Are We There Yet? Please?

Only last night when we recorded that very Hucklebug podcast, Stennie and I were having a small discussion (thanks to Michelle the Dishy) about weather. Not your general, "How's the weather," as my mom would speak about for hours, but more specifically, "What's the worst weather you've ever been in?" I named three pretty bad weather conditions I'd endured, nothing spectacular to tell, and left it at that.

After the discussion was over and we'd gone on to other things, I thought of another. I didn't interrupt proceedings to mention it, it probably didn't merit such a thing, and may not merit a blog either, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. It's one of those "you had to be there" stories, for I'm not sure any amount of flowery language could describe it to give you the full picture.

But as I said, I'll try.

It all happened about 17 years ago. I know this because the Dear Nephew was but a toddler. An incredibly cute toddler, but we won't go into that, for that's not so easily described, either. My brother-in-law was working at the time as office manager, comptroller, accountant, and general dogsbody for a car dealership, a very lucrative employment indeed. And his job called for him to travel to Washington, DC to pick up a vehicle.

Now, this wasn't really a "go to a car lot and pick up a brand new Lincoln Continental" type of thing. I wouldn't call it a repo, but that's kind of what it was. To me, "repo" says, "We're going to sneak in at 1am to steal a man's car." This man was giving up his car voluntarily. He couldn't pay for it, knew he couldn't pay for it, and finally said, "I give. Really, I give. Give it to you, here it is." And so the plan was such: The brother-in-law was to drive down in a new car from his dealership that he'd deliver to some corporation in DC, pick up the giveaway car, and come back home. And DC is a pretty fun place, and hey, if anything, we're a family that loves to travel, and so we decided to pack the B-in-L, my sister, the Dear Nephew, and myself into the car and spend an "on the company" weekend in DC.

Sounds fun, right?

Lord have mercy, you're gullible. Well, I guess we were just as gullible, too.

We climbed into a very nice gray sedan, complete with new car smell, and headed northeast. The stereo played good tunes, we zipped along, made it to DC, walked around the city, ate at nice restaurants, and had a fine time. Then Sunday came, the B-in-L got the address of the giveaway car, and we went to pick it up, drop off the nice gray sedan, and head home.

When we got to the guy's house and saw the car, well, we knew the style in which we'd become accustomed to living was about to come to as dead a halt as was humanly possible. The giveaway car was a Ford Fairmont. Now, they stopped making the Fairmont in 1983, I think, so this wasn't a new car we were driving away. It would have been at least seven years old, and boy, had it seen a lot of living in its tender at least seven years. It was what we call around here (though of course I'd never use such a vulgar term) "baby shit yellow," had four doors, a radio, no air conditioning, and other features as well.

Features like.... Well, let's just say that when a guy says, "I give," and relinquishes all rights to his vehicle, I don't guess he cares that much about sprucing the damn thing up a little before he does so. This car was a trash heap and no mistake. I mean, think of your local vast landfills. Take all that trash you're imagining before you and load it into a four-door Ford Fairmont. And guess what. It's still not enough trash. There was not a surface of this car, dash, seats, floor, that you could actually see. It was all covered in stuff. Trash, to be precise. Papers, year-old magazines, paper bags, food wrappers, you name it, it was in there. You didn't name it, it was still in there.

Now, to your normal adult, trash is a pretty icky proposition, and believe me, the three adults who were about to enter this vehicle and make a six-hour trip were all but creeped out within an inch of their lives. To a toddler, however. To a toddler this is a playground, a wonderland of happiness, and every time the Dear Nephew was allowed out of his car seat for a few minutes at a stop, he'd immediately hit this trashy floor and go exploring. He found what, well, what to that particular point of the trip, was the find of the day. A Dairy Queen sundae cup that had about three years previously held a chocolate sundae. The red plastic spoon was stuck in with the dried chocolate, not to be removed, not even with a hand grenade.

And then, it happened. Well, not it, for it happened later. But it happened. About two hours into our trip, on I-66 in the middle of nowhere, we ran into a thunderstorm of biblical proportions. Yep, we were riding along in our non-air conditioned Fairmont in 85 degree weather, and it began to rain. Hard. Big fat drops of rain that forced us to roll up our manually-rolled windows, sealing us in and amongst all that trash. And the sundae cup. Then the wind began to howl, sliding us this way and that, and then the lightning started. I swear to you, Cecil B DeMille couldn't conjure up any better lightning that what was flicking around our car. Cracks of thunder. Crying toddler. It was a nightmare, and the only thing I could think of to do was take the Dear Nephew's blankie, duck down below my seat into the paper bags and food wrappers, and hide. You know, every Saturday in October as we're heading up the mountain in our German gear, Mr M makes the same statement. "One of my greatest fears is that we'll wreck, and die in this car dressed like this." Well, I certainly didn't want to die by lightning bolt there in a baby shit yellow Ford Fairmont heaped with more trash than the landfill could hold.

The worst of it all, well, I know you're thinking, "How could it be worse," but it could, is that we couldn't outrun this storm. It was following us, like the Black Cloud of Doom that it was. We must have been in that storm for an hour before it finally subsided.

But finally the clouds parted, I think we saw God up there between them laughing and waving, and we got on with our trip.

Which should be the end of the story, but it isn't.

Because then it happened.

We were driving along, windows rolled back down, and suddenly the B-in-L had a panicked thought. "You know, I hope there's a registration or something in this car. I don't have anything with me to explain a thing about the ownership of this turdmobile." (Yes, it had garnered a name, well, actually named itself, during the trip.) "Look in the glove compartment and see if there's anything in there."

Dumb statement. Of course there was going to be something in there - trash! And there was, but my poor sister couldn't even have imagined what else she was about to find.

In there with all the bills and papers and napkins and straws and little packets of mustard and ketchup, she found - a set of false teeth. Not in a box or bag, just hidden in there. Uppers and lowers, the full set.

I've always trusted the B-in-L's driving, and probably for this very reason. For we all lost it in waves of hilarious laughter so badly, I don't know how he kept us on the road and out of the Arms of Death, but somehow he did.

It became quite the family joke. For years after, those teeth would show up when least expected. At a family gathering, someone would sneak into a bedroom and put them under someone's pillow. Then that person would one day stick them in the cabinet of someone else's kitchen. Or stick them in a shoe in the closet. They were given as birthday gifts, stuck in the bottom of Christmas stockings, and hidden in bouquets of flowers.

Then, they were gone. I guess someone must have given them to a person outside the family, and we never got them back. I hope whoever they were given to continued the tradition of passing them along.

Something that good just shouldn't be kept to yourself.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have - oh, wait, we don't have. No acro yesterday because of my lack of acrotime. Sorry, couldn't be helped. However!
* However, I have a very special treat for you, courtesy of Flipsycab. Flipsy, photographer that she is, saw a sign yesterday that got her thinking about Picture Sunday and signs I'd taken pictures of. Only this one was better than all of mine put together.





















Now, what was Mr M doing in California? Well, vandalizing stop signs, I suppose.