Great! Old Salem (day 4)

I've never been so happy to show up somewhere as it was closing. After the Transportation Museum, Ivan and I hightailed it to Old Salem. This is a National Historic Landmark which essentially restores and cultivates the community that was settled in 1766 by the Moravians. Who were they, you ask? A Protestant sect that came into being in 1457 in the now-Czech region of Bohemia and Moravia (click here for Wikipedia entry), they came down from Pennsylvania to create a village based, not on farming, but skilled trade. You can see that as you walk (or drive) through the streets. There's a tavern, an apothecary, a hat store and - the bakery.

Now I had read that the bakery was the place to be. Since almost all of Old Salem closed at 4:30pm and we made it to the Visitor's Center at 4:26pm (whew - thought we'd miss something), we couldn't get to go into the village stores and homes. However, in a brilliant move only the Moravians and their descendants could think of, the bakery was open until 5pm.

Here's one of the many great and funny things to happen here. We park in the street in front of the bakery. Now you gotta imagine that this is a little weird to us. We're surrounded by late 18th century and 19th century architecture and I'm pulling up in my 2009 Corolla (great on this road trip, by the way). We got out and looked around and Ivan says, 'are we allowed to park here?!'. Now you remember that I said that this trip has been all about meeting great and interesting people. Enter Vince. He's unloading a truck that's parked in front of us and hears my brother's comment. He says (I'm paraphrasing now), 'yeah - you're good; I saw the Jersey plates and realized only people from Jersey are that worried about where they're parking'. HILARIOUS and so true. If we find parking out front of anything, that's about as sure a tow as if we wrote, 'COPS SUCK' all over the rear window.

We went in to this amazing building, which actually bakes what they sell (and the Arts Horizons people will get a little taste of that when I get back). There were some samples of 'sugar bread', which I like to call 'Living in Heaven with Type II'. Fantastic. Over at the gift shop, we start chatting with Vince some more and it turns out that he's a NYC transplant from 22 years ago. Still has family up by me, but lives down here with his wife who's from the area. Couldn't ask for a nicer guy. He even facilitated an introduction with three of the loveliest ladies to work in a Moravian village (and that includes back then too, I'm sure). There were Frances and Amanda, or as Vince called them, the Moravian sisters. And next door at the hat store was Stacy. As Bridget's pointed our already, taking pictures with the great people I meet has been one of the highlights, so here are. WOW. I just realized now that I didn't get a photo with Vince. I'm a little disappointed at myself for that. However, this is an excellent opportunity to show off some of his talent. Vince told us, with a bit of a wink, that he knew the artist who did the great artwork on the Moravian cookie tins (click to order Moravian cookies). Lo and behold, the side of the tins indicate that they were 'illustrated for OLD SALEM by Vincent Cannino'. Even more interesting is that he won a Gold Addy for these illustrations. And to top it off, animal lovers like me and other will be really happy to see that he's put his talent to great use. Here's another sample of his work, which was done for the Forsyth Humane Society's Artists Unleashed exhibition. Talk about the great people you meet!

REMEMBER TO CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO SEE THEM BIGGER!


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