Long Day's Journey into Night

WHAT?!?!?!  

No school on Friday or Monday for President's Day weekend?!

No basketball games scheduled for either of the boys?!  

AND... Port Chicago is now taking reservations for tours since the military base is not conducting any operations for the time being?! (More on that in the next post)

Yippee!  Road trip!  Road Trip!  R-O-A-D  T-R-I-P!

So, we were up early on this Friday the 13th to get started on our journey up to the Bay Area. Our destination was Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site for the 2:00PM tour.  

Because the home of Nobel laureate and four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill is located at the end of a private drive in a gated community, visitors are only allowed to arrive via a National Park Service shuttle. Reservations are required for the ranger-led tour.

Tao House

The lion sits at the bottom of the stairs
to protect the home

Even though the exterior appears more Spanish, with adobe-like blocks and a tile roof, the home was named Tao House because of O'Neill's interest in Eastern thought and his wife Carlotta's passion for Oriental art/decor. Although most of what we saw was not original to the house, there were a few pieces that did belong to the O'Neills.

While residing here, O'Neill wrote his most notable works

The house backs to the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness, which was vibrant
green from the recent rains.

I must confess that I did not know much about Eugene O'Neill before our visit. I had heard of some of his plays, such as Long Day's Journey Into Night, but really had no clue what they were about. I even rented the movie adaptation of The Iceman Cometh (with Lee Marvin, Sorrell Booke (aka Boss Hogg), and a very young Jeff Bridges) as pre-trip "homework", but everyone had lost interest by the first intermission. Character development without any accompanying action is just too much to ask of us to appreciate!

Given how enthusiastic the boys were about the DVD (not!), I was hoping they wouldn't be too bored with the tour of the home. Afterwards, I was pleasantly to surprised to hear that they found the ranger's talk on Eugene O'Neill interesting. I'm guessing that they paid attention because she told stories about how much of a messed-up guy O'Neill was (his family, too!) and how he drew from that to write. Most memorable for M and J, though, was pushing buttons throughout the house (literally!) - the ones the O'Neills used to summon the household help.

Once the shuttle brought us back to our van, we headed to San Rafael for dinner. Ugh, Friday afternoon, holiday weekend traffic. And why would we subject ourselves to Friday afternoon, holiday weekend, pay-$5-to-cross-a-bridge-over-the-bay, traffic? Because when your picky-eater watches "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" and says "I want to try that!" - YOU GO!

Clockwise:  matzo ball soup, latke delight with corned beef and pastrami,
more latkes, and a Monte Cristo