A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

Let’s hear it for Jay Leno! He mentioned A RIDE ALONG THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY last night near the end of his monologue on the TONIGHT SHOW. Said it was a good show! Tried to make some lame joke about men using that phrase as a euphemistic phrase for some sexual shenanigans. It bombed but who cares about his joke? The mention is all that counts.

Yes. The program aired last night. I watched it in my living room with my mother Peg who paid close attention and never dozed. That’s a good sign.

Many people left comments at the bottom of “Saturday night at the Car Store” and you can read them there. Or you can leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

The program repeats in most cities this Friday or Saturday. It’s on the PBS and PBS-HD schedules for Friday night at 10 PM, but you really have to check your local listings for when it comes back on your local public TV station.

So, what did you think?

Our finished program, the final edit with final sound mix, the high-res-ed show with captions for the hearing-impaired, the complete 56-minute-and-46-second HD master tape has been at PBS for a month.  We sent it to our trusty post-production house called Pillar To Post in Virginia on September 17 if I remember correctly.    And yet I still dream about re-editing stories, adding and subtracting sound bites, changing everything and starting over.  I swear the other night in my dreams (my nightmares?) I actually booked Bob and Glenn to go out with me and get another story.  I worry about the program a lot, even when it makes no difference and nothing can be changed.

Back on September 20, there was the first public showing of A RIDE ALONG THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY on the wall of an interesting restaurant and bar called the Road Toad out on Route 30 near Ligonier, very close to Idlewild Park.  There was a Pennsylvania Lincoln Highway Road Rally that day, and after all the rally-ers ate dinner, we tried to have a surprise sneak preview (!) of the show, but the technology wasn’t cooperating, and it might have been a complete bust, but two good friends, Mindy and Rodney Crawford persevered, and they figured out a way to project my DVD from a laptop onto the makeshift screen on the bar wall, and it was OK.  People who stayed around got the gist of it, and it seemed OK.  Butko was there and wrote it up on his blog.

But still I dreamed of re-edits and new narrations, and maybe I should rearrange all of the Utah story.

Then this past Saturday night, October 18, there was a party out in Sewickley (one of Pittsburgh’s toniest suburbs, about 12 miles down the Ohio River from the Point) at the Sewickley Car Store, a Porsche Audio BMW dealership owned and run by a cool cat named Joe Scarfone, and we showed the program to a crowd of about 200 of our closest friends and neighbors.   It was good.  A nice relaxed atmosphere.  Food and drinks.  Lots of talk.  Plenty of WQED folks mingling with car lovers, members of our Pittsburgh History Club, Sewickley celebrities like Michael Seate and Kim Love.  There were reporters from the Tribune-Review and the McKeesport Daily News, and some really great friends of Joe.

There were rows of white folding chairs in the BMW showroom that was converted into a theatre for the evening.

My sister Nisey and her man Bill Scott drove over from Columbus, Ohio, to escort my mom, Peggy, to the party, and Carole Karn, one of my teachers from the eighth grade who has been a great friend ever since, came with them.  Brian Butko was there too with his wife Sarah and some friends from West Mifflin.  He was gathering pictures for his Lincoln Highway News blog.

Our cameraman Bob Lubomski and his wife MJ brought family, friends and their next door neighbor who remembered riding the Lincoln to and from school as a girl, long before there was a Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Editor Matt Conrad was there too with a young woman named Bridget Ferris who impressed us all.   Jolene Holderny from our business office (looking quite nice and relaxed on her first night out after having a baby earlier this year) came with her husband.  I wanted to invite her because she’s left several nice comments on this blog.

Joe Abeln and his wife Lex showed up too.  Joe helped Bob on the road on the last shooting day of the project, when I stayed in the editing room, and he’s worked on many of my programs in various capacities over the last 21 years.  I hadn’t seen Lex in years, and she looked great.

So did Merritt Holland Spier who was a producer back in the Golden Age of Local Programming at WQED in the late 80s and early 90s.  She and her husband Dave had attended the big Lung Association event the night before that Merritt had helped organize, and I think they were relaxing tonight.

Our composer and amazing musician friend Buddy Nutt came with his girlfriend UkuLizzy who I met one Saturday several months ago at the Children’s Museum when I first met Buddy.  I didn’t take a picture, but they were the best dressed couple at the event.   “Casual Chic” was the attire specified on the invite.

I met lots of people like Marion Schmidt Hutchison and her husband Wes who had too many nice things to say even before we rolled the tape. 

