Dawn broke cold at Long Neck.  The Weather Channel offered a temperature in neighboring Millsboro of 24 degrees.  It also offered a matching temperature at Buffalo International Airport.  While it wasn’t my prime motivation for moving here the promise of a better climate played a role.  It was my plan to spend this cold weekend in the upper reaches of New York State but my daughter’s split family provided a different outcome.  With but a few hours I could spend with her and calculating a cost for gasoline and tolls of 100 dollars I deferred our holiday together.
 

Instead I drove Saturday morning to Berlin, Maryland for an oil change.  Sure, it’s a hike as well but I know some fellows who can keep the cost in line, rotate my tires and not insist that I need to rebuild my low mileage 3 year old car.  My co-worker, Wayne Cannon, tells me if I plan to become a permanent resident of this wooded peninsula that worse choices could be made than Berlin.  He was also the first person telling me it was where a movie named The Runaway Bride was filmed.
 

Berlin isn’t a money magnet like nearby Lewes and Rehoboth but it sure could be the picture used to illustrate that loosely invented word “Americana”.  Some big colonial and Victorian homes line some of the streets.  One of the big Victorians is for sale.  The house and not any actual person living or once living is implied.  There are also some streets where the houses could be described as plain but it’s sure a pleasant ordinary.  The shopping district is red brick.  All of it red brick.  And mostly antique shops with a few scattered stores selling quilts. 
 

There is a small tavern on one street and I believe the name is “Goober’s”.  I didn’t go inside.  I’ve given up beer but from outside the windows it looked like the place to catch some good college football.  Or if not then the Maryland Terrapins.  There were two diners I visited for breakfast.  At the first I was offered a seat at the only available table, which was abutting a table where a family was already seated.  While reading the Washington Post I was asked who had won the Hawaii-Boise State game.  I sighed and offered Hawaii.  The family also sighed.  Boise State may be the real “America’s Team”.  The family got its breakfast.  After I got coffee nobody ever came to take my food order.  I went to the counter and mentioned this as I was going to pay for the hot drink.  Instead I was given the coffee at no cost and offered an apology.  One block away I found another restaurant, an ice cream shop really, serving breakfast.  So I ordered blueberry pancakes.  The waitress explained there weren’t any blueberries.  So I ordered plain pancakes.  My coffee came black.  When I asked for cream it was explained to me that cream should be ordered before the coffee is served.  Also there wasn’t any cream but I could have some milk.  When the pancakes arrived I was provided with a thimbleful of syrup.  It was explained there wasn’t any more syrup available.
 

This report could end on these sour notes but the pancakes weren’t sour even if not perfect. 
 

I spent most of the day after breakfast wandering the village streets.  It’s just magnificent. 
 

I walked Berlin’s streets until late in the day.  Then I went to a local burger joint on the end of town.  A place that shames any fast food restaurant I’ve ever visited.  It’s the type of place I’d have wanted to hang around in as a teenager and I could see myself in twenty years seated there on some Friday night, whiling away the evening with some local talk and a chicken dinner. 
 

My drive home was of the meandering variety, I mean.  Where am I going in any hurry?  It took me through Ocean Pines.  Very pretty and I’m sure it would be a nice get-a-way for a week in summer or weekend in late September or early April but it all looks too planned for me.  And you really can’t walk to mail a letter or fill a prescription or to a church.  At least from what I saw today. 
 

The day did warm before it was over.  Somewhere in the low 40s I’m guessing.  Cool weather doesn’t slow life here.  The shops along the beaches were busy as I drove home along Route 1.  Even the bicycle shop at Bethany Beach was doing a brisk business. 
 

Then I closed the day at church.  It strikes me there will be a time when I can no longer see new things.  God’s glory is on display, always has been.  It’s just that I didn’t always look in the right places.  Thanksgiving Day I went to a morning church service and then had two hours before I had to go to work.  I raked leaves under a sunny sky and with a thermometer reading of 71 degrees.  There was a hawk perched not far away in a tree.  A neighbor pointed it out to me.  Then the bird raised its wings and soared.  In circles and figure eights and it looked like a kite dancing on wind.  Last year at Thanksgiving I wasn’t employed and was approaching residence at a Rescue Mission.  What a God-given turn of events.

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