Last Breakfast in Gettysburg

Well I'm back from a vacation, of which you will eventually see evidence...but now I gotta just get through this Gettysburg trip that happened in late February. Our last meal was at a '50s style joint pretty much catty-cornered from Ernie's, and if I recall correctly also had a man's name in its title. In any case it was a cold day, but we got a pretty sunny set-up, which kept us warm and gave me nice light for photos. A number of us ordered french toast, which looked pretty good.

I. seemed contemplative about her bites.

I had the two eggs, sausage and homefries combo. I would have liked my eggs just a little more cooked after being flipped but it wasn't anything tragic. Sausage and potatoes were good.

Then we all drove in our respective cars out to one of the battlefields. It was so unbelievably windy and cold that I don't think any of us were too excited about staying out in the elements for long, so then we splintered into two groups. I was in a group that went to check out outlet stores nearby. I was particularly interested in finding sunglasses, but ended up buying two pairs of jeans for $30.

And thus concludes the family weekend in Gettysburg.

Snacks c/o Appalachian Brewing Company and Pizza c/o Tommy's Pizza

Oh man. I really gotta go to bed, but here's one more post. The timing of our lunch and then idea for planned dinner was such that a quick snack had to be had between them. This snack was c/o Appalachian Brewing Company, which truly has wonderful beer ... but has never quite figured out how to have its food match up in terms of quality. I had another stout and loved it.

And ordered a small cup of the chili, which my uncle warned me would be too spicy ... it wasn't, but I think he and I have slightly different tolerance levels.

We also all had a bit of their soft pretzels with mustard and beer cheese soup dip, they were nice and warm and soft. There was also a spinach kind of dip. Basically my thought is this: go there for the beer and if you need to eat something, don't get too ambitious.

Then we spent some time hanging out in the two adjoined rooms out of the four we had reserved. K. the little really was doing some excellent bed jumping work.

K. the OC and I concocted a plan where we'd play UNO before going to dinner so that afterwards we could potentially distract the kids with a movie while we focused on hearts (the night before the reverse happened in part because the kids got annoyed that we weren't going to teach them how to play hearts. Their day will come, but not quite. I think A. the bf's daughter K. and the eldest of M.'s kids, A. will be the first to be allowed into the hearts/rummy circle. And other cousin/brother K.'s daughter G., but they weren't there so let's not complicate this any further.

I got kind of bored of UNO pretty quickly and moved on to lying around taking photographs.

Little I. began to see me as a potential tickle target. Or perhaps I first tickled her and it was her payback?

In any case, she'd jump from one bed to the other and then try tickling my feet or belly. She hasn't quite gotten the knack for it, so I'd really just pretend to be tickled.

Which figuratively tickled her while also getting the attention of her older brother, who had a much firmer grasp of how to make a person tickled/squirm. Once it was two against one it was a little more intense on my feet.

Oh yes, she's an angel.

Then they momentarily lost interest in me and wrestled each other.

Then it was back to me.

Then I think pretty much everyone was over UNO and into lying down.

And then we gathered ourselves for another ritual eating experience. I don't actually remember Tommy's being as large a part of our visits to Gettysburg as it was for Uncle E. and his brood, but in the last few years I've enjoyed catching up. They recently renovated and it has slightly classed up the place, they also are doing a great job of having interesting beers on tap - Troeg's, Yards...not your average pizza joint Bud (though they have it too. We were lucky to be able to grab two good sized tables. I ended up with the kids. K. the OC joined in at some point. I took some photographs, but then trusted A. the eldest and K. to take some too as they are both responsible young ladies. And they took some good shots. This first one I did.

This was by A. I believe. I look awful but what can you do? Wake up early and work out probably. Moving on.

I think between us we split three pizzas, one pineapple and pepperoni, one cheese, and one sausage and peppers. Good stuff.

A. by K. I think.

K. by K. but two different Ks.

Ugh. I just want to prove I was there even though I look the worst.

Another one by K. I think.

Probably A.

Little I. does this funny thing that when you tell her to wink, she really just closes her eyes and winks her mouth, which is, I think, what I was doing here.

And that has got to be a wrap for tonight, even though we had one more meal before I headed out the next afternoon. You'll just have to wait a week and some days. It will totally be kind-of worth it.

