. The temptation was strong to pick up a little piece of it and slip it into my pocket as a souvenir. But…my conscience told me it wouldn’t have been right. The only thing I felt was right to take was photographs, and so I did.

We explored other areas: where the lifeboats and davits once were, now it’s just a long and open run of clear deck, with beaten-up railings along the edges. The pilothouse, where the ship was guided on record-breaking voyages and through stormy seas, is now empty. Atop the pilothouse, you could look up close at the giant forward funnel, whose last sheets of weather-beaten paint from the final yard period 56 years ago are hanging on for dear life. Brave souls could try to climb up the foremast, but my dread of heights kept me a live coward instead of an vertigo-plagued hero.

We explored aft, too: overlooking one of the giant propellers now resting on deck; a good view of the aft railing that was bent in Sevastopol; the shoots of green that have grown in nooks and crannies; the rust that has eaten away at unprotected metal. Then the vacant promenade deck, once all full of life, but now empty and ghostly, empty light fixtures now hanging down.

Back inside and back down to Times Square we went. The tour had already gone longer than expected, but there was more to see. As we waited for the next leg of the tour, there was a cooler with iced-down bottles of water and Gatorade, and we were welcome to help ourselves. I hadn’t had anything in hours, and walking around this unventilated ship on a humid summer day had worn me low. It took me no time at all to drain a bottle of Gatorade.

Then we were off to visit one of the engine rooms; once a forbidden area, now we were merrily climbing through it, exploring things, finding wonders hidden in the dark mustiness. Along the way, I’d look up and see paint hanging down in giant sheets from the overhead, or see where cables and wiring had been chopped out. I got to thinking about the hundreds of miles of wiring and cabling that would have to be replaced, the countless passages and corridors and nooks and crannies that would have to be scraped and repainted…well, there went my heart hitting the deck once more.

The last stop on the tour was the swimming pool. When the ship was new, this kind of became famous, with the stylized flags spelling out “Come on in – the water’s fine” on the bulkhead at the rear of the pool. Well, the pool basin was still there, but the flags and a whole lot else were long gone. Some in the group climbed down into the basin, while I was content to soak in the ambience from above. I’ve never learned how to swim, anyway, and with my luck I’d have found a way to go under in a dry pool.

And with that, the tour was over. We threaded our way back up to Times Square and our tour guide gave each of us a folder with some information and a sticker, our souvenir of the visit. I waited behind to let others go ashore first, and to thank the gentlemen who had helped us while we were aboard. But then I had a moment of panic: I couldn’t find my glasses. I looked everywhere in Times Square, unable to remember where they might be. At last I thought to check the top of my head; sure enough, I was still wearing them. Yeah, it was a brain failure, but in its way, it gave me a private moment with the ship. On the way out, I gave a bulkhead a gentle, loving pat, told the Big U to keep her courage, and reluctantly joined everyone else on the pier.

There was time for a few more pictures, and we lingered and talked for a little while, and then the convoy headed out. The two men who had hitched a ride over with me met back up with me, and I delivered them to their vehicle, wished them well on their ride back to Virginia. And then I gave our ship one last, loving look as I drove away. I looked up at Uncle Walt’s bridge, with “Song of Himself” gamboling through my head, then pointed my car the other direction, toward I-95 and the hotel room that awaited me in North Carolina.

That night, as I prepared for bed, the smell of that ship was still with me: in my clothes, in my hair. As, too, were the tangled emotions: wishing I could pick the Big U up, take that ship home with me; trying to cope with the likelihood that the ship could well be torn apart in a ditch in Brownsville, or that the ship that Mr. Gibbs designed to never sink would meet that very fate. But even with all that, I could know that, even if the worst did happen, at least I had this day.

Given what I know now, I’m glad I had it.