Here are all of the stories that I've written for Konos this year. There's still a little editing to be done, but here's what I've been doing all semester! Enjoy! (I've already put Linguini's Car Repair *here, here, and here* on the blog, but I put it on this page anyway)
A Day in the Life
Staring at the screen, Caroline was juggling several thoughts at once. She still hadn’t changed out of her pajamas, and it was already 11:30 in the morning. Youth group was that night, and Caroline was planning to sing with the praise team. In order to be at the church on time, she would have to leave home at about 5:30. Hours of schoolwork hung over her head, and she would have to finish before youth group that night. She turned her attention back to the screen, trying to focus on the research she was attempting to do. Just as she cleared her mind, the phone rang. Wondering who it was, she heard a voice shout for Carrie. Caroline was getting tired of sitting in the computer chair. She was thinking about the fact that she had at least three full hours of work to be done, and knowing her, it would take at least four. Then there was lunch to consider. Since she was still in her pajamas, Caroline needed a shower before youth group. She also needed to eat dinner.
With all of the willpower she could muster, Caroline glued her eyes to the computer and pressed on. For about ten minutes, she was able to read and take notes diligently, but then the piano interrupted her thoughts. Deciding to get up and take a break from the computer, she stood up and stretched her arms and legs for a moment. She walked into the kitchen and noted that the oven clock read 11:47. Her sister was sitting at the kitchen table doing math. William, her brother, was the one playing the piano. He and his mom were trying to keep Caroline’s youngest brother, Winston, from climbing onto the piano bench and ruining William’s song.
Caroline opened the refrigerator, peered inside for a moment, and closed it again. She walked out to the living room and flopped down on the couch. Picking up a book, she began to read. After a half an hour, she was called to lunch. She stood up, stretched again, and shuffled to the kitchen. Sitting down, she yawned and took a sip of water. Within a few minutes, everyone was seated at the table, and the prayer was said. After the prayer, some conversation began, and the food on the table started to disappear. Once all of the food was gone, Caroline helped straighten up the kitchen. She helped for a few minutes, and then went back to reading. Before twenty minutes had passed, her mom walked in and told Caroline to take a shower and get her schoolwork together. Plans had changed, and Caroline’s mom, Carrie, had to go to the house that Caroline’s family was building. It was important to make sure that the electricians were putting everything in the right places. Caroline and William had to go with Carrie to the new house, and they would leave straight from there for church. Caroline closed her book and trotted off to the bathroom. She took a quick shower and put on new clothes.
Back in her room, she gathered her schoolbooks and her Bible for youth group and shoved it all into her backpack. She picked up her backpack and lugged it out to the garage. Dropping it like a lead weight on the ground, she turned to tell William that he would be too hot in knee socks. It took at least ten minutes, but the threesome finally ended up in the car. Caroline tried to read in the car on the way to the house, but she gave up on that after awhile. Once there, Carrie dropped Caroline off at the library up the road to do her schoolwork in the air conditioning. Caroline sat down at a table and began to chip away at her work again.
Family History
A long time ago, in a land far away, the Roman Emperor Hadrian had invaded a large island off the coast of what we now know as France. Hadrian succeeded in conquering the southern portion of the island, now England, but when he got further north, he encountered a different type of people. Even though Hadrian’s army outnumbered the defenders of Scotland, the Scots simply weren’t going to admit defeat. Once Hadrian realized this, he told his troops to retreat, and he ordered a wall to be built between the lands that he had conquered, and the land of the Scots, now Scotland.
Not quite so long ago, in a land a little farther away, there was a castle. The castle overlooked the small town of Carlat, France. In it, there lived a nobleman and his wife. The nobleman’s name was Bernard Carlat II. He and his wife lived there peacefully until King Henry IV laid siege to the palace in 1604. King Henry IV destroyed the entire castle, but not without a fight. Bernard Carlat II didn’t want to lose his home, but his small army was greatly outnumbered.
Both of these groups of people have a few things in common. One is that both groups weren’t willing to surrender. Both groups also didn’t fight until they were provoked. Both groups also included people who are my ancestors.
