Have you ever opened your
big mouth and wished you hadn’t? Well…yes, but only in retrospect.
I think it was December of
1989. A bunch of us were eating lunch together at work. Ray was telling us
about how he raised and supplied the dressed quail for the gourmet meals served
on this casino cruise ship out of Jeckyll
Island , Georgia
Ray got free tickets, Sandra
offered to drive their motorhome, and the six of us made plans to go the
following Saturday. The Christmas tour was happening on Jeckyll Island Brunswick
Four of us, Sandra, Shirley,
Jim and I, pulled out of Sandra’s driveway in Gainesville
At Ray’s house we got the
grand tour of the quail operation, and then Cheryl, his wife, had to show us
her angel-making pottery studio. I admit she did beautiful work, but I was
getting antsy about the time. Finally, we all piled back into the motorhome and
sped up 301. Cheryl found a deck of cards and four of us sharpened up our poker
skills as Sandra headed to Georgia
We arrived in plenty of
time, and since dusk was falling, we decided to look at the Christmas lights on
Jekyll Island
We waited, and watched the
time tick by as traffic curled around us. Finally, someone from AAA came and
took Ray to pick up a rental car in hopes that we could still make our 7
o’clock deadline. It didn’t take long and Ray was back with a…tiny little compact
mini something, the only thing the car agency had left. How in the world were
we all going to fit into that? Not easily.
By now it was pouring rain
and we still had to find the dock. Ray insisted he knew exactly where it was.
He reversed direction through the crowded streets and soon came onto a main
highway. I was scrunched in a corner of the backseat and watched out the
steamed-up window as Ray swerved between orange construction barrels. They
marked a narrow lane to our progress. We came to the business section and off
to the right I could see the water. I thought yes, Ray knows what he’s talking about. Then I realized we were
going the wrong way on a one-way street. I think I shouted something remarkable
like “We’re going the wrong way.” Ray was not fazed and quickly righted our
direction, but now we were going away from the water instead of toward it.
In the end after many twists
and turns trickier than Algernon’s maze, we found the dock, but the beckoning
lights of the Emerald Princess were bobbing on the horizon off in the distance.
There would be no quail and no poker this night.
Our disappointment was
quickly replaced by hunger pangs. The immediate task now was to find our motel,
the La Quinta Inn, and hopefully, it would have a nice restaurant. We were
travelling down the line of orange barrels again with the squeaking windshield
wipers about to fly off their hinges. In desperation, Ray pulled into a gas
station and asked for directions. Following the attendant’s excellent advice,
we soon arrived at the motel and went in to register. They had some kind of
trouble with my credit card and had to put it through several times, but
finally we all had our key cards and trouped up to our rooms to freshen up
before dinner.
After Jim opened our door, I
stretched out on the bed in complete exhaustion from all the stress of the
drive. I moved around trying to get comfortable and smelled a strong pet odor
from the bed covering. The sign in the lobby had said “pet friendly.” This trip
was going downhill by the minute. Jim phoned the desk and asked if someone
could bring new bed linens. After cleaning ourselves up a little, we joined the
others in search of food. By the time we got back, we supposed everything would
be new and fresh.
We all met at the front desk
and were told about a nice seafood restaurant within walking distance. Even
though it was still drizzling, it was better than getting back into that
phantom of an automobile. It wasn’t far and we found the food and service to be
tolerable. We all felt a lot better after our hunger pains subsided. The rain
had stopped when we left the restaurant so we walked around a bit before going
back to La Quinta.
Our room was in the same
shape we had left it, still smelly. Jim called again and was assured someone would
be right up with new bed linens. I yanked the comforter off and threw it out in
the hallway, a big improvement almost immediately. The top sheet had to go too.
Now we were coverless and chilly with nothing to do but wait. No one ever came
and we finally fell asleep covered up with towels.
In the morning Sandra
contacted AAA and we were directed to the garage that had the motorhome. There
we were informed it had a faulty fuel pump and, no, they didn’t have one. It
would need to be ordered. In the meantime the mechanic would fiddle with the
old one and see if he could fix it. He thought the problem had occurred when
the main gas tank had switched over to the auxiliary tank. Plugged into the
garage’s electric, we relaxed in the motorhome, made some coffee, and discussed
options.
Shirley’s husband was due to
fly into Jacksonville that morning from a
business trip to Dallas
The ride home was uneventful
except for one stop we made near Baldwin . Ray
expressed his desire to look at the hundreds of lighted wire-shaped reindeer
and Santa Clauses peppering a field near a roadside market. He already had a
few of the yard ornaments and wanted more so the rest of the way I rode
nose-to-nose with Rudolph.
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