Odds and ends of the trip are still bouncing around in my head so I’ll have to empty them out on this keyboard. I looked in a mirror when we got home to see if the water I drank from the Fountain of Youth had had any effect. Unfortunately, the only change I could see was a little more flab jiggling on my neck. I think the guide there fibbed when he said he was 256 years old. That water didn’t even taste very good!
One of the last coffee stops we made was at Clear Lake, Iowa. Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Richie Valens died there in that plane crash “the day the music died” while they were en route to Moorhead, MN for a concert. I wonder how many times Waylon Jennings thought about it. He gave up his seat on the plane for one of the others who wasn’t feeling well.
In the visitor’s center at Stone Mountain we visited with one of the employees whom we learned to be a grandniece of Bill Langer. Our discussion reminded me of the book in our library THE DAKOTA MAVERICK authored by Agnes Geelan, and now I intend to reread it.
Plains, GA was not very big so we could not miss seeing Brother Billy Carter’s gas station where he and some of the good ole boys hung out. It doesn’t seem that long ago when television cameras focused on Billy and made him out to be a big buffoon. I wonder if he really was or was he just dumb like a fox? Loads of peanuts sat waiting to be unloaded just down the street. Across the street in a little country store we ate peanut flavored ice cream that was very good, and at the Carter farmsite we picked pecans off the ground and ate a few.
In St. Augustine at the Lightner Museum we saw a great collection of artifacts and antiques. One of the items I studied closely was a carved mirror frame hanging near the entrance. It was done by one of the recognized masters of woodcarving, Grinling Gibbons. A high-end art studio sat in one of the outer hallways. I thought it looked too uppity for me to even enter and look. The manager happened to have the door open and heard me express my misgivings. She said in a British accent, “Oh, bring your bloody wallet and get in here!” She was fun to visit with, but I didn’t dare touch anything. One of the paintings carried a $15,000 price tag. I think they went much higher than that. Her expected sales pitch, “Art has done much better than the stock market.”
One of the couples on our tour found themselves second-in-line to a bank robber. They stood in line behind some guy who handed over a bag to a teller and told her to put the money in it. The teller walked away and left the robber and the couple standing there. The would-be robber realized his bag would stay empty and took off. I don’t think our fellow travelers got their banking business done either. A few minutes later we saw cops all over the area. I wonder if they ever found the bad guy.
I think I can write the last line about our trip and shift my thoughts to other matters. We traveled with a busload of genial folks and saw a good deal of new country. I’m already looking forward to next year’s trip to the southwest. Mary sent the deposit in yesterday.