My father’s parents are both descendents of the Scotch – Irish, who are descended from the people who defended Scotland against Hadrian and his army. My father’s last name is Gray, which is a Scottish name, and his mother’s maiden name is Edwards, also a Scottish/British name. The Scotch – Irish people lived peacefully in Scotland until they began to be persecuted by England for their beliefs. Then, most of the Scots moved to Ireland to escape the persecution. They intermarried with the Irish, and their descendents came to be called the Scotch – Irish. Not long after this, the Scotch – Irish again faced persecution, and when they heard about the New World, they decided that they should go there to once again to escape religious persecution. They chose to settle mostly in Virginia and North Carolina. Back then, Virginia and West Virginia hadn’t split, so Virginia was bigger. The Scotch – Irish have always been very laid back, and they didn’t really like someone in a town far away telling them how to live, so they just governed themselves in little clans, and that worked just fine. When the British came to America, they wanted things much more organized, and they settled in the New England area. Today, if you look at a map, you’ll notice that the roads in most of the big cities in the south are crisscrossing at strange angles with no real organization. If you were to look at a map of a big city in the New England area, you’d probably notice that the roads are formatted in a grid-like pattern. These are modern day examples of the effect the Scotch – Irish and the British had on the different regions of Eastern America. When the Founding Fathers in New England decided that they’d had it with England, they looked to the Scotch – Irish for fighting men. The Scotch – Irish were, and still are, people who wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t bother them. If you did bother them, though, you were in for it. When the Scotch – Irish fought, they would fight either until one side was entirely dead, or until the other side surrendered. If it weren’t for the Scotch – Irish, America may not have won the Revolutionary War, and our nation might still be under British rule. Characteristics found in the Scotch – Irish who fought Hadrian are still noticeable in the Scotch – Irish even today.
My mother’s mother is also a descendant of the Scotch – Irish, but my mother’s father’s family is predominately French. His last name is Largent, and his mother’s maiden name was Carlat, like the town in France. Both are of French origin. His mother probably wasn’t a direct descendant of Bernard Carlat II, but it can be assumed, since her family was from France, that she was in some way related to him. Bernard Carlat II and his small army had the same determination as the Scotch – Irish who fought Hadrian. Even though these people lost their battle and their home, they fought valiantly until they could fight no more. No one knows what exactly Bernard Carlat II and his family did after losing the battle, so they didn’t make as much of a known impact on history, but they still deserve some recognition for their courage and bravery.
Only fifteen years ago, in a land not very far away at all (Tennessee, to be exact), Spencer Gray and Carrie Largent were married. They lived on the border of Tennessee and Georgia, and a year later, they had a little girl. That not-quite-so-little-anymore girl is me, Caroline Gray. I’m roughly three-fourths Scotch – Irish, and about one-fourth French. So far, the character traits seen in the Scotch – Irish and the Frenchmen from so long ago are quite prominent in me today. Although I’ve never instigated an international war, I have the same determination and stubbornness that got the Scots through their battle with Emperor Hadrian. When I start fighting, I don’t surrender without putting up a big fight. I probably wouldn’t have all of those traits if my parents didn’t have the lineage that they do. Then again, I wouldn’t be here if my parents didn’t have the lineage that they do.
Dictionary.com defines the word “stubborn” as being “unreasonably obstinate; obstinately unmoving; bullheaded or persistent.” This can be a bad virtue to have, but think about what the world would be like now if those Scotch – Irish didn’t have that trait. There might not be a Scotland, or an America, for that matter. The world would be an entirely different place. God planned everything down to every person, every animal, every injury, and every death that would be involved in the battle that happened centuries ago. He planned where every one of the Scotch – Irish families would settle here in America. He planned that my parents would meet each other, get married, and have me and my siblings. He’s already planned out my whole life for me. He alone knows who I’ll marry, who my kids will be, and who they will marry. He also knows whether I or they or any of their descendents will make a big impact on the world, like the Scotch – Irish, or maybe a small impact, like Bernard Carlat II. He planned my life, my parents’ lives, my siblings’ lives, and everyone else who has ever and will ever live on this earth before the earth was even here.
My Mother’s Life
My mom, Carrie Gray, has lived in eight different states and nineteen different houses, dorms, and apartments. Her dad was in the Air Force, which was part of why they had to move so much. Before my mom was born, her family lived in England, which is why two out of three of my mom’s siblings were born in England. Several years after coming back to the US, in 1972, my grandparents had my mom. She was the youngest of the four children.
