September 16, 2024

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I planned to be at the Pentagon for an afternoon meeting. About 9:30 that morning I was in Woodbridge, about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. I was working at home then, and stopped at the Post Office. A news bulletin reported a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers.

At 7:59 American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston bound for Los Angeles. About 15 minutes later five hijackers attacked and killed one passenger and overpowered and possibly killed the pilot and first officer. At 8:24 Boston air traffic control picked up a transmission from the plane’s intercom: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay.”

At 8:46 the plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower. United Airlines Flight 175, also from Boston en route to Los Angeles, struck the South Tower at 9:03. At 9:37 American Fight 77, which took off from Washington, hit the Pentagon. United Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:02.

When I got home from the Post Office Sandy, our kids, and a niece had called, trying to find me before I left for the Pentagon. I turned on the TV and watched 9/11 coverage for three days.

On September 14th, President George Bush visited Ground Zero. He placed his arm around the shoulder of firefighter Bob Beckwith. He said, “I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here.

“This nation stands with the good people of New York City, and New Jersey and Connecticut, as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you, the people of the world hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

Later that week the Pentagon reopened. I walked through the Navy wing. The smell of burned sheetrock and masonry was overwhelming. The damaged south side was sealed off by plastic sheeting. Heavily armed security officers patrolled the grounds.

A week after the attack I took the train to New York to visit a friend who then worked on Wall Street. Thirty miles from the city we could see through the train window a thin column of dark smoke curling skyward from the World Trade Center site and spreading across the horizon.

The New York City subway remained closed south of 25th Street or thereabouts, so I had to walk the rest of the way. It had rained the night of 9/11. The pulverized masonry of the towers turned to paste and coated the walls and windows of nearby buildings. From a couple of blocks away I could see the twisted structure of one of the towers protruding from the vast piles of rubble. Hundreds of workers in hardhats still searched for victims and remains. 

On my walk back to Penn Station I passed St. Vincent’s Hospital. The hospital had been used as a triage center for Trade Center casualties. The walls were covered with photos of missing persons. Crowds stared at the photos. I heard crying.

The 2,990 victims include approximately 2,600 at the Twin Towers, 125 at the Pentagon, and 265 on the four hijacked flights. The total includes 343 firefighters and 71 New York police officers. Thousands more were injured in New York. The total doesn’t include the 19 hijackers.

Last weekend in Greenville, S,C., at the city’s annual 9/11 commemoration, roughly 1,000 area firefighters and civilians walked six laps of the field-deck aisles of the city’s Fluor Field, the equivalent of the Twin Towers 110 stories.

I carried the card of Capt. Thomas C. Moody of Engine Company 310, Maspeth, Queens, who died in the North Tower. Eighteen others in his unit also died.

Moody, an 18-year veteran firefighter, lived in Stony Brook on Long Island. He was 45 years old, married to Maureen Moody, the couple had four children. His father, Charles, brothers Frank and Michael, and an uncle, William, all were New York City firefighters.

Moody earned a chemical engineering degree from the State University of New York and was a certified engineer in New York. He taught fire science and conducted training in handling hazardous materials at a local college. He responded to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Since 2002 hundreds of others have walked in memory of Capt. Moody and his 342 comrades at 9/11 commemorations nationwide. Many have posted messages on the “Legacy” website.

On my visit to New York I stood for a few moments and watched the dust still rising from Ground Zero. Almost no one understood then that thousands of recovery workers and others at the site would develop cancer and other respiratory diseases.

In 2018 the World Trade Center Health Program at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital estimated that of the 10,000 first responders and others at Ground Zero who developed cancer attributed to 9/11, 2,000 had died. By 2022 some 250 New York City police officers and 300 firefighters had died of 9/11-related health conditions.

Some years ago, on our way home to Virginia from Pittsburgh, we detoured off the Turnpike to visit the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Penn. The site was not yet completed, but 40 marble plaques, one for each victim, had been erected. The Flight 93 passengers are believed to have fought back and forced the hijackers to divert from their course to Washington and fly the aircraft into the ground.

The Greenville stadium walk, like dozens nationwide, has been held for years. At the start each participant rang a firehouse bell, which chimed solemnly across the ballpark. Each person carried or wore a card bearing the name of a firefighter lost that day.

By the third loop it was hot. A firefighter in full gear and, like many others carrying an oxygen tank, collapsed on the stairs. Medical personnel hurried to support her. The line held up as she recovered. Then we moved on along the course.

