A Rip Roaring Good Time Read online

  Even though I was basically talking to myself, I continued. "But I guess the GPS gadget was your anniversary gift, and if you like the over-priced toy, so be it. If you splurged this much for our forty-ninth, how much do you intend to blow on our upcoming golden anniversary?"

  "Fiftieth anniversaries are rare these days, sweetheart. For that matter, marriages in general are rare these days. Stone and Lexie got me thinking about you and me taking a special vacation to celebrate the big occasion," Rip said. Funny how his hearing problem cleared up when the topic veered toward something he was interested in.

  "But we're basically on vacation 24/7 now. We've been all over the country already. Where could we go that would be special? You know I don't trust airplanes as far as I can throw up in them. And I wouldn't feel safe on any foreign soil in this day and age. That old adage, there's no place like home, is especially true now. Because in so many other countries you'd have a target on your back and be lucky you weren't blown to smithereens when you stepped off the plane onto the tarmac. I don't understand why we all can't just get along. Live and let be, I've always said." I loved the open road, but the friendly skies were a whole different ball of wax.

  "I agree wholeheartedly with you about traveling outside the good ol' USA right now, with turmoil and havoc taking place all around the globe," Rip said. "But we can't let the threat of terrorism keep us from living our lives to the fullest and doing the things we enjoy. If we do, the cowards win! For all we know, there could be a sleeper cell of extremists planning an attack right here in Rockdale, as we speak. But even so, the chances of being taken out by a terrorist are still relatively remote."

  "You're absolutely right, Rip! I'm more apt to get killed in the H.E.B parking lot than I am by a suicide bomber. It's like negotiating your way through a mine field sometimes. I can't tell you how many times, while loading groceries in the truck, I've nearly been mowed down by stressed-out soccer moms chauffeuring a dozen kids around in their SUV's, fifteen-year old boys with brand new learner's permits, and even senile old ladies with glaucoma in one eye and macular degeneration in the other."

  I might as well have been talking to the air conditioner vent for all the attention Rip was paying to me. He tended to have a one-track mind, so I listened as Rip continued expressing his plans for our anniversary trip.

  "I was thinking about driving up to Alaska. We could take our time and enjoy all the sights along the way. We've never been there and I've heard the state is incredibly beautiful and full of fascinating things to see and do. I've always wanted to see the glaciers and perhaps spend a few days panning for gold."

  "It does sound like a fun adventure. I'd like to see a dog sled team in action and go on a wildlife tour to see critters like moose, caribou, bears and bald eagles. But wouldn't a trip like that be expensive?" I asked.

  "It wouldn't be cheap, by any means. It's a long trip up the Alaskan Highway, for sure. Almost fourteen-hundred miles, in fact. We'd pay a small fortune on gas and most likely have to replace a few tires on the journey, but we can afford it. A milestone anniversary like our fiftieth deserves an extra special celebration. You know, we only live once, and we can't take it with us. I've never seen a Brinks truck following a hearse, have you?"

  "But I want to leave Regina taken care of," I argued.

  "Reggie's financially sound. She married a very industrious guy and they're making boatloads of cash. In fact, she's got more resources and investments than we do. There's no reason for us to sit on our money like old hens. Besides, what would you opt for instead? A new eggbeater? You've got to admit, my dear, a trip to Alaska would be a far sight more exciting than that hard rubber spatula you bought yourself for our last anniversary."

  We were well beyond buying each other presents. After he'd gifted me with a new weed-eater on Christmas years ago, and I'd given him a set of Corelle dishes that bounced when you dropped them, we decided we might as well start buying our own gifts. At least we'd be guaranteed to like the presents we exchanged.

  "The handle broke on my old spatula and left me with only a metal one to use," I replied in my defense. "And you know metal is like kryptonite to a Teflon skillet. I sure don't want to be shelling out twenty bucks on a new skillet, too."

  "Who do you think you're kidding, sweetheart? I was with you when you paid seventy-five cents for that skillet at a flea market. It didn't have much Teflon left on it then, and has even less now," Rip said with a chuckle. "I watched you break the handle off that crusty old spatula trying to scrape burnt cheese off the bottom of that crusty old skillet. I realize we aren't loaded, honey, but we can surely upgrade a notch or two above 'crusty' at this stage in our lives."

