Good posts!
The Pines Barrens stayed the same but after they turned Atlantic City into Las Vegas the drive down from Manhattan was different. The Turnpike was much more crowded and the down home country music radio stations I used to be able to pick up on my old dial radio were gone. There was one old radio station I particularly liked. The disk jockey would stop the song right in the middle, play the commercial and stuff, and start it right at the same note.
Busby's general store was still there in Chatsworth and Friendship was still (sparsley) inhabited and everything was still pretty much the way it was when Mr McP wrote his book just a few years earlier. That NY Times travel story about the Pines - three words of it captured my imagination - "the windswept pines" - and inspired me to drive down in my Beetle (a great car for the narrow sand roads) - and then I fell in love with the place. I admit that I did fall out of love with the place to a certain extent years later when we spent a few lazy summer days camping out and lying around in Washington ghost town, i think it was, only to find that ticks had bored into our bodies in all the nastiest places. I put a rag down into the VW gas tank to soak in in gasoline and put that over the ticks and they wiggled out. It worked good but last I heard that method is no longer recommended. I think u r supposed to twist them out counterclockwise or something only that method has NEVER worked for me including the time I was covered with ticks in the Ozarks. I haven't read up on the subject of late because I haven't been troubled with the things here in AZ but I think maybe the gasoline method was best after all. I hate ticks but I love the Pines Barrens even though Chatsworth doesn't look like Chatsworth any more.
The Pines Barrens stayed the same but after they turned Atlantic City into Las Vegas the drive down from Manhattan was different. The Turnpike was much more crowded and the down home country music radio stations I used to be able to pick up on my old dial radio were gone. There was one old radio station I particularly liked. The disk jockey would stop the song right in the middle, play the commercial and stuff, and start it right at the same note.
Busby's general store was still there in Chatsworth and Friendship was still (sparsley) inhabited and everything was still pretty much the way it was when Mr McP wrote his book just a few years earlier. That NY Times travel story about the Pines - three words of it captured my imagination - "the windswept pines" - and inspired me to drive down in my Beetle (a great car for the narrow sand roads) - and then I fell in love with the place. I admit that I did fall out of love with the place to a certain extent years later when we spent a few lazy summer days camping out and lying around in Washington ghost town, i think it was, only to find that ticks had bored into our bodies in all the nastiest places. I put a rag down into the VW gas tank to soak in in gasoline and put that over the ticks and they wiggled out. It worked good but last I heard that method is no longer recommended. I think u r supposed to twist them out counterclockwise or something only that method has NEVER worked for me including the time I was covered with ticks in the Ozarks. I haven't read up on the subject of late because I haven't been troubled with the things here in AZ but I think maybe the gasoline method was best after all. I hate ticks but I love the Pines Barrens even though Chatsworth doesn't look like Chatsworth any more.
But I do like the vodka comment 
