Silent Sentinels

They march, in an irregularly spaced line, from Fenwick Island, to the entrance of Delaware Bay at Cape Henlopen, in the north. The casual tourist may be forgiven for mistaking them for lighthouses for they share the same tall windswept, somewhat foreboding isolation. Closer inspection, however, shows bricked-up doors and windows, ending in a steel-railed parapet 40 to 75 feet on the topmost deck. These are coastal watch towers, their usefulness almost 70 years past, and abandoned to the elements, with the occasional historical plaque to tell half-interested readers exactly what they are and why they are there.

By 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was going badly for the Allies; German U-boats, operating seemingly at will off the East and Gulf coasts, sunk an ever higher toll of shipping each month. While U.S. shipyards were building replacement ships at an accelerated pace and would soon catch up with and surpass the losses, the toll extracted by the wolf packs was fearful and went largely unanswered. U-boats lay in wait off coastal and resort towns, torpedoing ships as they passed silhouetted by the city lights. Burning tankers drew curious crowds of boardwalk spectators in much the same way a traffic accident would at rush hour. Bodies of merchant seamen regularly washed ashore along the Eastern Seaboard.

Delaware's coastal defenses construction began in 1939 and lasted for three years. Fort Miles, built at Cape Henlopen, was essentially a land-locked battleship sporting two 16-inch guns (the same as carried on the USS Iowa), two 12-inch guns, and a battery of four 6-inchers. The 16-inch battery could fire one-ton projectiles nearly 25 miles. Fort Miles also controlled a minefield, which could be turned off electronically for ships to pass, and stretched the width of Delaware Bay. Thirteen towers; eleven in Delaware and two near Cape May, New Jersey, manned by troops from the US Army's 261 Coast Artillery Regiment, were the spotters for the formidable guns at Fort Miles. Equipped with radios, fire control radar units, and various optics including azimuth sighting range finders, the soldiers kept vigil over the approaches to Delaware Bay. Azimuth sighting range finders visually determine a target's position using the measure along the horizon of the angle between the object and a fixed reference point. Sightings from two towers were triangulated and sent to the the fort to position the guns. At least that was the theory; the guns were never fired at a target.

Tower 7, located in Henlopen State Park has been restored and is open to the public. If you don't have a head for heights, don't visit, even though the steel ladder was replaced by a steel circular stair.

The towers were built on creosoted pilings hammered into the sand and a concrete base was laid on top. The towers themselves were constructed from reinforced concrete, strengthened by wire mesh and steel rebar. The concrete was poured into a hollow 16-foot diameter form, with walls a foot thick, in a singe 24-hour pour. After the concrete cured for about a month, steel ladders and wooden decks were added, and the tower was open for business. Beach sand was used to cut costs and the towers had a life expectancy of 20 years or less.

The towers continue to keep vigil after nearly 70 years, weatherng nor'easter storms and hurricanes, their footings washed by high tides. Pigeons roost on the rusted steel railings and rise in clouds when the odd falcon passes in migration. Pink at dawn and sunset, the Delaware towers have become as much a part of the landscape as the beaches themselves over which they loom.

What Money Can't Buy (Almost)

"Only two things money can't buy;

True love and home-grown tomatoes"

- Old Song


Fresh tomato season has snuck up upon us. I'm not talking about those spheroids that are hard as baseballs, flavored weak as water, imported from foreign lands like California and Florida, and available year-round in the local Safeway; oh no, I'm talking the meaty, red as first-water rubies, off the vine delicacies I get at my local hardware store (light bulbs, chain saw oil,local vegetables). These are early-maturing varieties, trucked down from the Amish farmers in Hanover County, Pennsylvania, and taste like the essence of summer. Attack one armed with a salt shaker - the juices run down your chin and the flavor pops on your tongue.

Grocery store tomatoes are picked green for better shipping and turn red by the application of ethylene gas which breaks down the chlorophyll. Unfortunately, the gas does not affect insoluble calcium pectinate, which in real tomatoes, breaks down into soluble pectin, allowing that satisfying chomp.

We take our tomatoes seriously around here. A crab cake sandwich just doesn't taste right without a slice of ripe tomato. Better yet, make a crab salad and fill a hollowed out tomato. Add a crisp white wine and lunch does not get any better.

The great Earl Weaver, manager of the Baltimore Orioles back in their glory days at Memorial Stadium, had a tomato patch out near the bullpen and woe betide any grounds keepers who interfered with his crop. He is said to have handed out fresh tomatoes like game balls to his star players. I'm sure Cal Ripken must have become sick of them.

If you want to be really decadent, try sauteing an onion in good olive oil until it caramelizes; add a stick of pepperoni, sliced thin; and a good ripe diced tomato. Let it cook on high heat until the tomato just starts to break down and add a half cup of sour cream. Meanwhile, the prudent chef will have boiled a pound of rigatoni, taking care to remember that this particular pasta always takes longer than originally thought. Drain the pasta and pour into the pot of sauce. Toss to mix and eat. This is a very rich, old Venetian recipe my grandmother taught me (even thought she was a Triestina to the core). Enjoy.

Botanically speaking, tomatoes are true berries. The ancestral form, found in the Andean foothills are tiny and mostly eaten by birds which disperse their indigestible seeds. The seeds are indigestible to us as well and many a sewage treatment plant has tomato vines growing riot around the periphery.

