(A couple classics at the Kokomo Auto Museum: Joe’s Javelin and Todd’s American rag-top on the road to Kokomo last Friday).

If there was ever a demonstration of the simple fact that I am not the man I once was (though still pretty good once, I hasten to add), it was the road trip to Kokomo.

There was a time when we would do that drive in a single day, dawn to past dusk. There were epic road trips that featured a cooler and Detroit to Park City, Utah, right straight through, like Cannonball Baker himself was riding shotgun with us. Not anymore.

It has taken the rest of the week and into Sunday to feel vaguely human again after 1600-odd miles behind the wheel. It was good, it was rewarding in terms of the people we encountered along the way, in mundane transactions and moments of high emotion. Good to know America is still out there, still vibrant and friendly and able to do things the way they always were.

I am at the farm this morning, and prepared to do some chores, but think the road is calling once more. Lovely Jamie had recommended a restaurant in Gordonsville she and her husband discovered on their brief honeymoon.

Gordonsville is a little railroad junction town in southern Orange County, and I think I am going to mosey on down on this lovely Spring day and check it out. And the museum that now occupies the Exchange Hotel, once a Civil War hospital that treated 70,000 casualties in the late unpleasantness between the States.

There is a family connection to the place. When the Irish landed at Alexandria in 1848 in the Famine Times, the men worked on the Orange & Alexandria line, and when they got to the junction with the Central Virginia tracks, they turned right and laid track all the way to Tennessee before my great-great-great grandfather died, swinging his hammer in the hot sun. It was a long way from County Galway for him to travel to his rest.

It is a bright morning with deep blue sky here in the country. I could trim the trees and the bushes here at Refuge Farm, and I know the tractor works since I started it two weeks ago after the long winter’s rest. So perhaps we will get to that after the little day trip to a quiet junction town, deep in the Virginia countryside.

Oh, the closure bit? Rosie is home and safe. Our pals Todd and Joe from the Hoosier AMC Club made a pilgrimage to see how she was settling in at the Auto Museum in Kokomo. Here is what Todd had to say about it:

“Went over to Kokomo today and walked through the Auto Museum with. We saw the 59 Rambler wagon of the Socotras and the Pacer of the Thurmonds. Also a Gremlin and a 64 American are in the museum. I drove our American over and Joe drove their Javelin up to Kokomo. Of course we went to the Half Moon Brewery after the museum tour. The 59 Rambler with its vertical fins is parked next to a 59 Chevy with horizontal fins. Oh, the days of real style. Of course the Rambler wagon has the Bill-designed roof which looks great and saved AMC a bundle in production costs. Such a gorgeous day to have the old cars out for a cruise.”

I posted on Todd’s page how emotional his pictures made us, and how happy we had done the right thing for Rosie. And in the meantime, I am going to take the 1991 GMC Syclone, in its day the World’s Fastest Production Pickup Truck, for a little drive in the country on a positively glorious Spring Day.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra, photos courtesy Todd Harrington
www.vicsocotra.com