Root Beer

The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal has gone through several iterations since it was first dug in 1829. Its final phase finds it 14 miles long and 450 feet wide, enough to fit — with the proper piloting — a couple of large ships next to each other. Carrie Rose at eleven feet wide is a mere speck. We were lucky not to encounter any large ships on our two transits, though we did have two large go fast boats sneak up on us from behind and almost flip us over . . . just kidding.

Carrie Rose now sits, tied to a floating dock at the diminutive Delaware City Marina. It consists of a long pier to one side of what used to be the C&D Canal. This old section is what remains of the old canal and at about 50 feet wide; there is not much of it.

Delaware City is a town that time has forgotten, nestled between an unseen refinery and the modern canal. It is a place that you come to rather than find. The downtown is well preserved. There are a few busy restaurants, a liquor store, a small grocery, a couple of specialty shops, and of course, an ice cream purveyor. A hand written sign out front proclaimed “ROOTBEER FLOATS”, who could resist.

The young woman behind the counter showed us the size (about a foot tall) and quoted us the price ($5.50), so we ordered one with two spoons, two straws, but only one cherry. She looked dejected.

I am here to say that on a hot summer day there is not much better than a root beer float. It is creamy with vanes of frozen root beer running through it all intermix with the melting whip cream, and the chemically tainted cherry was delish.

Charlotte let me finish the dregs and as I slurped up the remnants, a vision of another hot summer day long ago surface as clear as if it had just occurred. It was in the late 1960’s. I cannot remember if I was just out of Grammar School or in High School. I know it was after 1967 because that is when I managed — by cutting grass in Rosehill Cemetery — to save up the $165.00 to buy a Peugeot PX-10 racing bicycle complete with Reynolds 531 double-butted frame. I still have it and once a year tempt faith to ride it around the block.

My friend’s father was quite athletic and adventurous. He was 10 years younger than my father and had a coveted job in the trades, and it seemed had some free time. He proposed to his kids and me that we go on the newly created Wisconsin Bikeway. My friend’s younger brother and I took him up on the offer as well as one of his buddies, a kinda odd bachelor that I cannot even recollect, even after spending ten days with him.

There was no fancy literature. I do not know how he even found out about it. The instructions or I should say directions cause there was a little of that, consisted of a stack of mimeographed sheets. This is before Xerox and the prematurely yellowed paper covered with smudgeable blue ink was the only guide to be had. But I was not concerned; directions were the job of the adults. My job was to pack sensibly and make sure my bike was sound.

The number one project was to have enough tires to get 500 miles across Wisconsin. I know this must seem peculiar but this was a time before the distinctions between cruising, racing, off road, recumbent, etc., etc. existed. I had my bike and that is what I was going with. But back to tires, since the PX-10 was a high performance bike it road on high pressure tires. With the technology of the day, that meant sew-ups.

Sew-ups were like inner tubes with treads and they were actually sewed up, and if you can believe this, glued to the rim. They were also fragile. My friend worked at a bike shop as a mechanic and his brother repaired sew-ups on the side. I was also schooled in the fine millenary art of repairing them. Between the two of us, we had some twenty tires and we went through all of them before we got home. Ah, a night around the campfire sewing sew-ups!

But I am getting a little long winded here. Bikes and all were loaded on a train, which took us to La Crosse, Wisconsin where we detrained and road off into the Wisconsin forest and farmland. It was the first and last time I ever had ripples on my stomach. It was a glorious trip with fun adults and a great companion.

No one in Wisconsin knew anything about the bikeway. We were trailblazers and were treated as such. We slept in town squares and one time, in a torrential rain spent the night in a tiny town’s jail due to the sheriff’s largest. And the most memorable moments for me, besides gliding downhill for miles from Blue Mounds, the highest point in Wisconsin, was stopping at every A&W for root beer floats.

My friend’s father knew how to keep a couple of goofy kids happy and sated. It is a wonderful memory to have while on another adventure. This one, of course, on a different and more comfortable venue, but still one that needs a couple of goofy adults to be contented with a foot tall root beer float.