Laurels for Highway 9

A true story by Erick Sahler

Pop Taylor was a self-proclaimed “fordhook-shelling hoss.”

That’s country talk for one man’s pride in his ability to prepare a large quantity of fresh-picked beans for human consumption.

In fact, Pop was pretty adept at all aspects of gentleman farming, a hobby he picked up in the 1970s to occupy the off hours from managing a plumbing supply business.

On a small sandy plot behind the house where my grandmother was born, he cultivated neat rows of carrots, onions, tomatoes, corn, strawberries and a variety of lima bean called fordhooks. In a larger field out beyond the right-of-way, he grew watermelons — crimson sweets and Charleston grays — that came on around Independence Day and lasted through mid-August.

In my early teen years, Pop paid me minimum wage to help harvest and load the melons into the bed of his Chevy pickup. The biggest and most attractive specimens were placed on top, each polished to a shine with the rub of a damp rag. At first light the next day, we’d be off to the auction block in Laurel, Delaware, where we crawled along in a long, slow-moving line with dozens of other truck farmers there to sell their produce for big city markets.

It was a slice of rural America I feel lucky to have witnessed first hand.

I was recently lost in these memories while waiting in traffic at the Route 13 junction across from the old auction block. As the light changed, I noticed a sign I had never seen before:

END

US 9

With Alison attending University of the Arts in Philadelphia the past four years, Tracy and I have made dozens of stem-to-stern voyages across the First State. There are parts of Routes 1, 13 and 113 that I’m certain I could drive with my eyes shut. For occassional variety, we have sampled a number of alternative roads and Route 9 from New Castle to the Dover Air Force Base has become a favorite. We especially enjoy the towering view from the high-arching bridge over the C&D Canal and the way the two-lane country road saws back and forth across the low-lying salt marshes of Delaware Bay.

But that Route 9 — actually Delaware State Route 9 — stops just south of Dover. The “END US 9” in Laurel is an entirely different road, and one that is worth exploring.

For most folks, when asked to name a US highway that terminates on Delmarva, US 50 springs to mind. Who hasn’t pondered the “Sacramento 3073” sign above the Harry W. Kelley Memorial Bridge in downtown Ocean City? It is the start of a paved ribbon that stretches across the entirety of our country, from the Maryland beach to the capital of California, including an area of Nevada so desolate it’s dubbed “the loneliest road in America.”

Route 50 gets all the glory.

Except.

Route 9 is the only US highway that includes a year-round ferry. After its initial 30-mile east/west run from Laurel to Lewes, it crosses Delaware Bay to Cape May, where it turns north/south like all other odd-numbered US highways.

US 9 continues as a mostly two-lane road up New Jersey through Atlantic City and Freehold, the childhood home of Bruce Springsteen. The Boss mentions it in the lyric,

“Sprung from cages on Highway 9,”

in the rock ’n’ roll classic “Born to Run.”

Highway 9 also appears in Springsteen’s “The Promise” and “Last Man Standing,” as well as in songs by The Wonder Years, Danzig and The Breeders.

US 9 crosses the Hudson River and enters New York at the George Washington Bridge, site of the world’s largest American flag. It is also among the most frequently chosen sites in New York for suicide, and was at the center of the “Bridgegate” scandal that sunk New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s bid for the presidency.

From there, it continues north through the Hudson Valley, past Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow and FDR’s Hyde Park. At Albany, it recrosses the Hudson and then continues north to pretty Lake George, where it enters a lonely stretch through the Adirondack wilderness. Finally, it skirts the western shore of Lake Champlain and then terminates at the US-Canada border north of Plattsburg.

Before security was tightened, Route 9 continued all the way to Montreal.

Montreal! As in poutine and smoked beef! Maple syrup and steak seasoning! Molson beer and ice hockey!

What amazes me is how a single road — just one long continuous strip of asphalt — can traverse such a diversity of geography and cultures, and yet somehow unite them all together. Everyone and everything along that route has a commonality that links them forever.

We are Route 9!

You can drive it. Or walk it. Or roller skate it, if you wanted. It’s always there.

Hidden in plain sight, right across from the auction block.

Waiting.

Connecting.

What a notion!

And to think this all started with beans. And even though they were just fordhooks, I’m pretty sure they were magic.

Highway 9, which ends in Laurel, Delaware, is the only US highway that includes a year-round ferry – and lyrics in a Bruce Springsteen song.