Then they blinked the lights and veryone sat down.  Joe Scarfone made a few welcoming comments, then I tried to thank him for his excellent hospitality.  And I wanted to thank Linda Wagner from our Underwriting Department who had the initial idea of trying to pair us up with the Sewickley Car Store.  It was an ideal place to show a program about the Lincoln Highway.  Only a Packard dealership might have been more appropriate, but there aren’t many of them around anymore.  Big thanks to Linda and to all the folks at WQED who worked with her and the Car Store and its ad agency, Integra Marketing Group, to put this all together.

I didn’t want to ramble too long, but I also wanted to recognize certain people in the audience, like the Altizers who drove over from near Bedford, from their Lincoln Motor Court cottages, places featured in the show.  I could have gone on for a while.  There were too many people to thank and whenever you start listing people, it’s hard to stop.  Who did I forget?  I forgot to say that Brian Butko was there too, the man who first told me about the Lincoln Highway, back in1992 when we made a goofy travelogue called The Pennsylvania Road Show.

Anyway, I finally asked everyone to please hold any applause (if they were so inclined) until after the closing credits so we could be sure to hear Buddy sing “Goin’ All The Way” as the credits roll.  [A special nod to Paula Zetter and Kevin Conrad and Matt Conrad who worked together to make these some of my favorite credits ever in one of our shows.]

Then there was a small glitch when the show first started, or the audio did.  There was just a big blue screen, but the guys in charge of the AV machines and Paul Byers from WQED fixed things lickety split and we started over, with pictures this time.  Thanks to Paul, head of our Engineering Department, we projected the program onto a screen with a high-definition projector, and the images were extraordinary (especially from my front row seat.)

It is so interesting to sit and watch a show with an audience after watching it for months in a quiet editing room.  You don’t want people to talk too much but it was fun to hear giggles and gasps and oohs and wows as the stories unfolded.  I heard a woman behind me whisper to her husband, “Oh, she’s gorgeous!” when Carissa Altizer came on screen at the end of the show.

I was surprised at how much the crowd seemed to love Richard Gradzinski’s dry delivery and cool comments at his beautiful little gas station in Grand Island, Nebraska.  And I was glad to hear everyone react to the story of Esther Oyster and Bernie Queneau at the end of the show.  It went all right.  Everyone laughed when the cow runs from the flying DVD in the “To get a copy of this program” announcement, and then everyone listened to Buddy’s song while the credits rolled.  TV producers don’t often get to hear such reassuring applause.

Then there were goody bags to hand out and more food and drink to take advantage of.  I stayed longer than I ever expected to, schmoozing, checking out the totally cool, bright red and tiny 1957 BMW Isetta that Joe had parked in the front of the showroom.  Joe’s wife was really kind too and asked me to sign the welcome poster that was on an easel right beside the Isetta.  Who knows?  Maybe we’ll figure out a way to do such a premiere party again sometime soon.

I had a blast.  And I’m just hoping the event may settle my brain and I won’t dream of re-editing anymore.

[NOTE:  If you didn’t follow the links, be sure to see what Brian and Jolene wrote about the party on their blogs.]

We wrestled our program into the standard PBS hour-length last night.  Fifty-six minutes and forty-six seconds.   I wish we could have made a 90 minute program or a 120.  Many of our stories will premiere on the web.  Keep checking our site for pieces of the original program.  We’ll try to get some up soon.

After several weeks of pretty intense editing — longs days, no weekends, and too many Diet Pepsi’s — the program was shipped tonight via Fed Ex to Washington DC where it will be evaluated, captioned for the hearing-impaired, and prepped for broadcast and DVD.

There are still a few thousand things to be done.

It’s sometimes difficult to get a cameraman to leave a location. Times Square is one of those locations. There’s so much going on, so many people, so much dancing light and neon, maybe we should shoot forever.

After an hour or so more of post-lunchtime shooting, we decide to retrieve our van from the mysterious elevator-garage, then maybe get a driving shot going down 42nd Street toward the Hudson, which would have been the first blocks of the original Lincoln Highway. And after that, I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind stopping at the Strand Bookstore down in the Village. I have a weakness for discount and used bookstores, and the Strand is an old favorite. Bob and Glenn seem OK with heading that way, although they’d really like to find some cheap souvenir and T-shirt shops for stocking up on presents too. I think 14th Street might be fertile ground for that.