Lunch c/o Ernie's Texas Lunch and Trip to Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Emporium

Now I usually wouldn't rush and do so many posts back to back to back, but the truth of the matter is I'm about to embark on a vacation, and I know that I'm going to go overboard with photographic evidence of it, so I'm hoping to prevent total backlog that would lead to my blogging about the vacation three months after it happened. There is some wisdom in this approach, though I also have a 5 AM cab to take, so it may be a mixed outcome for me. In any case. The next morning we all did our own thing for breakfast (I went and tried a new place on the square, but the bagel I had there was so forgettable that I'm not even bothering). I would also generally photoshop these a little for color correction, but again I feel like it's better to power through this trip at this point (it was three weeks ago I think). Ernie's is closed on Sundays, and Monday was going to be a holiday, so in order to get enough Ernie's time in, we returned for lunch on Saturday. We also met up with our cousins F. and N., who have always been very nice folks. I don't know them as well as my mother or my uncle do, but they've never been anything but friendly. It's strange because everyone's getting older, and it's just weird to see. It's weird to see the fact that I have white hairs, and that I'm not 21 and K.'s not 24/5, and that our parents and elders aren't pushing 60 as much as past 70. It's weird. In any case. It was a bit more busy on a Saturday afternoon. The big table in the back and quite a few booths were taken up with Gettysburg College kids who had the look of recuperating from long previous nights. The place has been renovated since I was a kid; brighter red colors and whiter walls, but the basic layout hasn't changed a whit. I asked everyone if they remembered the older woman who used to sit at the last stool in the back, who I swear always seemed a bit in her cups. No one did. This either means I was a very observant kid (possible) or I made it up (also possible).

I thought I'd try something new. Ernie's does what it does and it's not too crazy about new things, so the variety of the menu is pretty limited. I went with a fried chicken sandwich. A step above McDonalds fare, but generally speaking if you go to Ernies, stick with the hot dogs and fries.

A., K.'s bf, ordered fries with gravy. We took up three booths between us all. I ended up sitting with A. the bf, M. the cousin and K. the younger cousin. The kids, of course, rotated a bit. I think A. the kid also spent some time with us as well. Once the food was pretty much eaten, but F. and N. and my uncle were still gabbing, I thought that K. the kid might be less restless if I played a doodle game I remember playing with my mother on plane rides. Basically she'd start a drawing of a face or an animal and then I got to finish it up. I'll need to find the Instagram (@carikuber) photo I took of some of the interesting and creative choices K. made. He seemed to think I always had an idea of what I thought it would look like finished (I didn't) but one particularly inspired image was of a 'three bottomed ghost' as in he had three derriers. I got a kick out of that.

I had gotten pretty excited about the possibility of taking at least some of the kids to the Land of Little Horses. Basically I have all these memories of things I enjoyed, or things that stayed with me in a non-traumatic way, that I'd like to share with family children. Perhaps one day I'll have kids of my own, but that is by no means a certainty, so the opportunity to potentially be the curator of their Gettysburg memories, even just a little bit, was appealing. Plus, whatever, I wanted to see miniature horses and buy a handful of feed for 50 cents and give it to them. I mentioned this desire to the kids' respective parents, and they thought that at least the older kids might dig it. And so that had been a tentative plan...especially because most of the adults wanted to go see the Gettsyburg College basketball game, which truthfully I wasn't as keen on doing. But alas. The horse place doesn't open until it's warmer and my back up non-basketball activity was an Elephant Museum/Candy Emporium and though I may not have kids of my own, I know that bringing kids to a place with crap tons of candy is, like, a totally bad idea and would only lead to sorrow for everyone involved. So, after lunch, we went our separate ways yet again. You know, I'm beginning to think we didn't walk to Ernie's on Friday, that it was Saturday that we walked. In any case, I did make the slight drive out of town west towards Chambersburg, to check out Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum. I only even knew the place existed because of our 2008 summer reunion, during which my father had quite the heart health scare and ended up in the Chambersburg hospital. I drove back and forth between the two towns a few times, and passed the museum each and was certainly curious. It's definitely something. A strange roadside attraction with a certain history and illusion of grandeur that I'm not sure is entirely unwarranted, but isn't quite warranted either. It seems that this collection of elephant knick knacks used to be quite a bit larger, but a few years back there was a terrible fire and a good chunk of the collection was destroyed. When you first walk in, it's a good sized room full of candy, but if you snake your way past the fill your own pixie stick dispenser you'll get to a long and narrow hallway lined with plexiglassed shelves just loaded up with elephants of all kinds. Some look like beautiful little trinkets, other cracker jack box toys from any number of decades. It's sensory overload in a way. So much is crammed on each shelf it's hard to really see any of it.

