The Gift of Gabb

Courthouse in Cartersville, Ga.

A good laugh is something to be treasured. A good laugh is just plain good fun. I’m an old guy and I have known more than a few good storytellers in my time. My friend, Rodney is one of the best. He is belssed with the gift of gabb.

I was raised in Atlanta. In 1965, I went away to college, but not too far away. West Georgia College was only fifty miles down the road in Carrollton. It was there that I met Rodney and his friend Don, who Rodney always called Big D. They were country boys from the little North Georgia mountain town of Cartersville. Our first encounter was like the Martians meeting the Earthlings. I had never been around country folk and they had never been around city people, but in only a little time, we discovered that we weren’t very different and became fast friends.

Rodney and Don had been best buddies since the first grade. More than likely they were the class clowns. They were funny and that is what I liked most about them. I introduced Rodney to my friend Jane and for a long while they dated. Eventually, they broke up. Both married another. We graduated in 1969 and over time, I lost track of them.

Thirty years later circumstance brought me to Cartersville to live. I looked around town for Rodney and Don. Sure enough, they were still there and still close friends. Rodney worked for the Board of Education and was divorced.  Don was happily married and owned an insurance agency.

After I had been in Cartersville for several years, Rodney called me one day and said, “You will never guess who I have been seeing.”

He was wrong. I guessed on the first try, “Jane.” I said. She too was divorced and in time Rodney and Jane married.

At a party, given in their honor in the home of a friend, I recounted several time how I had introduced them way back in 1965. It occurred to me that things hadn’t changed that much since college. I had this thought as I pulled and expensive microbrew out of a washtub that sat on the back deck, but back in college all we could afford was Pabts Blue Ribbon.  

Later that night, it was Rodney’s turn to be center stage as he told this story in his long southern drawl.

“Big D and I played high school football. It was a hot August and we were at summer practice. Big D sprained his ankle for the fifteenth time. He was always spraining something.

After practice, I went to his house to check on him. All the windows were open and I could hear the attack fan running. This happened before houses were air-conditioned and it was really hot.

 I knocked on the door. Big D’s dad, Frazier, let me in. He and Big D’s mom sat on the couch in front of a large window fan watching Andy Griffith on TV. I went up stairs to Big D’s room where he was soaking his ankle in a five-gallon bucket of hot water, only the water wasn’t hot anymore.

I said, “Let me change your water. It isn’t going to do any good to soak it if the water isn’t hot.” I grabbed the bucket and started walking to the bathroom, but I spilled a little.

Big D said, “Hay, dummy, just pour it out the window before you spill it all over the place. I went to the window and poured the water out. I heard a WHOOS sound and Frazier scream, “HOD DAMNIT BOY WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING UP THERE.”

I ran downstairs. Big D’s parents sat on the couch in a state of shock. Their hair was swept forward into a reversed ducktail hairdo and a wet cigarette drooped out of Frazier’s mouth. The couch, the chairs, the carpet, and Big D’s mom and dad, all soaked. The window fan had blown every drop of the water over every inch of the room.”

Sometimes the sun shines. Sometimes it rains, and sometimes at a good party someone tells a good story.  We had a good laugh and good fun that night. As I said, when telling a story, my friend Rodney is one of the best. He has the gift of gabb.

 

 

 

Sometimes things just don’t go as planned

Oh, Oh, to Mexico

It is a long flight from Dubai to Atlanta, to Dallas and to Puerto Vallarta Mexico.  I was tired when I arrived there. I am an expatriate. To me the word expatriate sounds as though it should mean someone who used to be patriotic. Not even close.

My wife Anne at Los Palmas restaurant

It means that I work out of the country, and that means I must stay out of the country for 330 days per year or pay Federal Income Tax.

I’m a married man and separation is hard on a marriage, but my wife, Anne, and I know we must do this—retribution for a mismanaged early life. Normally we meet somewhere in Europe, but the exchange rate has become so unfavorable there that we decided to meet in Puerto Vallarta Mexico.

Anne is my travel agent. She is quite good at finding out of the way, cheap places for us to stay. Often we are far off the tourist beaten path, and I like that. She found us a privately owned condo on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. There would be few if any American tourist staying there.

There was a glitch in my flight plans and I arrived half a day late. My very efficient wife had prepaid for the cab ride from the airport  to the condo, and after being accosted by ten or twelve timeshare salesman, I found the correct cab stand and I was on my way, glad to be free of the salesmen, only I wasn’t free.

After we got underway, the cabbie pulled out his brochures and made is pitch. The Puerto Vallarta Web site had not mentioned that everybody in town was a timeshare salesman.

We passed a Home Depot, just as in the States, and I wondered do Americans hang around the parking lot looking for work? I thought probably not. I tipped the cab driver in US dollars and found the condo. I had fifty dollars in my wallet and no pesos. I need to find a cash machine.