As we all know, the world changed that day and in following years. Capt. Moody’s children, young kids when he died, are now in their twenties. They and all of us are witnesses to change, and to remembrance. We will be back for this observance next year, and in years to come.  

September 9, 2024

We stopped at our daughter Marie’s office at the Neighborhood Cancer Connection.  I picked up a book in the NCC library. Another scolding “eat this, don’t eat that” tome, I guessed. But I took it home.

Two weeks later I browsed through it. The authors, nutritionists Maureen Keane and Daniella Chace wrote that “most of the protein in your diet should come from plant sources.” Plant sources. We had been through all that.

Ten or twelve years ago I read elite trail runner Scott Jurek’s memoir, Eat and Run. He tells his story of growing up on a Midwestern farm diet heavy on beef, pork, chicken. He moved to Seattle and, after sampling the vegetarian and vegan culture, got the no-meat religion.

Jurek went vegan and kept winning races, including the country’s premier ultra race, the Western States 100-miler seven times (1999-2005). In 2015 he set a new record (later broken) for running the entire 2,198-mile length of the Appalachian Trail in 46 days and about eight hours.

I caught the vegan bug, but didn’t win any races. To get protein I ate soy—soybeans, tofu, seitan, tempeh, along with edamame, black beans, then almonds, peanuts, walnuts, cashews. We ate spinach, asparagus, lettuce, arugula, kale, cauliflower, avocadoes, brown rice. I learned to eat Brussels sprouts. We spend hours planning meals to avoid meat and sauces and gravies flavored with meat.

I kept running trail events. Sandy would prepare Jurek’s vegan Minnesota Winter Chili for the post-race meals. The runners called her the “Chili Lady.” It stuck for years.

Yet I felt hungry most of the time.  

In 2018, the year of sickness, while driving across Texas, I noticed my face in the rear-view mirror. I looked like a prune, shriveled and lined. This is not working, I thought. I shifted from strict vegan to a vegetarian diet and ate eggs and drank milk. Finally I ate some chicken and said goodbye to the vegan and vegetarian life.

Inevitably, you learn about diet. The body requires 22 amino acids, substances that perform critical body functions. Your system can produce 12 of the 22. Animal protein provides all 10 of the others, although we can get them by eating a mix of non-meat protein-rich foods like nuts, beans, and soy. Non-meat protein sources don’t contain saturated fat, which can clog arteries and lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. You seldom see an overweight vegetarian.

By going back to meat I gained some weight. Getting sick taught new lessons about food. Cancer cells replicate faster than most healthy cells. So cancer patients find themselves racing with their disease to get nourishment, as it consumes their bodies’ protein. The malnourished, underweight look means cancer is winning.

I ate to stay ahead. A friend made me rich chicken soup, I sometimes ate three bowls for breakfast. I ate lasagna, burgers, chicken, beef stew, and other heavy foods. The vegan/vegetarian fling was ancient history.    

Keane, incredibly, went through cancer therapy but didn’t have cancer. Ater a miscarriage, her tests were interpreted wrongly to show cancer. She endured three rounds of chemotherapy followed by surgery. Years later she required intravenous drug therapy to keep her pulmonary arteries functioning.

She writes that over sixteen months of treatment no doctor, nurse, or other health-care worker mentioned nutrition. But then, Keane’s and Chace’s book, What to Eat if You Have Cancer, isn’t really about cancer. They write for anyone.

The chemo class I attended, required at the practice that treated me, issued a book of recipes by an oncologist and a nutritionist. I thumbed through it, then set it aside. It landed in a closet. Keane and Chace, in their book, back me up: “nutrition therapy alone will not cure cancer.”

They make the point that “in the unlikely event that you are dependent on a single food source for survival, it would have to be a ‘complete’ protein source,” that is, meat. That isn’t going to happen. Infants and young children need complete protein, for example, ovalbumin found in eggs, or casein, the protein in milk. But the rest of us don’t.

Keane and Chase argue once again that the mature human body can get most of its protein from plants. The next-best source should be fatty fish, like salmon, anchovies, and fresh (not canned) skipjack tuna. After that, grass-fed beef and other grass-fed meats.

“Animal protein comes packaged with lots of fat, few vitamins and minerals, and no fiber, whereas plant protein is accompanied by lots of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. … animal fat is a major source of arachidonic acid—a fatty acid that promotes inflammation.”

