Had a quick oil change and a quick breakfast before heading out of Columbus on US 33. I decided it might be nice to take a drive through Lancaster (birthplace of General Willam T. Sherman, who burned Atlanta) rather than staying on the by-pass. Big mistake. I had no idea the whole fucking town was under construction. I’m serious: every major road in or out was either blocked or reduced to one lane and absolutely choked with traffic. I’d always wondered where hell was. Apparently, it’s about 30 miles southeast of Columbus.

On the way home, I also saw Nelsonville (with another Kroger, no nearly so old or tiny as the one in McConnellsville) and Athens, a surprisingly cute college town. I had lunch at a Long John Silver’s there, not realizing that if I’d just waited fifteen more minutes, I would have found one of the last remaining Arthur Treacher’s locations. Oh well.

It all became a blur after I stopped at the mountainside Kroger near Charleston. I remember I got gas in Virginia because it was cheap. I think I may have eaten dinner in Statesville. But I’m not sure. I think all the starches finally got to me.

  

Breakfast at Frisch’s. If there is an active Big Boy franchise in a city I’m visiting, it is mandatory that I eat there at least once.

  

After breakfast, I made my side trip to Zanesville and McConnellsville. The visit to McConnellsville had been one of my prime motivators as there’s a tiny, ancient, but still open Kroger there that I had to see. And I saw it, along with the IGA.

Zanesville was just an interesting town along the way. I had lunch there, at a place called Nicol’s, where the special was beef with noodles. I didn’t realize that the beef and noodles would be served on top of mashed potatoes. This whole midwestern starch thing was starting to get to me by this time. It’s like I spent the whole trip in the midst of a giant carb crash.

 

Back in Columbus, I found a couple of decent used bookstores, and stumbled upon the 1940s-1950s neighborhood where the betrothed and I would probably crave to live if we ever moved to Columbus — in the vicinity of Indianola Avenue and Cooke Road, if I recall correctly. I spent a little more time around OSU and Upper Arlington and then went back to the motel for a while.

I didn’t really have a dinner agenda and nothing really “spoke” to my need to avoid anything involving noodles or potatoes, so after a long drive, I ended up at a nondescript Chinese place in a nondescript shopping center in a nondescript suburb. It was pretty good, I must admit.