{"id":310,"date":"2008-02-10T10:26:14","date_gmt":"2008-02-10T17:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=310"},"modified":"2008-02-10T13:41:01","modified_gmt":"2008-02-10T20:41:01","slug":"phoenix-tucson-the-gastronomes-titanic-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=310","title":{"rendered":"The Trail Trash Titanic Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trail Trash<\/a> drove to Phoenix yesterday to see the Titanic Artifact Exhibition<\/a> at the Arizona Science Center<\/a>.\u00a0 Which was eerie, sad, and fascinating.\u00a0 But was it the high point of the day?<\/p>\n

It was a high point, certainly.\u00a0 But so was being with friends.\u00a0 So was eating out with friends.\u00a0 And eat we did: twice in Phoenix and once in Tucson.\u00a0 I think we should change our name to the Trail Trash Trenchermen.<\/p>\n

Arriving in Phoenix, we stopped for lunch at Chompie’s<\/a> in Tempe, a great New York-style Jewish deli that serves home made pickles and enormous pastrami sandwiches.\u00a0 After the Titanic exhibit, we had wine (okay, I had iced tea)\u00a0and bruschetta outdoors at Postino’s<\/a> in downtown Phoenix.\u00a0 Later that evening, we had dinner at Cocoyaya’s<\/a> in Tucson, where I took a gamble on the Rajitas en Crema con Pollo<\/em> (sliced green peppers and onions in cream sauce with chicken).\u00a0 \u00a1Mucho sabroso!<\/em><\/p>\n

But back to the Titanic . . . at the start of the tour everyone got a boarding pass.\u00a0 Each of us was assigned the name of an actual Titanic passenger, and at the end of the tour we learned whether we drowned or survived.\u00a0 I was Adolphe Saalfeld<\/a>, who embarked for New York with a case of perfume samples.\u00a0 I’m happy to say Adolphe survived, although his samples went down with the ship (and were eventually fished up by . . .\u00a0not to put too fine a point on it . . .\u00a0the grave robbers who put together the Titanic Artifact Exhibition).<\/p>\n

But I saw my survival coming the minute I studied the boarding pass and\u00a0learned that Adolphe was a first-class passenger.\u00a0 He probably knocked some second- or third-class female passenger on the head, swiped her robes and scarf, poured on some of his own perfume, and\u00a0disguised himself as a\u00a0damsel in order to get on one of the lifeboats\u00a0(dear Adolphe, if I slander your memory, it’s only because so many brave men did exactly that the night the Titanic went down).<\/p>\n

Of our\u00a0group, surprisingly, four of the six of us survived.\u00a0 Maybe the organizers of the exhibition stack the decks so that the experience isn’t too depressing to bear.\u00a0 Because otherwise it surely would have been.<\/p>\n

Driving back down I-10 to Tucson, an old campfire song kept going through my mind:<\/p>\n

Oh they built the ship Titanic,
\nTo sail the ocean blue,
\nAnd they thought they had a ship,
\nThat the water would never go through,
\nBut the Lord’s Almighty hand,
\nSaid that ship would never land,
\nIt was sad when that great ship went down.<\/p>\n

Chorus: <\/em>It was sad. It was sad.
\nIt was sad when the great ship went down,
\nTo the bottom of the,
\nHusbands and wives, little children lost their lives!
\nIt was sad when the great ship went down.<\/p>\n

They were off from England,
\nAnd not very far from shore,
\nWhen the rich refused,
\nTo associate with the poor.
\nSo they sent them down below,
\nWhere they’d be the first to go,
\nIt was sad when that great ship went down.<\/p>\n

Chorus<\/em><\/p>\n

The boat was about to sink,
\nAnd the sides about to burst,
\nWhen the captain shouted, “All
\nWomen and children first!”
\nOh, the captain tried to wire,
\nBut the wires was on fire,
\nIt was sad when the great ship went down.<\/p>\n

Chorus<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, they swung the lifeboats out,
\nO’er the deep and ragin’ sea,
\nWhen the band struck up with,
\n“Nearer My God to Thee.”
\nLittle children wept and cried,
\nAs the waves swept o’er the side,
\nIt was sad when the great ship went down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trail Trash drove to Phoenix yesterday to see the Titanic Artifact Exhibition at the Arizona Science Center.\u00a0 Which was eerie, sad, and fascinating.\u00a0 But was it the high point of the day? It was a high point, certainly.\u00a0 But so was being with friends.\u00a0 So was eating out with friends.\u00a0 And eat we did: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}