Keane and Chace wrote a graduate-school-level textbook. The chemistry gets densely technical. Arachidonic acid—what’s that? Keep reading: when consumed out of balance with omega-3 fatty acids, it interferes with the body’s natural defenses against disease.

We may have heard about omega-3, a good thing, omega-6, less good. But omega-6, we learn, contains gamma linoleic acid (GLA)—the good omega-6 fatty acid needed for cellular health. Sunflower, safflower, corn, and soybean oil are sources of omega-6, which the body converts to GLA.    

I didn’t read through to the end, which is a series of complicated meal plans for different levels of calorie consumption. But we thought we should make some changes. We visited the organic grocery store. Their eggs were $9.00 for a dozen, which seemed high. We still had a box of the mass-market eggs at home.

We hit the local farmer’s market and walked past the stacks of bright-red tomatoes, corn, okra, onions, green beans, asparagus, squash, zucchini. We inspected the greens, collard, lettuce, kale—all the glowing bounty of the land. Memories rushed back. I bought some garbanzo beans at $2.25 for a pound. They’re supposed to be good for you.

September 2, 2024

The Minnesota State Fair, held the last week of August through Labor Day, is the second-largest in the country after the one in Texas. If you’re in or near St. Paul, the Fair is the place to be. We were there, so we went.

The Minnesota fair was established in 1854 as a territorial exposition for agriculture, then became the state fair when Minnesota joined the Union in 1859. Today the Minnesota State Fair is a year-round business with 80 full-time employees. The Fair hires more than 1,700 temporary workers for the ten-day operating run.

We drove to an offsite parking lot, staged the car, then rode a bus to the main fair gate. Adult tickets were $16, less for kids. Daily attendance this year ranged from 80,000 to 200,000 daily, even with a couple of days of thunderstorms.

This was a new experience. I recall a Tennessee State Fair in Nashville, but never attended. We did get to a couple of county fairs in northern Virginia years ago. I saw some cows, cotton candy, a merry-go-round, and booths that challenge you to knock over a dummy to win a doll.

In Minnesota the fairgrounds sprawls over 322 acres of permanent and temporary buildings, tents, and the ride structures and machinery. As we arrived about 10 AM the crowd surged toward the baked goods tent. Inside we wandered past shelves lined with homemade pies and cakes, each with a slice removed to show the filling, some wearing blue, red, and white ribbons indicating prizes awarded.

The blue-ribbon stuff looked especially tasty. Beyond the displays you could get a giant milkshake for $9.00, presumably made with milk from prize-winning local cows. A team of bright-eyed farmgirls—I guessed they lived on farms—served with smiles. The milkshake was delicious, as a $9.00 milkshake should be.  

A guy with a chainsaw stood inside a refrigerated glass booth sculpting a bust of a young girl from a block of butter. His model sat nearby in a parka, shivering.

From the tent we headed next door to the livestock venue, a massive concrete building marked “Livestock.” Stepping through the entrance you faced cows, hundreds of them, large, extra-large, and medium-size, brown, black, black-and-white, all-white. Some of these huge animals sprawled in pens, chewing on straw or sleeping. Young kids in cowboy hats and blue jeans guided them through the crowd to the judging area outside.

Someone who knows about these things explained to us that when the cows finish their careers giving milk they head to the slaughterhouse to be turned into steaks, hamburger, and so on. That’s where beef comes from, after all. Somehow, though, it was unsettling to understand how the business works, and that most of these critters won’t be back to next year’s fair.

We headed to the exit after washing our hands and scraping the straw from our shoes, and gulping fresh air. Next door we found the pig and goat pens, the aroma pungent and powerful. Most of these animals dozed quietly, a few doe-eyed goats stared up at visitors. A female pig who had just given birth lay in one pen, her half-dozen piglets, petite and cute, lay next to her, waiting to nurse.

In a far corner sprawled a massive beast asleep under a sign, “World’s Largest Hog,” announced at 950 pounds. A crowd stood near the pen, staring and snapping photos. While I watched the animal roused himself from his straw bed, slowly turned full-length, then sank back into his nap. Folks drifted away, others filled their places.

