By Mary Ann Anderson

When it comes to travel tips, there is a list for just about everything. Best this. Best that. Worst this and worst that. And more and more lists and tips are popping up devoted strictly to technologic travel gizmos– phones, netbooks, apps, games – but sometimes you need plain old-fashioned travel tips. With the fall and holiday travel season flying into full mode soon, try these few tips for passport perfect smooth sailing.

The number one rule of travel is to ditch the heavy suitcase. Unless you’re riding at the front of the plane in those bigger, nicer seats that allow 70 pounds per bag, then you’re in last class where I sit and where we’re allowed only a miserly 50 pounds per bag.

First thing you should do is weigh your suitcase, as you may be surprised at how heavy it is. I bought a stylish set several years ago, but was astonished when I realized the largest piece, the one I travel with the most, was a hefty 15 pounds.  After deducting the 30 pounds or so for my super-duper high maintenance beauty and hair products, only 5 pounds were left for clothes and shoes. No, ma’am, that wouldn’t do at all.

After much shopping around and research, I traded in the Model-T behemoth for the snazzier and affordable Sausalito Superlights collection from Ricardo Beverly Hills (www.RicardoBeverlyHills.com). Named to National Geographic’s Ten Best of Everything, the Ricardo brand carries extremely lightweight luggage. The Sausalito Superlights is expandable and has a four-wheel spinner, and best of all the biggest 28-inch upright weighs less than 10 pounds, ideal for high maintenance heavyweights like me.

Always travel with an alarm clock and flashlight. Since I don’t own a watch, I’ve had a small battery-powered Timex Indiglo (www.TimexAudio.com) travel alarm clock for years that I bought on sale for a mere $5. Not all hotels have clocks, especially those overseas, and wake-up calls can be unpredictable. Plus, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in hotel power outages and have been grateful for my tiny travel flashlight. Now the Indiglo comes with a built-in flashlight, so for less than $20, you get both in one convenient battery-operated package. Without the extra weight of a separate flashlight, you can score yet another pound for more makeup if you’re a lady or Adam Lambert.

Too many times I’ve heard horror stories about liquids exploding in luggage. One friend related how a bottle of olive oil that she was bringing back from Italy burst open in her suitcase and ruined everything. For another friend, it was wine. A bottle of shampoo exploded in my carryon and the gooey mess actually dripped out of the overhead bin and onto my head. So, then, after that fiasco I learned to stuff plastic storage and grocery bags, like those you get at Piggly Wiggly or Wal-Mart, into the suitcase. Anything that can leak or spill, like shampoo or olive oil, goes into the bags. But you can use them for any number of things, including storing wet clothes, dirty socks, and other unmentionables.

An all-purpose small first-aid kit is good, too. Pack it with aspirin, bandages, sinus medicine, anti-itch cream, antibiotic ointment, and insect repellant. At least you’ll be prepared in case you’re attacked by a swarm of hungry mosquitoes, a grumpy orangutan, or if you fly, a cranky seatmate who apparently has yet to have his morning coffee. If you’re going into a foreign country, like Kenya, Mexico, or Newark and accidentally drink the water, an anti-diarrhea medicine can spare you much anguish and embarrassment caused by nasty water parasites.

Other items I put inside my checked luggage include a copy of my passport just in case I’m bopped on the head and my purse is stolen, a collapsible corkscrew when a bottle of wine is appropriate, and a sewing kit complete with safety pins because buttons pop off, seams rip, and sweaters unravel—and that’s just in a Lady Gaga video.

My purse is filled with packets of tissues, a Tide Stick, Shout wipes, and Wet Ones single use antibacterial wipes. Some smaller airports don’t have jetways, which means running for the plane in rain, so it’s a good idea to carry a small collapsible umbrella and rain poncho.

You’re more likely to spot George Clooney than a washcloth in a European hotel. Take one or two with you, and if it’s not dry by checkout time, stuff it into one of those handy plastic Piggly Wiggly bags you’ve brought along. Also pack a small roll of duct tape. Luggage handles and zippers break, and duct tape is a quick fix. And if you wear glasses, an eyeglasses repair kit is an essential item. Keep an older pair in your luggage in case of major breakage.