42nd Street is slow going. Start and stop. Inch by inch. Never more momentum than half a block. Nonetheless, there’s lots to look at, and Bob shoots through the windshield and out the side window. We get to the river, wish there were still a car ferry to take to Jersey, but then we circle around and head downtown. We’re not ready for the Lincoln Tunnel yet.

We luck out and find a parking space about a half block from the bookstore. Our hour in the Strand goes fast. I find a few things to buy. Bob and Glenn aren’t so lucky. They want souvenirs. I walk up to Union Square with them, decide I should have left my books in the van, and I now want to walk back there, so I arrange to meet the boys in another hour at the car. I stash the books I bought in the back seat, think I may want to take advantage of the men’s room in the Strand, and I end up spending the rest of my time browsing there again, mostly on the basement floor.

When I meet back up with Bob and Glenn, I say we can hang out in Manhattan for a while, maybe find some dinner here since Harrison, NJ, may seem bleak after the big city. They agree to stay in town, get some grub and drive back out to our rooms in Jersey after dinner. Bob says, “We’ll miss the bad traffic that way too.” Bob hates traffic. So I remember Katz’s Deli on East Houston. We did a story about their incredible sandwiches in our show Sandwiches That You Will Like, and since we all are still pretty full from lunch, a small sandwich might be perfect for dinner. I forget there are no small sandwiches at Katz’s.

It’s getting dark by the time we pull up to the curb on Houston, lucking into another convenient parking space. Who says it’s hard to find parking the city? We go in, get our tickets; everybody gets a ticket at Katz’s — that’s how they bill you for your food. We find a table. A guy comes by and says it’s too late now for table service. Go to the counter. Bob and Glenn decide they want soup & half-a-sandwich. I think I want to try the new Bauml Bomb sandwich that they’re promoting with flyers all around the restaurant. I volunteer to stay and save the table while Bob and Glenn get the food at the counter.

Their bowls of soup are huge. My sandwich is gigantic. A mound of chopped liver, slice of raw onion, cole slaw and then corned beef on top! It looks deadly but delicious. I’m surprised to find it light, yes light, but big and bold. The corned beef at Katz’s is perfect. It’s the best in the world. (I remember the pastrami as being ideal too.) The bread is fresh but not strong enough. It gives way. I end up with a magnificent messy delight. Lots of pickles too, the barely pickled kind of pickles that are still bright green. Good stuff. With a bottle of Katz’s Seltzer to wash it all down.

After dinner, Bob plots our return to Harrison, NJ, via the Holland Tunnel. We ride through both tunnels in one day. We are exhausted by the time we get back to the hotel.

Who am I trying to fool? After we leave the Lincoln Motor Court, we stop for a sandwich at the Jean Bonnet Tavern just a mile or two east of the cottages. Bob and Glenn both get the crabcake sandwich (recommended by Carissa) and I get soup and fried oysters. When we walk back to the car, suddenly it’s dark, and we are tired, so we find rooms in Bedford. We are barely a hundred miles from home.

Tuesday morning we are up early and back on the Lincoln Highway. We scoff at the PA Turnpike at Breezewood and continue eastbound on 30. It’s a beautiful day, so Chambersburg, Gettysburg, Abbotstown and York all look good. At York we somehow end up on the 30 bypass around town and we cross the Susquehanna on the newer highway bridge.

I crank up my iPhone, check some items on the internet, and find out that we’re lucky. Tuesday is a market day in Lancaster, and I suggest we stop there for lunch. Bob and I learned to love the Lancaster Central Market two years ago when we were shooting our program called To Market To Market To Buy a Fat Pig. The Lancaster Central Market has a really good claim on being the oldest continually operating market in America, and its 19th century building is a beauty. We both know several stands we would gladly re-visit, and I think about freshly ground horseradish because we have Bob’s wife’s cooler in the car, and I could keep it cool for the next several days.

It’s a grab bag lunch, but it’s delicious and unexpected. The best kind of goofy mix of Indian samosas, hummus, oatmeal cookies and roast beef sandwiches. Glenn goes for drinks and returns with excellent mint iced tea. We sit at a small table in front of the market and a beautiful young woman plays a violin for us all during our meal. Lunch is fast and tasty and relaxing, and we’re only a half block from King Street, the path of the old Lincoln Highway. If we hadn’t just done a story about this market, we could easily include it as a highlight of the cross-country journey. You just have to pass through Lancaster on a Tuesday, a Friday or a Saturday.

With some cookies and other goodies for road consumption, we pull out of Lancaster, amazed at the proliferation of so-called “outlet malls” on the east side of town along the Lincoln Highway.