Here the Minnesota Pork Association distributed a kids’ coloring book entitled “Producers, Pigs & Pork” that followed the lives of piglets from nursing to adulthood. The book reported that in five months they grow to 270 pounds. The cute drawings were followed by outlines of ham, bacon, porkchops, baloney, pork loin, and a sketch of folks happily dining on pork. Our young niece, a vegetarian, sobbed.

We paused at the SPAM booth, which offered Spam sandwiches and Spam curds, $10 each. I wondered what Spam curds are, but didn’t ask, and kept my $10.

It was early afternoon, it was hot, our feet hurt. The nieces and nephews moved on bravely, Sandy and I straggled towards the shaded bandshell near the gate. En route we browsed through souvenirs amidst the abundant “Harris-Walz” memorabilia, this being Minnesota. We noted the “I’m Voting for the Felon” tee-shirts picturing Trump, few and far between.

We sat for a while waiting for the band, no one showed. Suddenly drums rolled behind us, we turned and saw the Saturday Fair parade approaching on the main boulevard. I ran to watch Minnesota’s finest high-school marching bands and drill teams, from places I never heard of. The Fair Queen and her court rode by in a decorated wagon. Local celebrities, mayors, and aldermen waved from convertibles followed by a couple of fire engines and a wagon drawn by giant Clydesdales.

It was a heartening, happy scene that summoned memories of long-ago Fourth of July parades with smiling drum majorettes, baton twirlers, and flag-wavers. The marchers waved at the crowd, we all cheered. In those moments we forgot about the angry divisions racking the country.

The last band moved down the avenue, the music faded. We headed for our family rendezvous. At the gate the real world intervened, police officers closed the exit because of a political demonstration. We detoured to a distant gate past giant farm equipment, harvesters, plows, planters, mowers, impressive products of Midwest factories, surrounded by crowds of knowledgeable folks inspecting them.

The Fair was the real article. The fairgoers return to their lives happy with their visits to this shrine to agriculture and homebuilding. The eloquent replication of Big Midwest farm life, the livestock, the home-grown products, the tough farmers themselves, showed off an authentic, colorful side of America.

We felt somehow briefly at home with the Minnesota big-country heritage. Then we recalled our world: the mild winters, the gentle end of the Blue Ridge as it meets the Great Smokies; the gorgeous Chattooga River, which separates, with its leaping rapids, Georgia from South Carolina. Two rich worlds, of wide contrasts in climate, terrain, and politics. Enjoy both.             

August 26, 2024

Phil Brady knew America. He was born and grew up in Minnesota, a place with a couple of big cosmopolitan cities, but with a rugged pioneer edge to it. As a young man he headed west. He worked on the Empire Builder-Great Northern Railroad. Later, after college, he worked in mines in the big Western states. He knew this country by its roughest edges.

Although he came from St. Paul, he was not a big city guy. His life was formed by his experiences in tough places far from cities.

For a couple of years Phil taught high school history and coached football in Winnemucca, Nevada. He moved on to teach and coach in Caldwell and Marsing, Idaho, home of a community of Basque people, who work as sheepherders. He lived with a Basque family for a while. Decades later he and his wife, my sister Regina, attended the funeral of the wife of one of his former students. The entire community remembered him.

He studied metallurgy at the University of Arizona. He knew about copper mining, railroads, big machinery, tools, and fishing. In his forties, he came back to the Twin Cities and married Regina. He worked in industry and taught school. They stayed in St. Paul for a few years then relocated to the Seattle area. Seven years later they came back to Minnesota.

Phil passed last week after a long fight with cancer. He was close to home, a blessing for the family. St. Paul, really, was the right place for him.

Like many Minnesotans, Phil was an outdoors guy. He took Scout troops north to Isle Royale National Park, a large island in Lake Superior. They camped and hiked and fished. He knew the wild places north of Duluth, beyond Minnesota’s Iron Range, in the cold country. Phil also was a shrewd finance guy who liked picking stocks. He gladly passed on tips, although I never got around to following his advice.

While in Washington State he hiked the gorgeous Cascades. He and Regina visited Alaska and Mexico. They took some overseas trips, to England, Ireland, France, Italy, Thailand.

But I knew him mainly as a guy who loved the road. He drove many times across the country, over the lonely open spaces of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota. He and Regina drove to California, Missouri, Louisiana, Florida. They saw everything, including the world’s largest nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. “He loved rocks,” she says.

