Observation #1:
The lawn statue caught my eye as Dick and I sped along the backroads of southern Missouri. After a month of vacation, we were heading home.
I gazed out the window and unexpectedly there it was. A large statue set-up. It’s not unusual for people to set out deer statues in their front yards, and sometimes even human-like dummies sitting in rocking chairs or holding Halloween pumpkins, so it wasn’t strange to see a male dummy sitting in a lawn chair. My vacation-dulled brain was slow to hone in on the sight, but I suddenly realized he was surrounded by drums.
“Whah?” My head snapped back. Drums? I turned to take a better look as we drove on and realized, with a shock, this was a real person, a man sitting in the middle of his front yard, shirtless, enthusiastically playing a full drum set.
“Did you see that?” I asked Dick, but he had missed it. Observation #2:
Don’t always trust that key card—something I learned at the end of our travel day when we stopped for the night at a motel. I left the dog-walking chores to Dick and registered and carried the dog beds to our room. Everything was fine until I inserted the card key and waited for the green light. Nothing. I flipped the card over and re-inserted. Again nothing. I slid the card down quickly. Nada. I swiped it slowly. Still no green light. Nothing but red flashes and a door that I wanted to kick in.
What to do? Look like a foolish old lady and ask the young man at the front desk for help? Yes, I had to admit defeat. The expression on his face was just what I expected when I reported the card key failure, but he politely followed me down the hall.
As he inserted the card, I could almost hear him sigh, “When will people learn to use these things.” But the door didn’t open. Hmm. He turned the card over and tried again. I brightened. Maybe I wasn’t such a loser. After a very vigorous session of card swiping, he finally admitted. “I might not have programed it correctly.” We returned to the front desk where he re-set my key.
Despite my uncharitable inner feeling of triumph for those of us who often are “card key impaired,” all ended well. The young man took the time to walk out to our car and give Dick a reconfigured card and became an immediate fan of Mr. Magoo the pug, who, he said, was a dead ringer for the pug in Men in Black. Observation #3:
My final on-the-road observation is simple. Garage sales can never be too big. The next day as we drove up Highway 61 along the Mississippi River and entered Winona, I noticed a neighborhood in which several households were holding garage sales. The wares were temptingly arrayed and cars stopped everywhere to check them out. Our pickup truck was loaded to the gills, so I didn’t entertain the slightest thought of even looking.
We drove on and found more and more garage sales. In fact we were surrounded by garage sales. “What’s with this?” We wondered as we passed through miles and miles of yard sales: Minneiska, Wabasha, and Lake City…
Finally, at a Caribou Coffee in Red Wing, my curiosity got the best of me. I asked.
“Oh yeah. It’s the Hundred Mile Yard Sale,” said the perky coffee gal, pouring me a large mocha. “It happens every year on the first weekend in May. People come from everywhere. Quite the deal.”
Maybe next year, I’ll leave space in our vehicle for an hour of garage sales.
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