We don’t flee too fast because we know we want to get a shot or two of the Dutch Haven windmill, an Amish Country landmark where you can get souvenirs of Pennsylvania towns with provocative names and free samples of shoo-fly pie, one of our state’s grandest contributions to world cuisine. When I was in high school, I first learned about shoo-fly pie from a girl from New Holland, PA, and she told me it was essential to serve it topped with mounds of homemade whipped cream.

The Dutch Haven used to be a restaurant, specializing in Pennsylvania Dutch cooking for tourists, but it’s just a shadow of that now. The pie sample is tasty, but I’m not tempted to mail one home. Better to try and bake one. I think its sticky molasses-y goodness makes it a bit like pecan pie with no nuts. Bob and Glen shoot the windmill from both sides of the street, and they grab a few shots inside too, never missing a chance at a bite of free pie.

We want to keep moving. Philadelphia’s suburbs start blending one into the other. We stay on Route 30, but when we get to the intersection with US 1, we pull into the parking lot of the Overbrook Presbyterian Church and get out the camera to shoot some video of this pivotal point where the Lincoln Highway (in one of its many guises) makes the turn west toward San Francisco, or north toward Times Square, depending on which way you’re traveling. It’s the spot where the Township of Lower Merion (settled 1682) meets Overbrook Farms (established 1892) in a tony part of Philly. I’m not sure how we’ll use this in the program, but we’re here, so we get some shots.

Glenn is driving as we head for New Jersey, and he spots the Lincoln Garage on the right as we zip by. We stop and turn around. We don’t cuss, we just shoot the place with hi-def video and all our digital still cameras. It’s closed for the day, but it’s a handsome old building with a profile of the president, a saucy slogan (”Don’t Cuss, Call Us!”), and it’s always good to get a Lincoln-named business. This old garage in Fairless Hills, PA, is mentioned in many of the books, including Butko’s and the one called Lincoln Highway by Michael Wallis and Michael Williamson.

We cross the Delaware on the old Calhoun Bridge, get confused in Trenton, sail through Princeton, and arbitrarily decide to stop at a Jersey diner for dinner. We start looking. We end up at the Plaza Diner in Edison, NJ, and it’s big and shiny, with a huge menu and honest-but-tired waitresses. The food is good. We all get the free dessert: tapioca pudding with whipped cream on top.

We have reservations in Harrison, so we’re headed there, but Highway 27 (the old Lincoln Highway) is not so clearly marked as we’d hoped and we get totally lost and befuddled around Elizabeth. We stop for directions in a gas station. I think we get lost again, then Glenn works some magic with the Google maps function on his iPhone, and we find our motel-hotel for the night. It’s 11:00 PM by the time we get to our rooms. And we’re up and outta here early tomorrow!

We start the day at our motel-hotel in Harrison, New Jersey, knowing that Manhattan is just a short drive, but we don’t know what traffic will be like, so we try to leave by 7:30 AM. We actually pull out of the parking lot at 7:45. We find the New Jersey Turnpike and follow the signs for the Lincoln Tunnel. It seems fitting to take the Lincoln Tunnel, but it was never really part of the Lincoln Highway. In the earliest years of the highway, starting in 1913, you arrived or departed from Manhattan on board a car ferry. Today there are passenger ferries, but cars have to take a tunnel or a bridge to get in or out of Manhattan. When the first NY to NJ tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, opened in 1927, it became a logical part of the highway, but the Lincoln Tunnel didn’t open till 1937 (when it was just a single tube with traffic moving both directions in the same space), and by then the original Lincoln Highway Association was just a memory.

We get to Times Square with a few minutes to spare. Amazing. We’re rarely (if ever) early.

We’re going to meet Jerry Peppers, the director of the New York chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association, at his law office on 45th Street, but he’s alerted me to a parking garage on 46th, and we go there, unpack all our equipment, and say goodbye to our van as it goes off in an elevator to who-knows-where.

As we’re checking in with the security guards at Jerry’s building, we see Buddy Rosenbaum standing outside the building, talking on his cell phone. It’s reunion time. Buddy doesn’t have a lot of time this morning, but he says he’ll wait while we say hello to Jerry upstairs. We go up, check in with Mr Peppers, and he comes back down with us, agreeing to wait while we do a quick post-ride interview with Buddy.