  Rip was right, but as long as the skillet was still at least somewhat functional, I wasn't going to waste hard-earned money on a new one. He often accused me of being a tightwad, but I like to think of it as being financially responsible. My family was dirt poor when I was a child, and early on I knew I never wanted to go to bed hungry again, so I try not to throw money away unnecessarily.

  As Rip set the cruise control at seventy on the pickup, I settled into my seat for the day's ride. I was looking forward to seeing Lexie, Stone, and Wendy again. The near-death experience the three of us had experienced had formed a strong bond between us, and attending Wendy's surprise thirtieth birthday party sounded really fun as well.

  The rhythmic movement of our Chevy truck as we traveled down the interstate lulled me into a peaceful trance. I found myself daydreaming about what the next ten days would entail. I couldn't get past the feeling that an unexpected chain of events, such as a ripple effect, had been set into motion.

  Chapter 2

  "Are you ready to pull over and have a bite to eat?" Rip asked. He was rubbing his hip with his right hand as he drove with his left. "It's about Dolly's lunch time."

  Our lives usually revolved around the four-times-per-day eating schedule of the chubby six-year-old grey and white tabby we traveled with. Being this cat's servants was pretty much a thankless job, but we adored her nonetheless. She always rode in the trailer when we were on the road. Otherwise, we'd be driven insane by Dolly's screeching and squalling as she plastered herself against the window trying to persuade people in passing vehicles to save her from such an injustice.

  Although it's not recommended, I'd ridden in the trailer with her one time when I felt under the weather. For some odd reason, traveling in the trailer didn't affect her at all. She had curled up in the middle of the sofa and slept peacefully all day. I was convinced it was just a power play on Dolly's part; a reminder of who called the shots in our household.

  "Yes, it's time for her majesty's twelve o'clock feeding," I said in response to Rip's remark. "You probably need to get up and move around a bit anyway. You can stretch your legs while I make us each a sandwich. We still have some leftover ham we need to use up before it turns green and fuzzy. As it is, it's taken on a slimy appearance and I've had to cut out a couple of areas that looked past their prime."

  "Man, does that sound appetizing! My mouth's salivating just thinking about it. In the future, could you please refrain from describing the condition of my lunch quite so vividly? 'Leftover ham' is all I really needed to know," Rip said with a sigh. "Can we have a few chips with our sandwich, you know, just in case I can't choke down the decaying ham? Why didn't you pick up some fresh lunchmeat at the store yesterday?"

  "Have you seen the price of meat these days? Ain't no sense wasting perfectly good ham when there are people going to bed hungry all over the world. It would be a crying shame to throw out edible food while other less fortunate people are starving."

  "Okay! Okay! I give up. I'm not sure I'd call it 'perfectly good ham,' but I'm almost willing to go to bed hungry myself just so I wouldn't have to eat it." My husband could be quite frivolous with money when it came to groceries. I never understood his willingness to toss out food just because it was a few days past its expiration date. I've seen homeless folks digging through dumpsters who
would be thrilled to happen upon the food he'd so casually thrown away.

  "We are not homeless! If we get to the point we can't afford lunchmeat, I'll get a job sacking groceries," Rip would say when I brought this to his attention.

  I admit I'm tight-fisted. Growing up, my family had been forced to scratch you-know-what with the chickens just to get by. Money was hard to come by, and my pappy couldn't keep a job to save his soul, and that's if mama could get him to look for one in the first place. It wasn't that he wasn't a hard worker, because he could work circles around men half his age. But if a hankering for something more enticing came along, such as an afternoon of fishing down on the creek bed, or perhaps a day spent bellied up to the bar in some dingy watering hole in town, my pappy would indulge himself and end up jobless more often than not.

  When I married Clyde right out of high school, we were both just eighteen. I vowed to be responsible as possible with whatever money we were able to scrounge up. I never wanted to find myself down and out again, forced to live on handouts and the good will of others.

