When the Union play PCNJ, they won't let us use the bathrooms in the concourse. That is why this blog exists. You can't get to the bathrooms, and so they set up portajohns out by the river. So I'm standing in line, the score is 0-0, and I wind up talking with the person in front of me in line. And for some reason I say "the west will kill us both." The guy in front of me, whose name is Connor and who is a really cool guy, recognizes the quote. We wind up singing Sailing to Philadelphia in line, and Roger Torres scores and the Union win, and all is right with the world. The next day I get out my copy of Mason & Dixon, and I read it again, and an idea gets into my head, of maybe someday traveling the route myself.
This is a long way of saying that this is the start of a bit of a project. My girlfriend and I will be driving the line this spring, going from the Stargazer's Stone to the Termination Stone, and all sorts of places in between. This blog is going to be the documentation of the preparation for the trip, and then the trip itself. I'm starting out with Pynchon, Wikipedia, Google Maps and a Mark Knopfler / Jackson Browne duet. There will doubtless be diversions into history, beer, soccer, television, and anything else tangentially related to the line.
History and Literature can take us strange places. No reason they shouldn't take us there together.
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