A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

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.

We stop one more time before we get to our appointment at the Lincoln Motor Court. Along Route 30 in Pennsylvania, there are just too many things to see and do as you motor along.

We pull off the right side of the road at the area where the official blue sign now says LOOKOUT POINT MT. ARARAT. There’s an amazing view from here. A low stone wall and a guard rail let you know that it’s surely safer to stay in the gravel, but if you step over both barriers, you can peer over the edge of the hill and see some of the ruins of the amazing Ship Hotel that was here from the early 1930s till 2001 when it burned to the ground. Bob and Glenn had to get a shot of the concrete and crumbly remains of its foundation about 15 or 20 feet down.
The Grand View Ship Hotel was a landmark work of roadside architecture, a big ship-shaped building that was built on the side of this mountain. You had to stop and take a look, although for many years you could also spend the night here because it was a hotel. On the prow of the ship there was lettering that let you know you could see 3 States and 7 Counties!

Bob and I had stopped here last fall when we drove out this way to get some shots of the Lincoln Highway with beautiful foliage. And we have to stop again today. It’s such a glorious summer day. The view is still wonderful, although it’s sliced by several tall thin burnt trees.

Back in 1992 when I was shooting stuff for our program called The Pennsylvania Road Show, I asked Brian Butko to come out here with us and talk a bit about the Ship Hotel because I had read an article he wrote about it for PITTSBURGH magazine. That’s when I met Brian (back when he had a blue Camaro convertible) and that’s the day I first learned about the Lincoln Highway.

When we stopped that day, the ship had a brown wooden exterior, a sort of shell over the old white ship structure, and the Ship Hotel was called Noah’s Ark at that time. I guess that’s why it still says Mount Ararat on the blue sign. I’ll have to ask Brian.

Back then Brian was working on his first book, a guide to the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania, and now, some 16 years later, he tells me that his next book will be about the history of the Grand View Ship Hotel.

Bob and Glenn and I fully document the striking views from Jerry’s office. He can actually look down on the spot where he would put the marker. We’re impressed. And I think how fortunate Lincoln Highway fans are that a man like Jerry would get excited and committed to such a project. I get the feeling that if Jerry can’t get a marker in place in Times Square, no one can.

“What are you gus going to do next?” Jerry asks.

“I thought we would offer to take you to lunch,” I say.

“How about I take YOU to lunch,” he counter-offers.

I say, “We’d be honored.”

He calls and makes reservations at a place called Trattoria Trecolori on 47th Street, one of his favorite places. We hike over there. It’s a small Italian place, white tablecloths, a maitre d’ who obviously knows Jerry, a cadre of attentive waiters, and really good food. Jerry orders fried mozzarella for us all as an appetizer. It’s not on the menu. Love that. Good crusty bread. A small dish of assorted tasty olives. Also a big plate of lightly fried calamari. And that’s just starters. We’re having a midday feast in Manhattan.

Bob and I are both tempted by the sardines special: flame broiled sardines. He and I agree to get an order of the linguine with clams and an order of the sardines, and we’ll share. Jerry gets gnocchi with an arrabiata sauce (made with bright red cherry peppers) and Glenn gets penne pasta with the same. After the caesar salads, before our entrees get to the table, Jerry’s wife Sue and eldest daughter Amy arrive. They’ve already had lunch but they come to sit with us, bringing new energy and a double dose of loveliness to the table. There are at least two conversations going from then on. How good the food is. How productive our morning was. How Sue is changing from a teaching career to a new job in school administration. How Amy once did cartwheels down a Texas highway when the family stopped because their suitcases fell off the roof of their car. How wonderful and goofy and exciting New York can be, especially Times Square. It’s a great lunch.

After the sardines and clams and several bottles of San Pellegrino, we get some of our equipment from Jerry’s office and we go back down 22 floors to get some more B-roll of Times Square. Glenn also suggests a video blog entry, and we give that a shot too. Times Square is beautiful and fun on a summer afternoon.

