The Adventures of Me & My Shadow #7 in FL,AL,MS,LA,TX,NM & AZ 01/05/98
Hi Everyone!, I hope you all survived the holidays in good shape, I know I did. In fact it turned out that I celebrated Christmas twice, once with Bill & Marilyn, Jack & Karen and Tori on the weekend before Christmas in Niceville, FL. Then again with my friends Bill & Jean Haws and their family in Houston, TX on Christmas day. Santa even found me over in Niceville, FL and gave me a shirt and some socks. Gus must have told him where I was, I know Gertrude wouldn't tell him. Gertrude gets mad when I don't let her navigate and she just don't have good maps except for the big cities so I let Gus do most of the navigating out on the highways. She likes to be in charge so to get even with me for not letting her do all the navigating, I believe she is controlling the weather. Every where I go the temperature falls to below normal. In Niceville on the 14th of Dec. the temp. was about 20 degrees colder than some places in North Dakota & South Dakota. For several days there we had frost in the morning and on the news they were talking about playing golf in Minneapolis, MN. I think Gertrude tried to drowned me when I was in Sarasota, FL but I got out and up to Niceville before the 10 inches she ordered fell. Then she must have ordered snow for Niceville but it fell in Mississippi. I found she had a map of Houston so when I left FL I put Gus in charge and figured I would let Gertrude take over when we got over into LA where her map with Houston on it started. Well she turned on some rain & fog all the way till I got to a rest area where I was going to turn it over to Gertrude, I needed some rest so slept awhile and when I awoke and put Gertrude in charge the weather improved right away. We did OK till we got to the place where she should have told me to exit I 10 and take I 12. But she didn't say that, she said to follow the signs to exit No (so & so) I don't remember the No., If I had done as she told me I would have been OK. Stupid me didn't do what she told me to do and by the time I figured out what she had said I was still on I 10 and that wasn't where she wanted me to be. So I looped down south through New Orleans. When I got a chance I put Gus in charge again and that really made her mad. I did put her in charge again before we got to Houston and I had no more trouble.
Had a real nice visit it Houston and learned something that I must pass on. For breakfast the first morning I cut one of those delicious grapefruits that Dick picked for me down in FL in half and asked Jean for the saran rap to put on the left over half. She got it out of the freezer and handed it to me, it tore like a paper, now I wish I could have learned this 30 years ago. It has always been a problem for me to tear saran rap. I also learned that the city fathers have their priorities all wrong, they spend all the money on fancy lamp poles and street signs and there is no money left to repair the street surface. It wasn't as bad as NY City or Charleston, SC but it left a lot to be desired, found out later that the uneven street surface could be because of the type of clay found there that expands an contracts according to the moisture content. I noticed the same conditions on I 45 going up to Dallas. I used Gus on the trip up to Dallas and just as we got to the city limits sign Gus told me to turn right. There was another sign there that pointed left and said "Airborne Museum" now I have never seen an Airborne Museum so I looked over there. I wondered how they would keep it air borne and if I would have to climb up a rope ladder to get up to it. I found out later that there is enough hot air in Texas to get a museum air borne. As I followed the instructions Gus was giving me He told me to turn left in 55 seconds and I looked ahead for the road and all I could see was a farm house with a driveway, I slowed down and looked as I went by and there it was, a narrow dirt road that looked like something I remembered from the 1930's in Nebraska. I made a U-turn through a cemetery just past the farm house and started up this dirt road. It was so rough that I had to slow to about 10 MPH. At this speed I figured It might be dark before I would get to Rod & Rosann's house, it was supposed to be up this road a little way. Me & My Shadow was bouncing and shaking so bad that I was afraid it would wake Gertrude up and then it would be hell to pay. Well I got to where Elno told me Rod's house would be and it wasn't there. I looked at the pointer on the map with Rod's address on it and it said Co. Road 149 and I was on Co. Road 249 so I turned around and went back down that rough road to look for CR 149. When I got back to the end of this road I decided to do some checking to see just where CR 149 was. When I rechecked the address on my address list I see that I had made a typo error and Rod's address was in fact on CR 249. I turned around again and headed up this terrible road and went about 3/4 mile further than where Elno said it was and there was this beautiful new home on this awful road. I went in, Rod came out to meet me and I jumped on him for living on such a rough road. It was then that I found out that Rod was the county commissioner responsible for the roads in this part of the county.
I also found out about all the hot air to lift that museum over by Dallas. I thought that the first thing you did when elected county commissioner was get the road paved past your house. Rod told me if that happened there would be a lynching and Rosann would be a widow. He told me there was no money in the pot to fix the roads (I suppose that the commissioners salaries use up all the money) and that the road was rough because of a lot of rain and the crews were off for the holidays. He also told me that he engineered inverted speed bumps in it to slow the traffic and to keep the rest of the county residents from raising too much hell about their roads. See where the hot air comes from? I had a lot of fun and enjoyed the visit and good chow till it was time to head for AZ.
Me and My Shadow headed west from Rod's as the sun was going down (I thought I would be out of Texas before the sun came up but I stopped too many times to rest so didn't make it. Before the sun came up the temp. had dropped down into the lower 20's. I'm sure Gertrude was responsible. Then when the sun did come up in western TX I saw some traces of snow hiding from the sun on the sides of the interstate. Saw some snow up on the higher mountains in New Mexico and Arizona. The first stop in AZ was at Mary Lou & Tom's Melody Ranch near Sonoita, AZ. They train horses and Tom is a singing cowboy (my kind of music). He has a recording studio at the ranch and he gave me 2 CDs of music to listen to as I drive. Had a nice visit and good chow before heading on to Tucson, AZ to have a short visit and some more good chow with Linda. Then it was on to Peoria, AZ where I will spend a few weeks with Mike, He has fixed me up with AC power and a phone jack so I'll be able to get on the net. He even made a car available to me. I sure can't beat that.
Till next time, Dallas, or Dad if it fits.

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