Because these were privately owned condos, there was no check-in process as in a hotel. I went straight to the condo, and knocked on the door, anticipating a big warm welcome, but there was no answer. I checked the condo number and name, and knocked again, but still no answer. What do I do now? I know. She is on the beach.

The wheels on my suitcase made an annoying clacking sound on the tile floor as I pulled it around the pool. It disturbed the sunbathers, and I felt as if every eye were on me. I drug my suitcase from the pool to the beach. She is a lover of the sea, and I was sure that I would find her there lost in thought oblivious to the time. After twenty minutes of dragging my bag through the sand, I concluded that she was not there. I returned to the condos where a maintenance man found me wondering around looking confused. “May I help you, Senor” he asked.

“Ah. Great, you speak English,” I said.

 “I lived in the States for a while.”

“No kidding,” I told him about not being able to find Anne.”

“Ah, Senor, she was here earlier. Perhaps she has fallen asleep.

We will go awaken her.”

We walked to the condo and began pounding on the door. There was no answer, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw her walking across the parking lot. Her shoulders were slumped and there was a glare in her eyes. As soon as she reached me, I put a big husband smile on my face and said, “Hi, Honey.”

“Don’t hi homey me. I know I’m supposed to be glad to see you but right now I can’t even fake it.”

Now I am not exactly the sensitive type, but even I could see that something was wrong, and I knew that it was my fault. I knew it was my fault because in any marriage when things go wrong it is always the man’s fault. Such is the nature of the female, or maybe it is God’s law. The fact that I lived in the middle of a desert with no phone on the other side of the world was no excuse. I spoke to her in my most sympathetic husband voice, “What’s wrong, Honey.”

“What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I just walked three miles and back, trying to get something to eat. I don’t have any cash and they won’t take my credit cards. I’m hungry as hell. That’s what’s wrong, and—and I drank the water.” By now, she was almost in tears. I nearly asked, “Did you tell the bank that we were going to Mexico,” but I have been married long enough to know better than to ask such questions.

I knew nothing about Porto Vallarta except that there was a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant there.  I knew this because I owned a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company hat. Across the front in big purple letters was written BGSC. It looked like a college hat and I always got a chuckle when someone asked me what the BGSC meant. Also on the hat in very small letters around the bill was a list of every town in which there is a Bubba Gump’s Restaurant. I remembered that Puerto Vallarta was one.

Now was the time to be a knight in shining armor, anything for my lady. “Let’s go to Bubba Gump’s,” I said while praying that fifty bucks would cover the cab ride to the restaurant, the meal, the cab ride back to the condo and a cab ride to the bank in the morning.

A look of relief came to her face and a slight smile, “Okay,” she said. Thank God, I found a cab on the street in front of the condos, “Tu sabe Bubba Gump,” I said in my very best Spanish.

“Yeah, man I know it.”

“You speak English?”

“I used to live in the States.”

“No kidding. You sell timeshares?”

“Si.”

I studied Spanish for three years in high school, two in college, plus I had studied it as an adult. I am in Mexico where they speak Spanish and everybody I meet tries to sell me a timeshare while speaking better English than I do. Next time I feel like speaking Spanish I will go to Miami.

“Will you take American dollars?”

“Si.”

“How much to Bubba Gump’s?”

          “Nine dollars” I quickly calculated. The trip there and back will cost eighteen dollars. That leaves thirty-two dollars for tips, the meal and a cab ride to the bank in the morning.  It is going to be close. Maybe we can find a cash machine that will take my card or maybe Bubba Gump’s will take it. I paid the driver and tipped him two dollars, leaving me with forty dollars. There was a cash machine next to the restaurant. I tried it but no dice. I hope the restaurant will take the one of my cards. “Honey order whatever you like.  I’m not very hungry. I ordered something cheap and a margarita. I couldn’t resist the margarita.  Anne ordered something inexpensive as well. Good, I thought. We are still under budget. The fare came to twenty-seven dollars. All my credit cards failed so I paid cash. When we left the restaurant, I had twenty-three dollars. The cab ride back consumed twenty of it leaving a balance of three dollars.

Next morning I scrounged up two dollars from the bottom of my suitcase and shaving kit. We found another cab in front of the condos. I asked, “How much to take us to the nearest bank in dollars,”

“Three, Senor.”

“Bueno vama nos.”

I paid him the three dollars and gave him a one-dollar tip. I entered the bank with one dollar in my pocket while praying they would help us. A lady banker waited on us. She helped us call our bank and we were saved.  Now I would not have to stand in front of Home Depot looking for work. After that we had a good time–that is we had a good time after we got over Montezuma’s revenge.  They mean it when they say don’t drink the water.