"When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March's drought to the root and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)
Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant lands"
(from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales)In our case, the distant shrines were near and dear to the hearts of the travelers, holy lands in the eyes of the pilgrims. To the Muslims there is Mecca, to Annie there is Hershey's Chocolate World.
Jimmy and Maggie are on spring break this week so we took the opportunity to rekindle the "Watson family field trips." This past Wednesday, we set out under perfect weather conditions to Hershey, PA, home of Wilt Chamberlin's 100-point performance on March 2, 1962, and more importantly the town named for Milton Hershey, father of the chocolate bar, of which Annie ate 100 on March 2, 2006.
Hershey's Chocolate World is primarily a gift shop, wrapped around a few exhibits and a ride that is best described as "it's a small world through a river of chocolate." The ride describes the chocolate making process, from cocoa bean to wrapping, and featured singing cows. I'm not sure if singing cows are really involved in the mass production of chocolate bars, but they were melodic and drowned out the noise of Annie and Maggie's cries for more chocolate from the gift shop. There was also an area where you could simulate the Hershey Kiss packaging process, a little hands-on exhibit that Jimmy and I experienced while the girls were buying pants with Hershey Kisses on them, Good n Plenty purses, and stuffed bears featuring Hershey brand logos. The simulated packaging process was pretty simplified, most likely in an attempt to avoid lawsuits, but we did get to wear funny hats and pull a lever that dropped a bunch of Kisses off a conveyor belt and into the box in front of us. And Jimmy got an employee badge with his picture on it.
Hershey also has botanical gardens, which are best known in Watson family lore for the spring break trip in which my sister Jill fell into the knee-deep creek after breaking a rope railing on a foot bridge. The good thing is that it happened about 20 years ago and we forget those things and she doesn’t have to worry about it coming up again. We did not visit the gardens on this trip.
Late Wednesday we left Hershey, and headed 50 miles south to a small burg just a few miles north of the Maryland border. Our destination was a town where in 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia met the Army of the Potomac and engaged in three days of battle, so that Ted Turner could film it and release a 4-hour motion picture starring the guy from Dumb and Dumber. Of course, I'm speaking of Gettysburg, and another "distant shrine" in the eyes of one of the Watson children. Jimmy has been waiting to go to Gettysburg National Military Park for about, oh, 5 years now, so this was a big moment.
We arrived at the Gettysburg Hotel, situated on Lincoln Square, in the middle of the town. The hotel was built in 1797 and now employs local college students with names like Tiffany and Ashley dressed in Civil War era hoop skirts. It's a nice location, across the street from a place where Abe Lincoln stayed once. That stay is commemorated by a statue of Abe Lincoln with his arm around a guy in a sweater and tennis shoes. Proper explanation of that sculpture is beyond the scope of this forum. But I digress. We liked our hotel, and as promised, this trip had something for everyone in our family, and this was Maggie's something. You see, Maggie was so fond of the hotel that she only said "I want to go back to the hotel" approximately 17 times per hour.
My sister Joannie drove up for the day from college to meet us, as did family friend David Hasser, who attends school just 15 minutes away from Gettysburg in Emmitsburg, MD. David is in the seminary, completing his training for the priesthood, and any doubts he had about a celibate calling were probably erased at dinner. We ate at the "Pub" across the street from the hotel. You might say that dinner was chaotic, and details are probably best left for the "live" version of the story, but when the restaurant patrons applaud when you leave, the waitress deservedly scoffs at any tip less than 50%, and your youngest spends part of the meal on the floor beneath the table, well let's just say if there was a Purple Heart for parents we'd have earned one Wednesday night (and if there is Purple Heart for having to read a run-on sentence, you all just earned one...congratulations).
Following dinner, we thought it best to take a walk down the quaint streets of Gettysburg, to burn off the pent up energy of the massively sugared up children, and to get some ice cream. And yes, that is the most inconsistent sentence ever typed in the history of the English language. We found a small old-fashioned ice cream shop, no doubt just like the one that Confederate soldiers would have visited 143 years ago, and the kids each picked a flavor. Annie, having eaten one small dish of strawberry ice cream (which Jimmy and Maggie could not finish), decided to help me consume the remaining 2/3 of my banana fudge ripple waffle cone. Amazingly, they all slept that night, albeit that all of us (sans David who drove back to Emmitsburg at about 94 mph), were piled in one room at the hotel in a scene resembling the Bucket family from Willy Wonka.
On Thursday, we were off to the Gettysburg National Military Park, just south of town, for the highlight of James Ritz Watson III's 7+ years on this earth. We started at the Visitors' Center, where we resisted the urge to buy replicas of Civil War era weaponry and instead managed to buy the wildly entertaining in-car CD tour of the park. I imagine we will get much use out of this CD later. Once the kids are asleep, Regis and I can put the CD in, grab a bottle of wine, imagine we are in the car with screaming kids, and have a nice evening reliving the days of yore, with the smooth, lyric voice of Wayne Motts ... "Now turn left on Lincoln Street, and soon you will be near Little Round Top, where Governor K. Warren first directed the Union troops...."
The nice thing about the audio in-car tour is you can go at your own pace. We stopped and got out to explore certain parts of the 25 square mile park, and skipped other parts. Jimmy liked Little Round Top, which is a large, rocky and wooded hill that overlooks most of the battlefield. Maggie liked Devil's Den, which is a group of boulders at the base of Little Round Top, that made for several moments of "Dad-panic" as she climbed the rocks, Good n Plenty purse on her arm, pigtails bouncing, and saying "c'mon Joannie" to her almost-as-frazzled aunt. Annie liked the stone wall that runs throughout the park, so much that she took one of the rocks, weighing about 4.5 lbs, home with her. She carried it around all day, and fussed when parted with it. It bears mentioning that there are several "No Relic-Hunting" signs throughout the park.
We finished the day at the gift shop (fulfilling both the promise to Jimmy and the prophesy that several hundred dollars worth of authentic imitation goods would be purchased during the trip) and at the cemetery (to bury my empty wallet), which is where Abe Lincoln gave the famous speech about being the luckiest man on the face of the earth after contracting Gary Cooper's disease.
After a busy day, we bade adieu to Joannie and headed back up the highway toward Jersey. Annie's stolen rock made it all the way back, as did a yellow hat Joan left in our car. When we pulled into the driveway, it was good to be home...well for most of us. Maggie said she wants to go back to the hotel.
Hope you all are doing well.