My mom was born in Redding, California, but she only lived there for six years. In order to give their children a more metropolitan experience, my grandparents moved the family to northern Virginia, near Washington, DC. They lived there for six years, and by then, my Aunt Christy and my Uncle Craig had graduated from high school and moved out.
After deciding that they needed a little change, the family moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1984. There, they lived in a huge old schoolhouse. The house was over a hundred and fifty years old. Since it had been a schoolhouse, it had some strange elements to it. It was sixty feet long, and the ceilings were around fifteen feet high. Some of the original wood floors were still there, and the holes from where the desks had been nailed to the floor were still visible. A small basement had been built later under part of the house, and the basement held only my Uncle Curt’s room. The main floor was huge, with a gigantic master bedroom and bathroom, formal living room, family room, dining room, kitchen, and office. When my mom’s family moved in, the house had already been redone with the basement by another couple who had also added a garage. The attic had eight-foot ceilings and was the size of the main floor, so my grandmother decided to put several more rooms up there. The upstairs became my mom’s considerably large bedroom, a guest bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, and a huge hall full of bookshelves. My mom lived there until she went to college.
My mom has five colleges on her transcript, even though she only lived at four of them. The first was Word of Life Bible Institute in New York. From Ohio, she went there for a year. Even though she enjoyed it, she chose to transfer to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. She attended there for three semesters, the first two being the 1990-91 school year, and the third being the first semester of the 1992-93 school year. In December of 1992, she moved in with my Aunt Christy and her husband, Chris. She lived with them until she started attending Moody Aviation, a school in Tennessee that was a division of Moody Bible Institute. She began going there in the summer of 1993, and that’s when she met my dad. They were both taking a class that had to do with the mechanics of an airplane. My mom and dad both wanted to be missionary pilots. They met at the end of that summer and started dating in the fall. My mom went to Moody Aviation for a year, and then transferred once again to Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. In 1995, my parents were married and moved to Flintstone, Georgia, near Covenant College. In a little over a year, my mom had me. She took her last test to graduate from college two days before having me. Because Covenant only had one graduation per year, and I was born in September, she had to wait until May of 1997 to receive her diploma.
In 1999, after living on the east side of Atlanta, we moved to a nearby apartment. That was two weeks before my sister was born. We lived in the apartment for almost a year, and then moved to tiny little house in a tiny little town called Mableton, Georgia. We lived there until 2002, when we moved to the house where we live now. Two years later, in the beginning of 2004, my brother William was born. In May of 2008, we bought a piece of land in a town so small there’s not even a stop light in the entire town. Our property is right next to a grass runway and a museum that’s a replica of the first Atlanta Airport. We started looking into building on it, but that was put to a temporary stop when my brother was born a year later in the same hospital room as William, with the same nurse attending. Now we’re almost ready to move into the new house that’s on the property we bought two and a half years ago.
My mom has lived in a lot of places for someone who’s less than forty years old. She’s been out of the country many times, mostly due to the fact that my dad’s an international commercial pilot, but also a few places when she was living with her parents. She’s lived in Georgia the longest, though, and she intends to stay here for quite a while longer.
Five Eggs for Breakfast
Yawning and sleepily opening one eye, twenty-one year old Spencer Gray realized that a new day had started. He stretched and rolled out of bed. Quickly, he donned his camp-director’s attire. He needed to get to the cabin so he could make breakfast for the staff at Head of Dean. Head of Dean was one of seventy-six camps at the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch in New Mexico. The Ranch is the biggest camp in the world, and thousands of people camp there every year. Spencer worked at one of the twenty-six staffed camps. The other fifty didn’t have a staff, so the boy scout troops just camped there by themselves. Spencer opened the flap of his cabin and stepped out into the cool morning air. He strode toward the cabin with all of the food supplies inside. The food had been delivered the day before by a vehicle from base camp. The food in the cabin included many canned goods and other imperishables, but also some fresh food too. Since it was almost a day old, though, it wasn’t very fresh anymore. On Thursday mornings, the staff always had massive omelets to use up the eggs, but since the staff only included five people, the eggs were never all eaten before they went bad.
Spencer opened the cabin door and stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He walked over to the wood stove to brew coffee for the dads who had stayed at the camp the night before. He dumped some coffee grounds and water inside the coffee pot and set it on the hot stovetop. Next, he took the eggs off of the shelf and cracked five into a bowl. While he was mixing them, the door to the cabin opened. In walked Steve, a program counselor.