In addition to the many, many shelves of candy, they also have a fudge case of house-made fudge. You can get 8 different kinds for $13, which I did....but then forgot to document because sometimes I am an idiot.

Outside they also had a strange amalgamation of statues around the main building. It's right off the road so it's one part magical and one part just weird...hard to get lost in the magic when cars are racing by. It had snowed just a little over night, and while in Gettysburg there wasn't much of a trace left by mid-afternoon, the drive west included some rather beautiful vistas of snow covered hills and valleys. Adams County, PA is a kind of weird area, the little I know of it, but not without its charms and beauty...and very strange BYO strip joints (but we don't need to get into that).

Obviously.

Imagine my face there.

Elephant looking over a fish pond. I wondered how the fish didn't freeze.

And on the way west I saw this strange thing and decided on the way back it was worth pulling over on the side of the road to document because....what the hell?

And there you have it.

Hot Dogs and Fries c/o Ernie's Texas Lunch

Once I had eaten, I checked into the same hotel our family has predominantly stayed in ever since Helen's house was sold. This hotel, Quality Inn at General Lee's Headquarters (known by us and for all time as "Larson's"), holds almost as many memories at Helen's house. Even after her death, we'd still manage to meet up there about once a year, usually around Christmas. For a while now we haven't really done Christmas in Gettysburg, which is fine by me - it's COLD, but we still manage to get together about once a year or so. My mother's brother, Uncle E., could certainly be described as a creature of habit...which I think he very much gets from his father. And if you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you will not be surprised by the meals we enjoyed over the next few days. In any case. First I checked in. Then I went to the Appalachian Brewing Company restaurant, which is part of the hotel, and enjoyed myself a delicious stout while waiting for the rest of the folks to come in. Seriously good beer. If you have the chance, definitely check their line of beers out. Soon enough K. and A. and M. and A. and K. and I. all appeared and those of us of age enjoyed beers and a quick catch-up before further regrouping. Then we walked to Ernie's Texas Lunch, which like pretty much everything else in Gettysburg is steeped in my mother's family memories and lore. When my grandfather attended Gettysburg College, he ate there. When my mother and uncle were growing up and they'd visit the Fairfield relatives, they'd eat there. When my uncle went to Gettysburg College, he ate there. When my cousins and I were growing up and meeting up, well...you know...we ate there. And since I returned to the lower east coast after grad school, that tradition has most certainly continued. It was not terribly warm or pleasant, but given our diet for the next 48 hours, a walk did us all good. Little I. was not so keen on walking.

The kids didn't skip a beat once we were inside, lining themselves up at the counter while we took over the large table in the back, which for so so so many generations has had my family members gathered around it.

Fries on this day were hot but could have been a little crispier. You'll note that pretty much everyone not under the age of 12 chose lager for their beverage.

I have learned that I don't really love the full nine yards Texas dog, which comes with chili and heaps of onions. So I got two dogs just with mustard. Still nicely cooked. I think the slightly charred skin is my favorite part.

The staff is really nice, both front of house and back of house. One of the cooks came out and first asked the adults if it was ok to give the kids lollipops, and once given the 'ok' kindly doled them out. I. was quite pleased with hers.

And then I'm not sure exactly what this was about. But she's got pretty cool kicks.

And K. wanted me to take a photograph of this because he was 'a bridge' and he most certainly was. When K.-the OC (original cousin, there are a lot of abbreviated names starting with the same letters) and I were little (and, really, even in the last five years) we enjoyed jumping back and forth from bed to bed in the hotel's rooms. Now with this new generation of actual young people, we are most certainly bad influences...I didn't take any photographs of it, but all four kids, K. and I all jumped vigorously on the beds while the 'grown ups' were still on their way back.

And then, as we have done for as long as I can remember, we gathered around a table and played some cards. Hearts first for the older set, then UNO with the younger. Though I hadn't played hearts in some time, I did quite well. Actually, I think I did better than I ever did when I played it a lot back in the Chicago/France days.