I've been told it's beautiful to see this time of year...

2016 Road Trip.  Part Trois.

I woke up alone in Brooklyn on a twin bed under Minions sheets.  I took a sticky, unairconditioned shower in a window facing the street.  I drank strong coffee and ate a gigantic egg bagel--which I never forgo up north, no matter in whose company I find myself or the amount of lye involved.  And then it was time to crawl over the bridge and out of the city into New England.
Some highway construction and GPS confusion sent me into New Haven, so I took the opportunity to explore Yale's campus and the people milling about it.  Floppy-haired boys with belts, blonde girls in day dresses.  Lining up outside of popular pizza places on tree lined streets.  I wondered what my life would've been like if I'd gone to the Ivy League school I was meant for-or even finished school on time-and met a nice boy there who wanted to take care of me.  I almost wondered it out loud but remembered my wife was there too.  Scrolling through facebook in the passenger seat.  So I found my way back to the highway.  Through redirected lanes and construction zones, Rhode Island, Boston, some slum--it was on to the next destination, Salem, MA.
Which at night was everything I wanted it to be.  Foggy, too quiet, leering statues at unexpected turns, a proper Irish pub-but by day a little less romantic.  Vaccination clinics and law offices sprinkled among the tourist shops, each one the same as the next and all manned by bookish emo fatties. And in the light of day a little disappointing that the whole witch hunt affair was just the out of control cattiness of a gaggle of Mean Girls. Though I of course found the one place I could buy a coyote jaw (and maybe even a Mogwai or something) and was given a tarot card, which I would later learn was because I have practically the same face as a young woman put on trial for witchcraft.
But there is obviously some real history here, and plenty of kitsch.  Jon Bon Jovi served me breakfast. There's a healthy appreciation for Bewitched. And the wax museums give every bit of 1989 low budget realness-and thankfully, air conditioning.  All that said, Samantha and those Mean Girls aside--I still believe in witches.

Patrick Dougherty-StickWork

Thompkins H. Matteson, 1853