“Hey, Steve!” Spencer said.
“Hi,” Steve drowsily said.
“I’m making my omelet. You can use the bowl when I’m finished.” Spencer turned back to what he was doing. He reached up and grabbed a skillet. The skillet made a loud noise as it hit the stove.
“Ow! Boy, I sure am awake now!” Steve yelped. He had sat down on a chair in the cabin and closed his eyes. When the skillet clanged against the stove, his head had jerked up to look at Spencer.
The door to the cabin opened for a third time that morning and in walked Jay, another program counselor.
“Hi Spencer, hi Steve.” Jay sat down in another chair, rested his head in his hands, and closed his eyes.
“You’d better not do that, Spencer might ring the breakfast gong again,” Steve warned.
“Hey! It wasn’t that loud!”
“That already woke me up once, thank you very much,” Jay complained.
Spencer scooped his now cooked omelet out of the skillet and onto a plate. He grabbed his fork off of the counter and went to sit outside. Just as he got out the door, a man emerged from his tent.
“Hi, there…uh…sir.” Spencer never could remember the names of the campers.
The man replied with one word. “Coffee.” He croaked.
“Oh, I forgot about that. Let me go get it from inside.” He set his plate down and turned around back into the cabin. Spencer grabbed the pot of warm beverage and trotted outside again.
By the time he got back outside, most of the campers had assembled by the fire pit. Some looked like they could have slept for the rest of the day, while others looked as if they had been awake for hours. Two boys scampered up to Spencer and started telling him about something they had seen the day before.
“There’s a grave back in the trees over there, did you know that?” the first boy asked.
“As a matter of fact, I did know that,” Spencer said, smiling to himself.
“Who’s in there? There’s no name or anything!” the second boy said emphatically.
“Well, no one on the campground knows, so just make sure to stay away from it, okay, boys?”
The wide-eyed boys nodded in fear, “Yeah. Yeah, okay, we won’t touch it.”
The truth was that there was no body there at all. The summer before, Spencer had worked at the same camp, and he and his friend found a board from an old outhouse. It had been a double-outhouse, so the board was the length of an average person. They decided to lay it on the ground and mound some dirt up over it. Then they had taken two sticks and lashed them together with twine to make a cross. They stuck the cross in the ground, and there was a grave! Instead of making up a story to go along with their prank, whenever someone asked about it, they simply claimed that no one knew the story behind the mysterious grave, and left the rest up to the boys’ imaginations. Even after a year, the “grave” still existed, and occasionally, people would ask the staff at Head of Dean what it was doing there.
Spencer set the coffee pot down and stepped away for the men to get cups of the warm beverage. Since there were no coffee drinkers on the staff at Head of Dean, none of them had any idea of how to make the coffee, so they guessed. They had been making it the same way all summer. They started by dumping some coffee grounds and water into a pot together and heating it up on the stove. Then they served it straight out of that pot, so the grounds were never filtered out of the coffee. Most of the time, the grounds stayed at the bottom of the pot, but sometimes a man would end up with coffee grounds in his cup. Even with their strange method of coffee making, they constantly got compliments on how good it was.
Spencer finally sat down to his massive, cold omelet. He ate a little over half of it before being completely full. After cleaning up, Spencer conferred with the three program counselors. At the camp where Spencer worked, there were four program counselors and one camp director. Spencer was the camp director. He was the first counselor who had ever worked at Philmont to become a camp director with only one year of experience there. One of the program counselors was off, so there were only four people working.
“We’re planning on doing the wall this morning and then sending them to the next camp, right?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, I think that’ll work,” Spencer replied.
“Okay, let’s do it!”
The group of young men strode toward the large group of boy scouts and their dads.
“Okay, guys, see that wall over there? That’s going to be our activity this morning,” Spencer began. “The goal is to get your whole group over the wall. It looks short, but it’s harder than it looks. There’s a platform on the other side, so once you get someone up there, he can stand and pull someone else up. The wall is twelve feet tall, and it’s up to you how you’re going to do it. We only ask two things. Number one: Please try not to take more than an hour or so. If that happens, you’ll be late to your next camp, and that could be bad. Number two: Please try not to get severely injured or die, okay?”
A snicker rippled through the crowd.
“Okay, let’s go!” a dad yelled as he rubbed his hands together. The group huddled together to create a strategy.
“I wonder what they’ll come up with this time,” Jay said.