All weekend I’m working on editing the program and getting things ready for our trip to New York. Buddy Nutt the composer, vocalist and one-man-band, stops by on Saturday to talk about music for the promos, and he’s as cooperative and interested and helpful as I knew he would be. I’m embarrassed because I have to shove him out the downstairs door of WQED at 2:35 as I quickly gather my public-speaking paraphernalia because I forget I am supposed to be at Barnes & Noble in Monroeville. I jump in my car, speed out to the bookstore, and apologize to some of the folks who are waiting to meet me. I give out some promo DVDs of To Market To Market To Buy A Fat Pig, and I ask a set of trivia questions, most of them linked to the Pittsburgh 250 celebration that’s going on this year. I think that’s why I was invited to Barnes & Noble. It was their Pittsburgh Days.

Sunday I finish up my first swipe at the story about Kim Perkins and her used bookstore in North Platte, Nebraska. Then I drive home, do a load of laundry, pack my bags, and get back to work to do 12 more things, including starting the story about Richard Grudzinski and his gas station in Grand Island, Nebraska. I go home at 11:30 pm. Zonked.

Today I’m up early. My back aches. Or is that my left kidney? I get to work by 8, wearing shorts (against our dress code!), finish up some loose ends on the gas station story, gather all my releases and tapes for the trip. As always on days like this, I’m relieved to find Glenn and Bob both here, loading the van. We have, as usual, 1700 more things to do. They go and get gas in the van, check the air pressure in the tires (Barack Obama was right — they were under-inflated), buy windshield wiper fluid, some bottles of water, and pretzel nuggets for munching inn the van. We finally get out the WQED driveway around 11 AM.

It’s a glorious sunny day, but cool. Bob jokes, “We start our journey on a brisk October morning.” There is a slightly autumnal crispness in the air. We’re late, so we hop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Irwin, then we get on Route 30.

At Greensburg, you start to see lots of Lincoln Highway signs. Old segments of the original highway (or various intermediate routes from over the years) turn off of 30 at unusual angles to the north and south. You’d need a lot of time to explore all the possibilties. On the eastern outskirts of Greensburg, we take the one old segment that runs by the Mountain View Inn. This is the segment that Brian Butko first showed to me back in the early 90s, and so it was my first section of the old Lincoln Highway. You never forget your first chunk of historic roadway.

We take our time. We stop and shoot any stuff that looks interesting. As we get near Jennerstown, I say we ought to find the entry posts for the old camping area that Brian Butko mentioned in his interview last Friday. He pointed them out to me 16 years ago, but I don’t remember exactly where they are, so we watch for two stone columns on the north side of 30 as we zip along. I see two squat stone markers on the left, and we pull over to shoot them, but first I call Brian in his office back in Pittsburgh.

Brian helps me figure out that these are NOT the Jenner Pines Camping Park columns. We’re not there yet. He says the words JENNER PINES CAMPING PARK are carved into the columns. Oh, OK. He also suggests we consider the historic marker that’s coming up about Frederick Duesenberg who died on this road back in 1932. Hmm. That sounds interesting.

We stop to get a shot of the Duesenberg marker, put up by the Antique Automobile Club of America. There’s a big brown dog on the other side of the road who doesn’t approve of our activities, and he barks constantly. Tirelessly. We pay him no mind. But his yaps bring out the people who live in the house on our side of the road, the people who have the Duesenberg marker in their yard, and they tell us lots of information. There’s an old stretch of original Lincoln Highway that forks off here to the north, and these people point out how it continues on the other side, as what looks like the driveway of the barking dog. They say that old Duesenberg died off that section of the road, sort of back in the trees beyond that house.

These folks also give us a suggestion for lunch: the Coal Miner’s Inn in downtown Jennerstown. They say it looks fancier than it is, that the food is homemade, good and reasonably priced. Sounds perfect for us. We find it. We take advantage of the salad bar. Fluffy homemade dinner rolls. The waitress is saucy and smart. She gives us a hard time. And she brings turkey special for me, chicken parmesan for Bob, and raspberry chicken for Glenn. The portions are huge. Great desserts too.

