It all began when my wife, who goes through all our junk mail in search of cents-off coupons, came upon a brochure from Virginia Beach, Va., and waxed nostalgic. We had spent a week`s vacation there five years ago, camping out among the sand fleas and mosquitoes, and she decided an encore was in order.
”How can you wax nostalgic over a place you`ve only seen once-and then in the middle of Hurricane Charlie?” I said. ”Remember Hurricane Charlie? We nearly drowned!”
”We did no such thing,” she said. ”You always exaggerate. In any case, this isn`t the hurricane season and the weather is bound to be just beautiful. We haven`t been on a camping trip for a long time.”
It is a well-known fact that if one does not go on a camping trip at least twice a year, the brain turns into mine tailings that run out through the ears. So, with memories of riding out a hurricane in a pup tent still lingering at the fringes of my mind, we set out for Dixie.
The cardinal rule for any traveler journeying to Virginia Beach from the north or northeast is avoid Philadelphia at any cost. I was prepared to drive all the way to Wyoming, if necessary, to avoid the labyrinth of Philadelphia, but then my wife looked at the road atlas.
”Look here,” she said. ”Route 611 goes right through Philadelphia. We couldn`t possibly get detoured or lost on 611. It`s silly to drive all the way around the city.”
Road map trouble
The woman never should be allowed to touch a road map. We took 611. We got detoured in traffic that was moving about two blocks a day and lost in a neighborhood that would make a Beirut street-fighter cry for his mama. I`m sure there is a lot more to Philadelphia-the Liberty Bell and all-but if you`re not going for that, go elsewhere.
For our part, we were going to Virginia Beach, though not ”straight as a string.” The Philadelphia shortcut cost us about two hours and my wife, who did not wish to discuss the matter, buried herself in her Game Boy, seeking solace for an hour more in an addiction called ”Tetris,” which she plays in times of stress with little squeals of triumph and groans of despair.
The second cardinal rule for any traveler going anywhere is never buy your wife a Game Boy for Christmas-not even as a joke.
The route we took to Virginia Beach runs down the Delaware/Maryland side of the peninsula that helps form Chesapeake Bay. It is a landscape of tilled fields lined with produce stands, little seafood restaurants and shops selling antiques, lawn sculpture, fireworks and smoked hams.
What lies at the end of the road, however, is anything but bucolic. It is called the Chesapeake Bridge-Tunnel. For a toll of $9, one is afforded the thrill of driving just above the waves of Chesapeake Bay on an 18-mile causeway that periodically plunges beneath the water to clear passage for sea- going tankers, freighters and war ships of the U.S. Navy.
Terrified by bridges
My wife, who distrusts tunnels in general and is positively terrified by bridges, was not happy.
”Just think,” I said as we began the long dive to the bottom of the bay, ”Over our heads, at this very moment, are passing mighty seagoing vessels weighing hundreds of thousands of tons with keels that doubtless clear this tunnel roof by a matter of feet.”
”Some day,” said my wife, retreating to her Game Boy once again, ”I`m going to light matches under your fingernails and see how you like to be tortured.”
The woman has no sense of humor, but she was right about the weather. We arrived at the Holiday Trailer Park, where we were to pitch our tent just in time for a heat wave that broke records all the way back to the invention of the thermometer.
The Holiday is a pleasant place to camp-as clean and well-appointed as anything we had seen since another such trip to Disney World`s Ft. Wilderness, and like the Disney creation, it offered its patrons not only a swimming pool, but hourly ”trolleys” to the beach, about 15 minutes away. Within an hour, however, our little nylon tent had turned into an oven, and my wife, who could laugh at a hurricane, wilted.
”Find me a store,” she demanded. ”We have an electrical hookup here and I want a fan and a 30-foot extension cord. I am not spending the night inside a brick kiln.”
I must have been a lizard in a previous life. I hate the cold, but bask in heat that drives others to violent crime, and my metabolic advantage rendered me cocky.
A fan in the tent
”What sort of sissy camper wants a fan in her tent?” I chided. ”You said the weather was going to be just beautiful, and it is. What more could you ask?” ”A fan!” she grated, and since her manner was most unsissylike, I capitulated. That night, as she tossed about and rubbed her body with ice cubes, another sound overrode the hum of the new fan.
”Listen,” she said. ”That sounds like thunder. Did you put everything away? I think it`s going to rain.”
”Nonsense,” I said. ”That`s just another of those F-14s from the naval base. They fly all night. I think they know something we don`t know about Baghdad and they`re staying in practice.”
Twenty minutes later, aided only by sheets of lightning and the feeble beam of a flashlight, I was running about the campsite frantically stowing away the things I had failed to stow before we turned in. It rained for the rest of the night.
Next morning, among items found safe and dry inside tent or car were cooking utensils, the coffee pot, a waterproof tarp, three empty beer bottles and, inexplicably, a short length of 2-by-4. Soaked beyond redemption were the road atlas, the matches, a pocket novel, her Game Boy and my notebook.
”If I didn`t know better,” said my wife, surveying the damage, ”I`d say you had a hand in this.”
Such sarcasm deserved nothing less than a snappy retort.
”Let`s go to the beach,” I said.
Crescent of unlittered sand
The beach at Virginia Beach is pristine-a long crescent of unlittered sand backed by the usual franchise that hawks sandals, swim suits, beach towels, plastic geegaws and rude T-shirts to tourists. But there are amenities well beyond the needs of sun-worshippers and surf-freaks and some of them are found nowhere else.
For miniature-golf devotees, there are courses that appear to have ransacked the creative talents of Hollywood`s best special-effects wizards, and the Ocean Breeze Festival Park, with its water slides, games and rides, is a peerless carnival.
But no trip to Virginia Beach is complete without a visit to the Association for Research and Enlightenment founded by Edgar Cayce, the so-called ”sleeping prophet” of the first half of this century.
Cayce, an unpretentious man of limited education and no medical training, stunned doctors in his day by going into self-induced trances in which he diagnosed illnesses, often those afflicting people he never had met, prescribing unorthodox treatments that worked more often than not, and even sending patients to doctors of whose existence claimed he was unaware of when awake.
”Before his death in 1945, Cayce gave 14,000 ”readings” on medical problems ranging from psoriasis and scleraderma to optic neuritis, effecting what some say were complete cures in a number of cases. The readings, along with ”the world`s largest metaphysical library” of 50,000 volumes, are housed at the ARE center, 67th Street and Atlantic Avenue.
Cayce`s grandson, Charles Thomas Cayce, who now presides over the ARE, said a surge of interest in holistic health care has put the center in the spotlight once again.
”There is a tremendous increase in alternative approaches to health care and healing,” Cayce said in an interview at the center. ”I think some of the reasons have to do with expense and frustration. People are increasingly leery and uncomfortable about trying to work with medication and pills. Maybe there is an increasing sense that there`s more to us than a physical body.”
Certainly there is more to ARE than alternative medicine. The center both offers and teaches massage therapy at the huge hospital Cayce built in 1928, but his ”readings” were not confined to diagnosis and prescription. They also encompassed a wide range of metaphysical subjects ranging from reincarnation to extrasensory perception, and any visit to the center can be an exploration of all of them.
My wife and I decided to be tested for ESP while we where there and flunked the test resoundingly. I pondered that as we headed for home.
”If you have no ESP, how come you . . . ” I began.
” . . . always know exactly what you`re thinking?” my wife finished.
”I`ve been married to you for 33 years. I know who you are.”
So there you have it. Familiarity doesn`t breed contempt; it breeds psychic power. But don`t count on it. It still won`t get you through Philadelphia.
