November 5, 1998

After the poetry festival ended, a major toll road called the Garden State Parkway routed me all the way down to Cape May in the southeast corner of New Jersey, against Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Coast. Unlike driving in the Southwest, cruising along in the slow lane at 65 miles an hour, New England states don't last long. About the same amount of time, in fact, a fast driver takes to cross a county in New Mexico.

Money goes fast, too. Toll fees took a sandwich sack loaded with quarters and dimes. The short delay by the toll window, however, was worth the fee just to unfreeze my fingers from the steering wheel. The toll lane also offered the only refuge from being sideswiped by a Volkswagon or clipped by a Trans Am. But as soon as the red light above the control arm changed to green, the cars raced from the stall the way a roping horse charges a barrier.

The bed and breakfast place I booked claimed to be 30 minutes from Cape May, but turned out to be about 35 miles in distance and about an hour in time after the rush hour ended.

"Abraham Lincoln," the same brochure said, "stayed in the room as a young lawyer." He tried law cases in a town close by called "Cape May Courthouse." The farmer who built the house took in roomers. He and Mr. Lincoln, I suspect, sat in front of the fireplace and talked politics while the farmer's wife did the supper dishes and made up the beds.

I pulled a rocking chair up within the space I figured necessary for his long legs to reach the hearth. Pressed my fingers together to under my chin, rested the heels of my hands on my chest and closed my eyes to imagine being Honest Abe, the young lawyer from Illinois. Drawing up my hindlegs to rock a bit, I imitated a few rolls of "four score and ten" to hit the right beat. I tried and failed to visualize where a candidate named Honest Abe; or for that matter, Honest Alice might fit in today's political scheme.

Cape May looked as if all the Victorian houses on the Coast had moved to town. Every street is lined in two and three-story gingerbread houses, painted in striking tri-color décor, and surrounded by heavy spiked black iron fences. Strict zoning preserves the aura of the past. On any block, carpenters and painters work at tedious restoration of porch rails and framing blue and yellow stained glass windows, or hanging screen doors decorated in the wooden curlicues of the era.

A lady in an art gallery said old money kept the town under control. None of the excesses of the resort towns is permitted; newcomers of 10 years' residence or less are expected to behave as Victorian as the architecture. Bottles wrapped in brown paper sacks rested on the restaurant tables. Liquor licenses are exorbitant in New Jersey, so blue or red nose laws are easy to enforce, whether by tradition or economic reality.

The population of Cape May varies day to day from checkout to checkin time at the inns and hotels. About every other lot is a bed and breakfast place. I moved to town after discovering how much driving it took to rent Abe Lincoln's room. (Please don't confuse this with the room the Clintons rent in the White House.)

Before I register in a bed and breakfast, I look the room over. If the bed is covered with rag dolls and stuffed animals, I check the shower pressure and run the hot water hydrant to see whether the landlord is using the dolls and teddy bears to divert from serious plumbing defects. (Strange, since children are unwelcome, that bed and breakfast operators can have a fetish about decorating a room like a nursery.) Bowls of perfumed potpourri may mean a chicken processing plant is upwind; bail bondsmen, low class bars and pawn shops are good clues how to judge security.

Cape May brought out my finest skills of fooling around, taking walks and reading books in outdoor restaurants. Ferry schedules worked right to cross the Bay to nap in a bobbing deck chair. Marked paths led down to walks along the beach for kicking chips of driftwood and turning over shells in the wake of the lowering tides of the ocean. Verdant wetlands held such spectacular sights as a flight of swans, flushing from a big clump of reeds to bank and circle, then land back on the same pond in a whirring of wing beats strong as a diminishing air brake.

Abe Lincoln hadn't stayed at the new place. But I think he'd have been better satisfied in a room closer to the courthouse …