After lunch, we have to drive back west a half mile or so to find the Jenner Pines stone markers, and we get a shot or two, knowing that we have to get going. We were supposed to be at the Lincoln Motor Court at 2, and it’s already 2:30. We need more time. The hours fly by on the Lincoln Highway.

So today, we finally devote a day to talking and riding with Brian Butko, the author of Greetings From The Lincoln Highway and The Lincoln Highway: Pennsylvania Traveler’s Guide, as well as assorted other books. He’s an old friend of mine, and he was the first person who ever made me aware of the Lincoln Highway. That was back in the summer of 1992 when I was shooting a statewide look at roadside attractions called The Pennsylvania Road Show (out of print for years but coming back soon in a DVD Special Edition with extras!)

He and I had talked last week about where we should do the interview, and Brian suggested Peppi’s Diner in Wilkinsburg, the vintage stainless steel structure that has been Charlie’s Diner and Scotty’s Diner in years gone by, but it’s been a Peppi’s sandwich shop for several years now. I thought it was an inspired choice, called and asked for permission to shoot there, talked to Lou at Peppi’s Downtown, and he was happy to let us invade for an hour or so.

(I actually like Peppi’s sandwiches very much - great bread, juicy meat, lots of tasty toppings - and in recent years they’ve received some attention for their Roethlisberger sandwich, named for the Steelers’ very popular quarterback. And I love that sandwich. Loosemeat, sausage, egg, cheese, onions, all slammed together in a big hoagie bun. Pretty scrumptious. They weren’t making this sandwich back when we did our Sandwiches That You Will Like program for PBS, or I probably would have included it in the show.)

Bob and Glenn and I meet Brian at the diner, set up a light in the one end of the place, and we monopolize that space for a good hour and a half. Brian knows too much about the Lincoln Highway. We talk about the road in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania and coast-to-coast. I’ve interviewed Brian two or three times before, but I think he is his best ever today. Maybe we’ve just known each other long enough (although sometimes that makes an interview more difficult) or maybe he is just more relaxed. He says lots of stuff I want to have in the program.

He also comments on how nicely Peppi’s have kept up the diner. The stools, the counter, the tiles, the rest rooms at the one end with the dark wooden door. . It’s a National brand diner, and Brian says they’re really rare. He knows too much about diners too.

Of course, we stay there and eat lunch. Jim and the staff treat us like kings. Big thanks to them. Brian gets a portabella hoagie, Bob and Glenn get the chicken and mushroom sandwich, but I have to get a Roethlisberger. Oh so huge and scrumptious. We split some fries too. I’m ready for a nap.

But we want to visit at least a few of the places that Brian has mentioned: the Lincoln statue in Wilkinsburg is top of our list. It was erected in 1918, paid for with pennies collected by local children, and it stands on the triangle of land where the old William Penn Highway meets the old Lincoln Highway, and then the two roads continue on together as Penn Avenue into Pittsburgh. We try several different set ups. Brian is taking pictures too because he’s putting together a new Lincoln Highway book, and he has the Lincoln Highway News blog, so he keeps snapping away, and Bob gets shots of Brian taking pictures.

We also drive across town, heading out the Ohio River Boulevard, sort of following the general direction of the original 1913 Lincoln Highway, but a block or two away from the actual original streets. We want to get to the odd little community called Glenfield, right where the huge bridge carries Interstate 79 over the Ohio River. It’s hard to find your way in to Glenfield (you have to take a viaduct over the train tracks, and the arrangement of signs and ramps is intimidating) and then there’s really only one street left in the odd collection of houses between the railroad tracks and the river. That one street is made of yellow bricks, and it’s old and bumpy and wavy, and you would be a fool to dive it faster than 15 or 20 miles an hour. It used to be the Lincoln Highway. A lost old segment in Glenfield.

The day goes way too fast. I have to be at Kennywood Park by 5 PM for an interview on WORD radio, and Brian lives in West Mifflin, where the amusement park is located, so I bum a ride with him. Even as we zip back into town, Brian takes an unexpected detour in Avalon and shows me another twisty old segment of the highway that goes across an old Allegheny County Bridge from 1896. I’m always learning when I’m with Brian.