“No telling! I guess we’ll find out, though!” responded Spencer with a laugh as he sat down on the ground. He was expecting time for a little snooze while the boy scouts formulated their plan.
The Winston of Mass Destruction
“Caroline, the baby needs a new diaper!” William yelled.
“That’s impossible!” Caroline replied. “I just changed it ten minutes ago!”
“I guess he wasn’t done,” said Sarah from the other side of the room.
“You’re changing that diaper, Sarah, I just changed one,” Caroline said with a hint of frustration.
“Fine.” Sarah sulked off to change Winston’s diaper.
Caroline turned back to her schoolwork. Before she had read two sentences, the phone rang. At the same time, William yelped, almost as if he were in pain.
“Eeeww!” He ran from Winston’s room, holding his nose.
“Hello?” Caroline answered the phone.
“Hi, I’m calling for Nancy Davis.”
“Uh, wrong number,” replied Caroline.
“Do you know what number this is?”
Duh, this is my house, Caroline wanted to say, but she restrained herself. “Yes, why?”
No answer.
“Hello?”
After a few seconds, Caroline hung up the phone.
“Don’t go in Winston’s room,” William said, still holding his nose. “It’s gross in there.”
“Why do you think I didn’t want to change his diaper?”
Caroline glanced at the clock and decided to start making lunch. She reached out a finger to turn on the radio and caught the last few seconds of a song.
“That was Michael Bublé with his new song ‘Hollywood.’ Here’s ‘Fireflies,’ by Owl City.”
“Did you hear that?” William grinned at Caroline. “His name is Michael Bootleg. Isn’t that funny?”
“That’s Michael Bublé, William.” Caroline was desperately trying not to burst out into laughter. She walked over to the refrigerator and tugged the door open.
“What do ya’ll want for lunch?” Caroline shouted so that both siblings could hear.
“Food,” Sarah yelled in response.
“Oh, good, because I thought you would want to eat napkins.”
Sarah emerged carrying the baby.
“We’re having grilled cheese,” Caroline decided. She pulled the ingredients out of the fridge and started on the meal.
Twenty minutes later, Caroline set the last dishes on the table. “Lunch!”
William appeared at the table.
“I thought you said we were having grilled cheese,” William exclaimed.
“Yeah, we are.”
“Why is there tomato soup here, too?” William gave a disgusted look at the soup.
“Because I was fixing lunch, and I decided that we were having grilled cheese and tomato soup. Just deal with it, okay?”
As William turned on his funk, Sarah walked in the room.
“Yuck! Tomato soup? Eeeww!”
“What is the deal? It’s not that bad!” Caroline was getting frustrated.
“It’s disgusting. I hate tomato soup.” Sarah sat down with a thud and settled into a funk of her own.
“I’m going to eat in my room.” Caroline picked up her food and left the room. “Don’t say hate, say–”
Sarah finished Caroline’s sentence. “-strongly dislike. I strongly dislike tomato soup.”
Caroline closed the door to her room set down her dishes. Within seconds, there was a timid little knock on her door.
“Come in.”
The door opened, and a tiny little face framed with a blonde buzz cut appeared. “Momma doesn’t let us eat in our rooms,” it said.
“Is Sarah still in a funk?”
William opened the door a little further a stepped into the room. “She left. Didn’t you hear her door slam? I don’t think she’s going to eat any lunch.”
“I don’t understand the issue with the tomato soup. It tastes fine!”
The two kids made their way back into the kitchen. They sat down, and Caroline realized that the baby was no where to be seen.
“Where’s Winston?” she asked William. There was a short silence. “William, where’s Winston?”
“I don’t know!”
Caroline and William dashed off into different parts of the house, yelling Winston’s name. As Caroline peeked into her parents’ bathroom, she heard William.
“Winston, no! Naughty! No, bad boy! Caroline!” he was shouting.
Caroline ran toward the voice. When she opened the door to the bathroom on the other side of the house, she found Winston. He was sitting in a huge pile of toilet paper that he had pulled off the roll. William was trying to keep Winston from pulling off any more.
“Winston! Naughty!” Caroline stepped into the room and picked up the grinning child. “William, go occupy him while a clean this up, please.”
“Come on, bro!” William dragged his now screaming little brother out of the room.
“Don’t pull his arms out of the sockets!”
“Well, how else am I supposed to do it?” William asked.