Phil knew the highways. I recall him explaining, in scrupulous detail, points of interest (to some) that could be found along U.S. 2, the isolated road that crosses the country from Seattle to northern Michigan. Route 2 is way up there, shadowing the Canadian border through the far-north no man’s land of those big near-empty states.

He knew the little settlements, the rises and descents, the hazards, the long, long empty stretches. To him, roads like highway 2 were, well, America.

Yet Phil also could be a homebody. He had a gentle touch with nature, and could make flowers and vegetables bloom. He cultivated bountiful gardens in St. Paul and at Regina’s and his place in Redmond, Wash. Five years ago we visited them out there, around March. It was chilly and damp, but Phil already was preparing his plot, raking and pruning.

He loved taking his grandkids fishing and hiking. He showed them the Cascades and glorious Glacier National Park. He understood the decline of the salmon population in Northwestern rivers as a result of industrial and urban pollution, and explained it to me and to anyone else who showed interest. But he never stopped fishing, and occasionally hauled in a big one.

Phil and Regina returned to St. Paul from their first retirement home near Seattle for a mix of reasons. One was, I thought, the call of Minnesota, known for the Twin Cities, beautiful wilderness lakes, and brutal winters. St. Paul, the state capital, also can be called the capital of the Upper Midwest. It’s where Phil grew up, where they met 30 years ago.

They understood, after giving Seattle a chance, that it was never going to be the home they left.  Phil could take those rough Minnesota winters and maybe preferred them over the rainy Northwest. He didn’t mind attaching an engine-block heater to a car’s battery to keep it from freezing.  

Phil developed mesothelioma, one of those cancers that does not get better. Sandy’s dad, William Harper, after years working in heavy industry, also contracted mesotheliomia. It took him quickly 25 years ago. Victims measure out their time left.

Phil fought hard. He was treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., one of the country’s great hospitals. But we know one thing: cancer keeps showing up. He and Regina made one more trip last year, to Montreal and Quebec.

We all flew up to St. Paul to see Phil off, cramming ourselves in those cramped United seats.

But my first thought was to do what Phil might have done, take it on the road. We could have driven the long interstates through the country’s midsection, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin. Phil might instead have taken the state highways and local roads that wind through small towns, past farmland, over rivers, hills, and mountains, getting another taste of the country.

Friends and family came to St. Jerome’s church. Son-in-law Robert Valaas spoke. He talked about hiking Logan Pass in Glacier with Phil. “I found that day … encapsulates the quintessence of this faithful, curious, humane, devoted, and caring man.

“Phil let the best beliefs of Christianity—justice, kindness, and humility—guide his life,” Robert said. “And never was Phil happier than when out in nature, appreciating the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. … So now there is a big, Phil Brady-shaped hole in our part of the universe.

“It’s up to us to pick up some of the slack. So get out and explore the world, on its back roads, its hiking paths … the mountains, forests, seas, and islands. Honor God … strike up conversations with people you don’t know … . Learn and remember the history of your family. … eat some good food, savor some good Irish whiskey.”

The priest rose for the blessing. “In fishing and hiking, being with nature, Phil connected with God,” he said. “He knew there is a time for everything. Today is a good time to give thanks.”

Phil’s and Regina’s seven grandchildren, Nora, Margaret, Eliza, Matteo, Juliana, Ben, and Jonathan came forward with the gifts. We rose in remembrance and gave thanks, and went on our way.

August 19, 2024

It was about time we saw Myrtle Beach. After three years in this state we drove down to meet a niece and her young son, Rachel and Joseph, who had flown down from New Hampshire. It had been a couple of years since our last visit with them, we jumped at the chance.

At some point, if you live in these parts, South Carolina’s pseudo-tropical Low Country is an inevitable place. Charleston is for the history and architecture fans, Hilton Head is for the golfers and country clubbers. There are chic places among those three, Kiawah, John’s, Folly, Pawley’s Island, dozens more, specs of affluence and sand. Myrtle is up the coast, near the North Carolina state line.

Thousands make the drive to Myrtle every year from all over Yankeedom, thousands more from our neighborhood, the Upstate. The trip is across mind-numbing interstates, 385, 26, 20, 95, then a maze of state roads. The capital, Columbia, 90 miles into the trip, is at the junction of 26 and 20. Nothing else engages the human brain en route, the roads sink lower into Low Country, bogs, swamps, scrub forests, the odd auto-repair garage, burger joint, or church.