  Like me, my dear momma loved my pappy unconditionally and never complained. She'd worked until her hands bled; doing anything she could to make money. She washed and mended other folks' clothes, cleaned out barns, and even stooped to begging on the street whenever we'd hit rock bottom, which was a frequent occurrence. Momma had done whatever it took to see that my siblings and I got an education. I was the youngest of five kids, and my mother passed away just after I got my high school diploma and my new husband all in the same week.

  But even though I am financially conservative, I'm not cold-hearted or ungrateful. Since we had depended on the generosity of others to help us scrape by at times, I did my best to pay it forward. I donated money at least once a month to homeless shelters and food missions to help the needy scrape by, as we'd often needed help to do. We volunteered to work at the food missions frequently as well. However, helping the less fortunate was my only extravagance, if it could even be called that.

  Traveling down the interstate a couple of hours later, Rip said, "Kearney is only about fifteen miles ahead. Do you want to pull over in a state park, or stay over in a discount store's parking lot to save a few bucks? I'd vote to splurge and stay in that nice Good Sam campground south of town along the Platte River."

  "I think we can splurge for one night since we'll be spending the next week or so at Stone and Lexie's bed and breakfast," I replied. "Not to mention, we stashed away a nice wad of money helping the Harringtons out the last month and a half. If I remember right, this park on the river also has a nice pool. We could both use the exercise."

  As "workampers", we'd made six hundred bucks, as well as getting a free RV site, at my cousin and her husband's Cozy Camping RV Park in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We'd kept the shower houses clean, and during the annual Frontier Days, we'd also bagged cubes from their ice machine and sold the bags of ice to campers. Cheyenne Frontier Days was the largest outdoor rodeo in the world, and the campground had been filled up to the gills with campers.

  The annual rodeo was held in late July during the heat of the summer. Bags of ice sold faster than the Harringtons' machine could make it, and they often had to pay a local company to deliver extra ice just to keep up with the demand. As my cousin, Emily, told me, there were only two seasons in Wyoming - winter and July - and she wasn't exaggerating all that much. But summer to folks in Wyoming is subjective. In comparison, the hot and humid summers in south Texas would be akin to hell on earth.

  As full-time RVers, when we weren't working for free rent at campgrounds, we often "dry-camped" to save money. Before leaving a park with full-hookups, we'd empty our grey-and-black-water tanks, and fill our fresh water tank. Along with our generator, we could camp without hookups for several days, which usually saved us at least a hundred bucks in campground fees.

  We'd also utilize state and city parks, which were normally cheap, or even free, but where campers were often only allowed to stay a limited amount of time. Occasionally we spent the night in parking lots, where permitted, but it was always a special treat to stay in a fully-appointed RV Park.

  We generally opted for Good Sam Parks where the campgrounds had to maintain high standards to maintain their Good Sam status. We carried one of their catalogs in our truck, which made finding a nice campground much easier. More importantly, we received a ten percent discount with our Good Sam card. We usually looked for campgrounds with swimming pools as well. We both enjoyed swimming for exercise, and with Rip's bad hip, swimming helped alleviate the pain of bone grinding against bone.

  "By the way, Rip, when are you going to have that hip looked at? Are you planning to wait until you have to crawl to the bathroom just to take a leak?" I asked my reluctant partner. Like a lot of men, he avoided doctors like the plague. I'm sure he was afraid they'd find something dreadfully wrong with him that he didn't care to know about, or that, God forbid, required surgery or unpleasant treatment of any kind. "You know as well as I do that you need a hip replacement. It's not going to get any better on its own and eventually hip replacement is going to be inevitable anyway, you stubborn mule."

  "Yeah, well, until it's absolutely necessary, I'm not going to allow anyone to cut on me like a butchered hog. In the meantime, I get along just fine with my trusty cane. So get off my case about seeing a doctor, sweetheart. In the meantime, help me watch for the right exit."