Bob decides to set up our tripod on the sidewalk, just beside the giant windows of the studio of ABC’s Good Morning America, but he’s just trying to get the Times Building in the background. Buddy looks relaxed and robust. He talks to us for just a few minutes about the thrill of being a New Yorker who got to be celebrated as he rode into Times Square with a police escort. It was a spectacular end to the cross country trip of Buddy and his buddy Bob Chase (now back in California) after 32 days on the road, crossing America from West to East. Buddy says he and Bob are already discussing possible routes for their next jaunt, and they did get to keep the Piaggio MP3 trikes.

Then we started looking for a place to do an interview with Jerry Peppers, the patient lawyer who’s been watching from the sidelines till now. Bob says Let’s go out to one of the uninhabited traffic islands in the middle of Times Square, and we all traipse out there, and Bob walks north till he finds a weird little space near 46th Street where cars coming down Seventh Avenue come really close to the cars coming down Broadway, but there’s a narrow spot where Jerry could stand somewhat safely beside a low Jersey barrier, and we’d have a really dramatic background for his interview. Jerry is game, so we go for it.

Jerry Peppers is a great talker. We get some of his personal history (boyhood in Cleveland, lots of different jobs, law school and family life), his path to finding the Lincoln Highway, and some very funny stories about his resemblance to Vice President Dick Cheney. The cars on either side of him sometimes seem like they’re brishing up against his sleeves, but he’s cool and collected, oblivious to the chaos and colored lights all around him.

When we finish the interview, we break out the still cameras and snap his picture. And he takes ours.

Then we walk over to the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street where he would like to see a Lincoln Highway Eastern Terminus marker placed. Jerry has printed out a simple but very effective paper-prototype on his computer, and he shows us how he tapes that up periodically to show where the marker could be, especially on special occasions, like the triumphant arrival of Buddy and Bob on their motor-trikes on Bastille Day last month.

Jerry also shows us where he’d like to mount an explanatory plaque on the one wall of the nearby Times Building, an interpretive historical marker that would explain a bit about the Lincoln Highway to curious passers by.

It’s reassuring and oddly inspiring to see how Jerry has the energy and interest to be the impetus behind setting up a marker at this end (and start) of the Lincoln Highway. He just may make this happen.

Having seen his “work space” this morning, we ask if we might go back up there with him and get some shots from that 19th floor corner office. He says No problem. The view from both his two big windows is unforgettable.

We finally arrive at the Lincoln Motor Court in Mann’s Choice, Pennsylvania, around 3:30, maybe 3:45. If the Altizer Family tells us we are just too late, Go away! and Never come back! I understand. But they have been patient. They are saints. They actually seem excited that we’re here. I called on my cell phone a couple of times to say we were on our way, but we just kept getting later and later. Now we’re here.

The Lincoln Motor Court is a collection of 12 little cottages arranged in a semi-circle, a horseshoe shape with a central courtyard where the owners have their house and the office. It’s a scene from a classic movie. It’s a set of time-machine structures that take you back to a time when you wanted your motel room to be a separate building not a lot bigger than your car! It’s a modest piece of American roadside architecture, apparently from the mid-1940s. It’s a hoot and a beauty.

The Altizer family has owned and run it since 1983 when Debbie and Bob drove up this way from their home in Washington, DC, looking for opportunities, maybe a small business that would get them out of the city. They found this place and decided to see if they could make a go of it. They saved this beautiful little bit of American roadside culture.

Although they had other design ideas and decorating plans early on, by the early 1990s they realized history-loving and roadside-crazy tourists could help make this motor court a success. They preserved the cottages in their original state as best they could. Debbie found vintage fixtures and furniture in flea markets and yard sales all around the Bedford County area. The walls of all the cottages are made of beautiful old knotty pine. “Not paneling,” says Bob. “Tongue and groove knotty pine.”

Bob Altizer has worked on the plumbing and the foundations and figuring out how to make the cottages look better and last longer. He tends to the distinctive red and white metal lawn chairs in front of the cottages, but he says they’re not as sturdy as they once were. “We’re always looking for good metal chairs at flea markets,” he says.

Debbie is in charge of the interiors, all the cleaning and the laundry and keeping the places presentable. We hear she can be a neat freak at times, but that’s a real asset when you’re talking about motel rooms. Her daughters used to help a lot with maid-duties, but they’ve grown up and moved on.