Ladies and Adam Lambert, this paragraph is just for you. Throw in a couple of pashminas, wraps, or scarves. They weigh practically nothing and can jazz up an outfit from casual to classy in two seconds flat. For those bad hair days, either a baseball cap or a soft collapsible hat works wonders to hide unmanageable locks.

If you travel overseas and become sick because of those parasites, get bitten by cobra, or trampled by an elephant, your health insurance probably won’t cover those costs. That’s why you need travel insurance. There are several excellent companies like TravelEx and On Call International.

Here’s the rundown of the invaluable coverage you can get for just a couple of hundred dollars. On Call International (www.OnCallInternational.com), for example, helps travelers and their families, including missionaries, students, faculty and others, more than 50 miles away from home in emergency situations. Their Global Response Center is available anytime, day or night, from anywhere in the world. Depending on your plan, they help with emergency medical services and evacuation, lost or stolen document, translation services, and lost luggage. Additionally, On Call International has a 24/7 nurse helpline staffed by U.S.-licensed nurses to provide medical advice.

One last thing. If you’re traveling to a Third World country where poverty abounds, take older clothes that you can leave behind. Believe me, they will go to good use. I once left a pair of shoes at a hotel in Uganda because I had accidentally stepped in rhino poo at a wildlife sanctuary. When I checked out of the hotel, I saw a young man taking them out of the trash and smiling as if he had stumbled upon a million dollars. When I started to protest that they were practically worthless, I was assured by the hotel clerk that someone desperately needed those ratty, smelly shoes and wouldn’t have to go barefoot any longer. That takes the adage of someone’s trash is someone’s treasure to an entirely new level.

SPECIAL FEATURE LENGTH  ARTICLE

By Kathy Witt

“A man told me, ‘They have the smartest people in the world out there in Oak Ridge, but there’s not a one of them who knows what it is that they’re doing.’”

One of Tennessee’s best-kept secrets is the aptly nicknamed “Secret City.” The town sprung up, seemingly overnight, in 1942 beneath the cloak of government classification on a 60,000-acre tract of land that would itself grow, seemingly overnight, into Tennessee’s fifth largest city: Oak Ridge.

In “Cooking Behind the Fence, Recipes and Recollections from the Oak Ridge ‘43 Club,” Dr. Lewis Preston (quoted above), an Army first lieutenant who chose going to Oak Ridge during World War II over going overseas, and others recall the early days of the mysterious metropolis that was home to the now historic Manhattan Project, a massive wartime effort which produced the world’s first atomic weapons.

Says Sue Wassom Thomas, a student when she arrived in Oak Ridge with her family, in her remembrance: “There were only three flattops on our street when I left for school one morning. When I came home from school that afternoon, there was a whole new neighborhood of flattops – finished, furnished and occupied.”

Deep, dark secrets

This once-secret city, with its natural, historic and family attractions, shopping and local foodie favorites like the Soup Kitchen, Golden Girls (“Yes, we have our own Blanche!”) and Big Ed’s Pizza, a boisterous dig-in-with-your-hands hang-out, now proclaims its presence from the top of its International Friendship Bell. The Friendship Bell, by the way, is the first monument between a U.S. Manhattan Project city and Japan and serves as an expression of hope for everlasting peace.

Museums abound, beginning with the American Museum of Science and Energy where you’ll discover how 75,000 people kept mum about a national secret. The museum interprets Oak Ridge’s role in World War II through exhibits that include Cold War/Civil Defense, Real Robots, a vortex simulator, science and technology careers work station. New to the museum is a flattop home, fully restored to its original “Secret City” floor plan and that may be toured. (Note: The home was closed for repairs due to damage in the excessive rains of July but is due to reopen in September.)

The flattop model was one of five home designs, designated “A” through “F” according to size, which included central heat, porches and fireplaces, and assigned primarily according to family size. Three thousand cemesto houses, which took two hours each to build, were completed at the rate of one every thirty minutes.