  I knew he was changing the subject to avoid a good old-fashioned nagging episode by me. It's not like he hadn't heard my "your stupid stubbornness is going come back and bite you in the rear end" speech so many times before that he could probably recite it himself. So, instead of reiterating it, I responded to his request. "I thought that's why you bought that high-faluting GPS thingy? Ain't it supposed to tell you every move to make? Does it tell you when to pull over in a rest stop to pee, or do you have to figure that out all by yourself?"

  Rip's selective hearing had been reactivated, so I just slipped on my bifocals that had been hanging from around my neck on an old shoestring I'd fashioned to hold them and began to read the road signs as they whizzed by. Within forty-five minutes, we were sitting in folding lawn chairs on the patio of our full-hookup RV site. Rip had leveled the trailer, attached the hoses and cords, and hooked up the cable TV, while I fixed us each our favorite drink. At the end of a long day on the road, we each always allowed ourselves a single highball, albeit the one allotted mixed drink was served in quart canning jars.

  We didn't want to get staggering sloshed, but we did want enough alcohol to help us unwind and relax. My drink of choice was a tequila sunrise while Rip preferred a "Douchebag"—a cocktail containing four ounces of Crown Royal and such a tiny splash of Coke that a twenty-ounce bottle was a lifetime supply. In fact, I have a suspicion that the minute amount of Coke is added just so he can refer to the drink as a cocktail and not just four straight-up shots of pure whiskey. To test out my theory, I once served his Douchebag without the Coke and, sure enough, he hadn't even noticed it was missing.

  It was warm and muggy in Nebraska that afternoon. It was the kind of heat and humidity that zapped your energy within minutes. Given the weather, my tequila sunrise was particularly refreshing. When I set the full jars of our iced cocktails on a small folding table we carried in the under-belly storage compartment, the sweat rolled off them like an NFL linebacker at training camp.

  Fortunately, there was a nice breeze, a pleasant view of the Platte River, and much-needed shade under the awning on the door side of the Chartreuse Caboose. I had cranked out the full-length canvas awning after I'd removed the chairs from the same storage compartment beneath the trailer. This was a much more enjoyable atmosphere than one would find in an asphalted Wal-Mart parking lot.

  We sipped on our drinks as we discussed our upcoming stay at our new friends' bed and breakfast. The Alexandria Inn was a massive renovated Victorian mansion from the turn of the 20th century according to Lexie. We talked about how nice it'd be to see the fascinating
home and visit with our new friends.

  After we'd exhausted that subject, Rip explained the issues with the travel trailer he planned to have the local Rockdale mechanic take care of during our stay. His detailed explanation of each repair that needed to be done nearly caused me to nod off.

  I finally distracted him enough to launch into a new, more intriguing subject. We discussed what Lexie had told us concerning the surprise birthday party she was hosting for her daughter.

  "It sounds like it'll be a rip-roaring good time," my husband said.

  "Yes, it does," I agreed. "I'm really looking forward to a little R&R while we're at the inn. It will be nice to kick back for a week or so and just hang around the inn like lazy slugs for a few days."

  "Good luck with that," Rip said. "Since we came out of our self-induced hibernation, which most folks call retirement, I've never seen you manage to rest and relax for over about ten minutes in a row."

  Little did I know, this would not be an issue. As things would turn out, there would be little time for kicking back, resting, and relaxing in the coming days. Being a lazy slug for a spell would turn out to have just been wishful thinking on my part.

  Chapter 3

  We pulled into Boney's Garage in Rockdale, Missouri, early the next afternoon. An older mechanic named Paul, who specialized in recreational vehicle repairs, was going to work on a long list of issues regarding leaks, squeaks, and reeks that had been accumulating over the last several months. The mechanic would work on the repairs while we spent the week at the Alexandria Inn. I'd been nagging Rip to work on the problems himself. Naturally, I would have liked to avoid the cost of a repairman, someone who, at seventy-five bucks an hour, had no incentive to hurry and get the job completed.

  After a lengthy career as a member of law enforcement, Rip could bust them, cuff them, and stuff them like nobody's business. If you needed someone to scour your basement for potential serial killers after you'd heard a suspicious noise, or to talk a suicidal citizen at the bitter end of his rope down off the ledge of a tall building, Rip was the man for the job.