Visiting new places has not had much appeal lately. We were hitting Myrtle for one night then getting out. Your choice is the real beach or “Broadway at the Beach,” a promenade of attractions set along a manmade canal a mile or so from the real beach. Hotels provide a brochure: “Prepare to make magical memories as you enjoy a winning combination of shopping, dining, entertainment and attractions!”

For sure the summer visitor can find all those things at “Broadway”: deep-fried seafood, cotton candy, tee-shirts, ballcaps, sundresses, Trump 2024 banners, and more tee-shirts, thousands of them.

We had the fish dinner then strolled past Christmas at the Beach, Hollywood Heroes and Villains, two life-size plastic dinosaurs, a glittering five-story-high Ferris wheel, an equally tall waterslide, high-end restaurants and fast food, a stand that emitted a stream of bubbles and sold $20 caps. Kids climbed on the dinosaurs, parents snapped photos. We crossed the canal and watched a speedboat roar through sharp turns, thrilling the paying passengers.

On the other side we found more of the same along with three or four abandoned restaurants. Recrossing a second bridge we glanced down to see hordes of large koi, a type of carp, jumping to snap at scraps of food tossed by tourists.

It was the hard-core summer scene, throngs of visitors in tees and tank tops, tired and hot, slogging hand-in-hand with their tired kids, lugging plastic sacks of their purchases. I recalled the same setting along Atlantic Avenue in Virginia Beach, which we visited many times years ago, the tee-shirt and beachwear shops, the fast food, the low-rent bungalows and upscale hotels, the gridlocked traffic, the sunburned crowds.

The glitter and kitsch of the “Broadway on the Beach” spectacle seemed to explode before our eyes, every shop and marquee an urgent come-on to spend money on stuff you don’t really want that would end up forgotten in a closet or garage. As usual in these odd fixes, I thought of something else, this time the lonely, beautiful beach of eastern Long Island, New York, at a place called Amagansett, where my folks took us for two weeks each summer. Now, as then, not a souvenir stand within miles, wide beach and beach grass only, heavy surf crashing against the sand.

In the morning we made it over to the real beach. With Rachel, Joseph, and Rachel’s mom, Barbara, we padded across the warm sand and looked out at the sea. The tide was low. The surf showed a brown tint, the aftereffect of Tropical Storm Debbie. The waves rolled quietly up the sand. A few folks stood knee-deep in the water.

To the south a long row of beach umbrellas stood in a tight formation, sheltering people from the sun’s oppressive glare. Sunbathers sprawled on blankets, mostly looking already well-done. On the horizon a thin haze hung over the beach and the water. Across the span of sand the crowd was in the hundreds, and growing.

This was North Myrtle Beach. In both directions the high-rise condos and hotels, twenty, maybe thirty stories high, stood as if at attention as far as we could see. The impression was of a huge, bustling city of concrete and stucco, an intense urban infrastructure put up over decades to accommodate the desire of untold millions to visit the seashore.

It’s the same at Virginia Beach, maybe more of the same, and at the few other popular beaches I had visited in New Jersey, Florida, and Maryland. Just off the beach, the tourist support system offers mini-golf and fast food. Seafood restaurants and more souvenir places line the main artery, U.S 17.

Myrtle Beach, like those others, is an excursion into a peculiar world. In nearly all those places a hundred miles of near-empty rural countryside transforms into beach-resort business enterprise. Thousands and thousands come, creating massive traffic jams on summer weekends and holidays. People love the beach, wading in the waves, lying on the sand, buying tee-shirts and cheap stuff to take home.

I get it, we all do. Decades ago, the Jersey Shore was the place to be in summer. My New York City grandparents, always dressed as if for church, visited Asbury Park and Atlantic City and strolled the boardwalk, taking the sea air. My high-school friends and I drove to Long Branch Beach after senior prom.

My Long Island aunts and uncles, as kids in Brooklyn and Queens, loved Rockaway Beach with its Playland amusement park, an early touch of Myrtle Beach now turned into condos. They loved Jones Beach and Coney Island. These are famous places, New York institutions. You could ride the city bus or subway, no interstate travel required.

We watched Joseph stomp in the water and look for shells. Sandy took off her sandals and got her feet wet. The three of us talked about other things, about family, about visiting New Hampshire and maybe Maine. We were thinking of cool, crisp autumn weather, small towns, deep-blue lakes, pine forests, mountains. We didn’t think about Myrtle Beach.