“I don’t know, just don’t hurt him.”
They finally got the baby out of the room, and Caroline managed to clean up his mess.
“Okay, he’s going in the highchair,” Caroline said as she appeared in the kitchen again. She lifted the baby up into his seat, buckled him in, and slid the tray on over him.
“Do I have to eat the tomato soup?”
“Yes, eat five bites. It’s good for you.”
“That explains why it’s so gross,” William grumbled. He barely dipped his spoon into the bowl of red liquid.
“That’s not a bite!” Caroline exclaimed. “Here, I’ll show you.” She filled the spoon with soup and stuck it in her brother’s mouth. Since he couldn’t speak without spilling soup all over himself, he simply made a disgusted face. Just then, Sarah walked back out of her room.
“Hi,” Caroline said cheerfully. There was no answer. Sarah sullenly walked to the refrigerator, filled her cup with water, and returned to her room.
“I’m ready for another bite,” William said, breaking the silence.
“Here.” Caroline lifted the spoon to his mouth once more. “Okay, you do it now. I’m hungry, too, and I can’t feed two people at once.” She turned back to her own food, wondering when her parents would be home to relieve her.
A Very Merry Christmas Thanksgiving
“Beat you to Grandma and Grandpa’s car, William!” I yelled and took off for the dark blue van.
“Hey, no fair, you’re seven years older than I am!” William kept on my heels, but I still managed to beat him. We had been riding in the car for the last five hours and were glad to be running around again.
“Hi Grandma!” I ran up the sidewalk to give her a hug. “I’m so excited about this weekend! I love Thanksgiving!”
My grandpa has three younger sisters, Betsy, Ginny, and Mausty. My grandparents had three kids, and each of his sisters have two kids of their own. Six of the nine people in the second generation are married, and one is engaged. Three of the six married couples have one child each, and my family has four kids. Every Thanksgiving, most of the family gets together for the last part of the week.
Just then, I spotted my cousin Leighton.
“Late!” I said excitedly and ran to give her a hug. “I haven’t seen you for months!”
“I know,” Leighton said, returning the hug. “I’ve really missed you!”
We took each other’s hands and headed toward the main building of the bed and breakfast that our grandparents had booked. Just then, my sister Sarah ran up.
“Leighton!”
“Hi, Sarah!” Leighton turned to give Sarah a hug. “I’ve missed you so much!”
“Me, too,” said Sarah, hugging Leighton.
“Hey,” I interjected, “has anyone see Katy and Fred and Ivy?”
Leighton spoke up. “I think Katy’s in their room with Ivy. Ivy might be napping. I don’t know where Fred is.”
“Oh, okay, we probably shouldn’t bother them,” I said.
Leighton’s face lit up. “This place is too cool. They have this awesome little kitchen thing with sodas and wine glasses and snacks. It’s fifty cents for a soda, and seventy-five for a snack. There’s popcorn and a microwave, chips, crackers, and granola bars. I think there might even be little packages of gum!”
“No way! You have to show us this place.” Sarah tugged on Leighton’s arm. “Let’s go!”
“Okay, okay, come on!”
We scampered off to the kitchenette. Leighton walked up a set of stairs to a little raised patio with two doors into the building. She walked to one door and pulled a key out of her pocket.
“Aha! The keys to the city!” I joked.
Leighton wiggled the key in the lock. The door swung open to reveal a small, tiled room that resembled a kitchen. There was a counter around two sides of the room. The corner with no counter had a little table with two chairs. On the counter were two baskets, one with cans of soda, and the other with snacks. There was also a sink, a microwave, and a glass jar with coins inside.
“Where are the wine glasses?” Sarah asked.
“Allow me to present,” Leighton reached for the door to a cupboard, “the wine glasses.” She opened the cabinet and gestured to the shelves of glasses.
“Sweet! We need some money, though.” I smiled.
“Voila! Might this be helpful?” Leighton pulled twelve quarters from behind her back.
“Wow, Late, you’ve really got it together, don’t you?” I said.
“Are you kidding? I was here by myself for two hours before you showed up; I’ve got the whole day planned out. What do you guys want?”
“I want a Dr. Pepper and some chips.” I reached for the items.
“I’ll have Sprite and crackers,” Sarah said.
“I’m going to have Pepsi and chips,” Leighton finished. “Do you want to split some popcorn?”
“Sure.”