The 12 cottage-units are covered outside with gray Insulbrick, the weird building material that hasn’t aged well, and which at least one writer has called GhettoWrap because it seems to show up in lots of poor neighborhoods. Bob and Debbie gave the exteriors new class and style by putting white frames on all the corners, sort of giving a nice contrast to the Insulbrick. I generally hate InsulBrick, but it works here. In fact, I like it. The gray and white and red color-scheme is smart and timeless.

We spend a good three, three and a half hours at the Lincoln. Its name is not a coincidence. Lincoln Motor Court was the original name of the place, attracting Lincoln Highway travelers since its beginning. And the Altizers acknowledge that they were revived and re-energized by the Lincoln Highway Association when it had its first organizational meetings in the Bedford area. “They held one of their first meetings on our front yard,” remembers Debbie. “They convinced us to stay.”

We interview Debbie. We have her give us a tour of the honeymoon cottage. The bathrooms are small but fully equipped with showers and all necessities. Colorful old tile too. Then we talk to Carissa, one of the Altizer girls, who’s been working at the recently restored and grandiose Bedford Springs Hotel. It’s the family business but on a different scale. Then we talk to Bob Altizer on camera, and the light is starting to fade.

We can’t stay the night here. The Lincoln Motor Court is booked full tonight. That’s good. We want to get a few more miles under our belt before stopping for the night. We’re barely a hundred miles from Pittsburgh! We’ll have to travel faster tomorrow to be in northern NJ by tomorrow night.

But I’ll be back, maybe for a leisurely weekend trip into the Pennsylvania countryside, and I will stay in an InsulBrick cottage. Can’t wait.

It’s hard to follow any highway in New Jersey. Roads just don’t seem to be very well marked. The other night we got lost in Elizabeth as we headed north along 27, and now we’re leaving our hotel in Harrison with resolve to be vigilant, to watch for turns, to follow our maps, to read Butko’s book as we go, and to see what we can see.

It takes us a while to find Highway 27 which follows the path of the original highway. We’re confused and befuddled and well south of Newark before we find ourselves on a road with an occasional NJ 27 sign.

We stop in Linden to get a shot of the boxy little White Diamond Diner. If we don’t find a New Jersey story, I say, maybe we’ll just get a montage of diner shots.

We keep heading south on 27 and I notice a bunch of bright benches and brooms and signs outside a Mexican restaurant called Beana’s in Rahway. I say let’s get a shot from across the street and I’ll go over and ask the owners if they might be interested in our invading the place.

The inside of Beana’s is a happy explosion. There are vintage toys, lots of bright pictures and banners and decorations of all sorts on the sunny yellow walls. The owner is not there, but the hostess is very friendly, and the tall slim older gentleman she’s talking to is helpful too. Then while we’re talking, the hostess says, “There’s the owner right there,” pointing to a guy walking by outside on the sidewalk. Quickly he is over with Bob and Glenn on the other side of the highway, talking to them. I walk over there too.

It turns out that Kerry O’Connor is a friendly and energetic Irishman. He and wife Gina (often called Gina Beana in her early years) have owned and run Beana’s for 15 years. And when I explain that we’re doing a documentary about this Lincoln Highway, it turns out he knows the road and has some childhood memories of signs and historic markers. He agrees to an interview and we decide to give this a shot.

We learn that Brenda Paco is the hostess/waitress/everything who takes care of all the hungry folks who stop by. Lunch is starting. She stays busy.
There’s one table of 4 young women in the corner, and they are wonderfully cooperative, letting Bob tape their ordering, their eating, their conversations. One of Kerry’s friends brings his kids. Some folks from Brooklyn who are visiting a friend in Rahway stop for lunch, their first visit to Beana’s. And two businessmen round out the lunch crowd. Everyone seems OK with our camera looking over their shoulders.

Brenda warns the guys in the kitchen that we’d like to come back there too, and they ask for a few minutes. The cook and his assistant are Mexican, and although her Spanish is not perfect (her parents are immigrants from Peru,) she says she tries her best.

We spend about 4 hours at Beana’s, capturing lunchtime customers, talking to Kerry and Brenda, eventually eating a late lunch ourselves, learning all we can about Beana’s and its relationship to the highway.

We’ve eaten so much Mexican food on our journeys that it seems appropriate that we have a Mexican restaurant in the show. One owned by an Irishman? As the sign says in the front window: God Bless America.

So, I’m not really sure what to do about Philadelphia, if anything, and when I’m talking to Brian he tells me about this old abandoned section of Old Lincoln Highway in Northern Philadelphia. It’s behind the Lincoln Motel, and it includes an ancient stone bridge that we decide to go and see.