Bonifant Road

When I stopped to take a picture of this ridiculous looking fake tree/cell phone tower that is obnoxiously visible from way off in the distance, my intent was to post the picture on my blog and complain about how stupid and unattractive it is. But it's actually kind of photogenic in a way. It looks pretty dumb in real life though.

Once I was out of my car with the camera in my hand, the compulsive picture taking disorder started once again. A couple of years ago they came in with bulldozers and completely destroyed what had once been a recreation area with baseball diamonds and things. They sprayed it with hay but it was just a big mud pile for quite a while. Gradually the vegetation filled in and it became a marshy area with a pond that seems to be very popular with migrating ducks. There were about twenty of them - they didn't all make it into the picture.

I am guessing that they constructed this artificial "wetland" area to compensate for some of what the Inter County Connector will be taking away. They are building a gigantic overpass a little bit east of this area. It's really going to change the character of the area, but it was nice of them to at least make an effort to keep some areas friendly for wildlife. I hope it all works okay, because at this point we don't really have any choice in the matter.

This is probably one of the most scenic bus stops in Montgomery County. I would imagine that waiting for a bus might be a little more pleasant if you had this lovely creek to look at while you waited.

It's pretty amazing that some of the trees haven't even started to change color yet while others are completely bare.

This is the "Road to Nowhere." That's what I used to call it when I was younger. I always wanted to see where it went. I think it was one of the old original parts of Bonifant Road. They've changed it a couple times and I guess sometimes it's easier to re-route the road than it is to widen an old bridge. You can't really tell to well from this photo, but it just heads off into increasingly heavy underbrush.

After my husband saw this photo he told me he used to fish from this bridge when he was a kid. The creek there is Northwest Branch.

So now I'm looking back across Bonifant at that cell phone "tree" again. I started thinking about my first official piano teacher (my mother taught me until I was about 12). His name was Harold Pries and he was really old. I remember driving up a very long curved driveway with lots of trees on either side to his big beautiful but slightly gloomy old house on what eventually became the former site of the Trolley Museum.

I had never had formal piano lessons before when I started with Mr. Pries and my year of lessons with him was very interesting. Although he seemed to be extremely old fashioned, he had me work through several volumes of Bartok's Mikrokosmos along with the usual repertoire which included a whole lot of Bach. No more John Thompson for me!

One of the most interesting things he had his students do each week was to memorize a poem of his choice. He must have had hundreds of poems memorized himself. There were poems by Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and many others, including Shakespeare. And he wanted you to recite them with the proper expression too. One time he assigned me a passage from MacBeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot,

full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

I memorized it, but I just couldn't get into the sentiment of it in my recitation. I was just a silly little seventh grader and I couldn't feel or relate to whatever this poem was about. I hadn't experienced doom and gloom yet. Well he gave me a demonstration of it that was so grim that I thought he might kill himself afterwards. It was pretty scary and very intense, but I was sort of impressed and amazed anyway. I think it was too intense for my mother though because she started looking for a new piano teacher for me pretty soon after that.

All in all though I'd have to say that the weekly poem memorization experience was very beneficial to me in ways that I couldn't possibly appreciate then, but certainly do now. And I didn't know enough to have an opinion about his teaching, but I do know that he inspired me to work harder than I ever had before.



So first it was the piano studio of Harold Pries, then it became the trolley museum, and now it's the ICC. The trolley museum has moved to a new location just on the other side of the ICC. I had heard it was due to open this weekend, so I drove on in to check it out.



It's not open yet. They're still working on attaching the cables and they won't open until at least one of the trolleys is up and running.



I asked one of the guys who was working there when it would be opening and he said that they were trying for next Saturday but he thought that was optimistic. I peeked inside the building. It's a lot fancier than the old one was and it looks like the exhibits are more attractive. From what I could see just peeking in the door.

There was a road around the back that did not say "Do Not Enter" so I drove it up to the top of the hill. The light was really fading by then so this herd of deer looks rather ghostly.



I took one more picture of the "tree" from behind the trolley museum. It's actually planted rather close to the new building, which you can't tell at all just driving down Bonifant.



I guess I have a little more appreciation of this thing now that it has caused me to take a little trip down Memory Lane. Thank you, cell phone tree!