Tomatoes were taken to Europe by the Spanish with the other spoils of the Aztec and Inca conquests: gold, jade, corn, and chilis. When they reached southern Europe, tomatoes were greeted as Mana from Heaven, and become an integral part of the cuisine. Thomas Jefferson brought tomatoes to North America after serving as Ambassador to France and travelling widely through Europe. He experimented with various cultivars and ate them regularly to the great alarm of his friends. At the time, tomatoes were called "love apples", grown as ornamental plants only, and were widely believed to be poisonous. This is only partly true; the leaves, vines, and raw green fruit contain alkaloids such as solanum, scopalamine, and various other nasty things which act as natural insecticides. Tomatoes are in the same botanical family, Solanacae, and related to peppers, potatoes, and tobacco; all of which produce various witches' brews of defensive chemicals.

Another Solanacae, Jimsonweed, contains a powerful hallucinogen, and was originally called Jamestown Weed after the first English settlement in Virginia. It seems several settlers during one of the regular food shortages tried eating this particular weed. They were out of it for several days and the practice soon caught on among their bored and hungry neighbors and had to be suppressed by the authorities. The settlers soon switched to growing and using tobacco, which, as we all know, is completely harmless. Interestingly, the tobacco they originally obtained from the Indians and grew as a cash crop is not the same one may find in the average pack of Luckies today. John Rolf, of Pocahontas fame, imported a different species for the plantations from Central America. The early form is still grown in parts of Europe where it is used for insecticides.

The tomatoes from the hardware store don't quite measure up to home-grown. I haven't planted any this year, but neighbors have. Tomatoes are prolific enough that I expect to see a bag or two left on the doorstep before long.

Graduations and Transitions

When we spaced our kids four years apart (only semi by design), it never occurred to Pat and me that, off in the distant mists of the future, there might be a problem with scheduling graduations. Ariel is a newly-minted graduate of Randolph Macon College, BA in English and minor in Women's Studies, and Alec has graduated from James Madison High School here in Vienna. He will be going to James Madison University in the fall.


By the luck of the draw, the graduation ceremonies were not on the same day, but Alec's prom fell on the evening of Ariel's graduation. This entailed his cadging a ride to Ashland from his cousins and hightailing it out of town as soon as the events were over. He needed to: pick up his suit from the cleaners, a task which had been put off for weeks; pick up flowers for Allison, his date; get something to eat; and show up at the appointed spot with his friends and their dates for the obligatory pre-prom photos by the parents. After which, they caravaned to Centerville, about 20 miles down the road to assemble at the limos for transport to the actual prom. All of this logistical block and tackle work would have presented little problem but for the fact that Ariel had been involved in a fender-bender the week earlier. Her car was still in the shop in Ashland. Since her car was hors-de-combat, I had to drive my truck down because all graduates had to be out of their dorms by 5 p.m. that day. We (Pat and I with my mom) drove down the night before to avoid I-95 Saturday gridlock and spent the night in a nearby hotel. Up early so Pat could take my truck to campus, picking up a bouquet of pink roses and daisies on the way, parking the truck at the body shop three blocks away. Ariel's dorm is on the main drag of campus and the street in front was closed for the graduation which was taking place next door on the fountain plaza "under the oaks", as we like to say here in the South. Everything went off without a hitch; Alec showed up on time to process with his sister for the robing (he put the stole over her shoulders). The obligatory speeches were delivered, and the soon to be alumni (we already received fund raiser mail) marched across the stage ("don't trip, don't trip") and picked up their sheepskins.


Luncheon under tents and a veritable orgy of picture taking followed. Hugs, high fives, tears and promises to keep in touch were the order of the afternoon. Except for me...I trudged to get the truck and negotiated with a campus police officer to thread the barricade and park in front of the dorm. Ariel and her roommate had made a rudimentary attempt at packing up their stuff and a couple of hours and discoveries of long-lost objects ("I thought I lost that last March"), vehicles were loaded and the trek back up I-95 resumed.


We met at home, dropped off the truck and sped off to the pre-prom photo op. We got there with minutes to spare, and, along with the other parents, shot endless pix of very grown-up looking young ladies and gentlemen. We didn't see Alec until the next morning when his answers to any and all prom-related questions consisted of monosyllabic grunts. I take it he had a good time. One final piece of shrapnel for this temporal hand-grenade was everyone had to be at church that morning for a "recognition of the graduates". I'm sure everybody recognized Ariel and Alec, even though they were half asleep and moving like zombies.


This past Wednesday, high school graduation took place. Ariel drove to get grandma, growing increasingly panicky in the afternoon beltway gridlock, with two hours head start, they just made it back to grab a bite and then off to the biggest high school in Fairfax County for the ceremony. Skies glowering, we followed the herd into the parking lot and as the rain began to pelt down, jumped the curb and parked on the median strip. Into the cavernous field house and up into a set of very shaky bleachers to watch the ceremonies.



I guess all graduations are at heart about the same. Substitute the names of the schools, the speakers, and the students and you pretty much have a repeat of the last one. Except this is your kid who stayed up nights writing term papers on the influence of Shakespeare on Saul Bellow or sweating through calculus homework or any of a dozen traumatic events which now seem kind of trivial. Milestone achieved, diploma in hand, future by the throat, world their oyster, here they come, ready or not.



It seems like just a couple of weeks ago Pat and I were discussing daycare.