This particular house, a “B-1” two-bedroom flattop design, it has a mere 576 square feet of living space and has been preserved with its original built-in furnishings, including desks. Visitors to the home will literally be walking across historic floorboards and will learn about the families who arrived in Oak Ridge more than a half century ago to build a life in a city that wasn’t named on any maps at that time.

At the Historic Graphite Reactor, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (formerly X-10), visitors will see the world’s oldest nuclear reactor built as part of the Manhattan Project.

“I wasn’t sure how a light bulb worked when I got here,” recalled the late Graydon (Grady) Whitman who arrived in Oak Ridge in March, 1944, at the age of 23 to work at the Y-12 National Security Complex, built to separate the uranium 235 isotope from natural uranium. The former volunteer interpreter with the Oak Ridge Visitor Center loved to share his experience: “I was flung into one of the control rooms and told to manage it. I grew up very quickly.”

Visitors can board the Secret City excursion train, a.k.a., the Atomic Train – restored to the 1940s era of passenger railroading – on a one-hour, 14-mile tour that departs from the Heritage Center, formerly the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, whose artifacts include wooden crates with spare parts and some vintage instruments. A model of the reactor lets visitors insert mock fuel rods and measure the increasing levels of “radioactivity” as the model reactor goes “critical.” The northern portion of the excursion route was featured in the 1999 biography/drama, “October Sky.”

 On a lighter note

In spite of its former secret and serious mission, this town knows how to play. The Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge is a whole school of fun with 12 interactive exhibit areas that intertwine the arts, history, science and the environment in non-traditional exhibit galleries. Within the 54,000 square feet of this original Manhattan Project schoolhouse, children can dig coal in an Appalachian mine, pound the percussion in the music room, shoot boats down the waterways through the locks and stop to smell the bromeliads in the rainforest.

Dolls from all over the world are displayed throughout the museum: colorful souvenir dolls from Brazil, Native American dolls in traditional dress, life-size puppets and others. In International Hall, the smooth wooden Japanese Kokeshi dolls, an 80-piece collection donated to the museum by the Smithsonian Institute in 1974, are a handle-with-care item. In the Doll House room, two fun collections hark back to earlier times with “Your Grandma’s Dolls” and “Your Great-Grandma’s Dolls.”

The big attraction here is a trim two-story pink house that children as tall as five feet high can comfortably fit in and through. Big squashy chairs invite kids to come sit a spell and no one can resist peeking into the refrigerator or climbing the stairs to the second floor.

Other Oak Ridge attractions: the Oak Ridge Art Center where you can explore works by contemporary international artists; the Oak Ridge Playhouse, one of the oldest continually operating community theaters in the country, for exceptional productions (past shows have included “Grease” and “The Pajama Game”; and Historic Jackson Square/Greenwich Village where you can while away the hours browsing the shops. This was the original town site of Oak Ridge, built during the Manhattan Project years, and now features unique shopping and dining, showy gardens and historic displays.

In the 1940s, homesteads were flung up faster than residents could find their way home at the end of a work day to create a community. Although these “cemestos,” a cement and asbestos combo, were supposed to last just seven years, many of them are still lived in today and it is fun to take a driving tour through the neighborhood and see these petite “alphabet” houses.

“I recall the feel of the house, the newness, the warmth of body and spirit,” recalled Katherine Bolling in Cooking Behind the Fence, who arrived in Oak Ridge with her husband and young daughter on a cold, snowy day in 1941. “I could sense that coming to Oak Ridge had been a good decision.”

Visitors will likewise feel good about coming to this historic once-secret city.

If You Go

The cookbook, Cooking Behind the Fence: Recipes and Recollections from the Oak Ridge ’43 Club, was published by the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association. Contact them to purchase a copy: P.O. Box 5825, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, 865-481-0542.

Lodging options include the Hampton Inn, 800-426-7876 http://hamptoninn.hilton.com, and the DoubleTree Inn, 800-222-8733, http://doubletree1.hilton.com, as well as several other chain hotels and a number of campgrounds and marinas in Anderson County.

Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau, 800-887-3429, www.oakridgevisitor.com

Photo: flattop Bedroom; credit: American Museum of Science and Energy