The girls picked out their snacks and put enough coins into the jar to pay for them. I opened the microwave and stuck the package of popcorn inside.
“Is there a button for popcorn on this thing?” I peered at the panel of buttons and couldn’t find one.
“Just put it in for a few minutes, and when it starts smelling burnt, you can take it out.” Leighton said.
Since I didn’t see an alternative, I did what she suggested. “You’re going to make a great cook when you get older, Late.”
“Very funny! Oooh, let’s use wine glasses for our popcorn,” Late suggested. She pulled out six wine glasses and handed two to each girl.
“Does it smell burnt yet?” I sniffed the air.
“It hasn’t even started popping, Smart Stuff.”
“Oh, whoops. I wasn’t really thinking about that.”
Sarah opened her can of Sprite and poured it into a wine glass.
“Okay, now it’s popping, Caroline. Hear those little noises? That means that the little kernels of corn are popping.” Leighton smiled.
“Seriously, I’m not that stupid. I just wasn’t thinking before.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Leighton joked as she elbowed Sarah. Sarah grinned, and then sniffed the air.
“I think maybe it’s done. I smell a bit of fragrance in the air.”
“Oh, gosh, yuck, turn it off!” Leighton nearly shouted.
I lunged for the microwave and smashed the “off” button. Sarah opened the microwave and snatched out the popcorn.
“Ow!” She dropped it on the floor.
“Not the floor! It’s going to leak butter all over!” Leighton dove for the bag. “Yow!” She, too, discovered how hot the bag really was and threw it into the sink.
“No!” It was my turn to pick up the bag with the ends of two fingers. “It’s gonna get all soggy if you put it in the sink.”
I opened the bag and poured equal amounts in each glass. “Okay, Late, let’s pour our drinks and go have some fun.”
Leighton and I filled our glasses with the foaming beverages and threw away our cans. Sarah, already holding her drink, popcorn, and crackers, opened the door. The three of us trotted down the stairs and across the sidewalk to Leighton’s room.
“Here, Caroline, hold my drink, and Sarah, you hold my popcorn.”
We took her treats while she once again pulled out her key and swung open the door to her room. I stuck my head inside and smiled. I couldn’t wait for all of the fun we were going to have together.
Linguini’s Car Repair
Ten-year-old Carrie looked up sleepily from her homework. She slowly stood up, stretched, and peered out the window.
“Momma, the mafia’s here again!” she shouted out the bedroom door.
“I’ll be right there! Turn the light off so they can’t see you,” came the muffled response.
Carrie flipped the lights off and returned to the window overlooking the small intersection in front of her house. Their road had big, empty lots on the other side. They were thick with trees and bushes, and the cross street passed right through. That stretch of road was a bit spooky at night. Every few weeks at dusk, two cars would stop near each other for a few minutes. Ever since she had first discovered these strange occurrences, Carrie’s mom had been convinced that it was the mafia making drug deals. Carrie’s room had a window that over-looked a little section of the road, and every time they saw the cars parked there, Carrie and her mom watched the proceedings of the “mafia.”
“Okay, what are they doing?” Carrie’s mom closed the door to the room quietly.
“I don’t know. What does the mafia usually do on dark streets at dusk?”
“Beats me. Do you have any binoculars? Maybe we can see what’s going on.” Carrie’s mom strained to see down the road. “Wait a minute, there’s a guy getting out of the one on the right.”
“No, I don’t have binoculars. Even if I did, they probably wouldn’t help since it’s getting dark,” Carrie said. “Well, I guess we could use a flashlight, too.”
“Oh, sure, they’ll never notice a blinding flashlight beam coming from a window in one of the houses, now will they?”
Carrie grinned sheepishly. “I suppose you do have a point there.”
Carrie’s mom always insisted that they turned off the light so that the mafia couldn’t see the silhouettes in the window. They both continued to look out the window curiously. They stared for at least a minute.
“My eyes hurt, I want to keep doing my homework,” Carrie complained.
“Excuse me? Are you okay? Did you really just say that you want to do your homework?”
“Uh…yeah. I did,” admitted Carrie.
“Well, you’re homework can wait this time. I want to watch and see what happens. Oh, look, he’s opening the trunk.”
“Who is?”
“I don’t know their names!” Carrie’s mom said. “But it’s the one on the left.”
“What’s he taking out?” Carrie asked.
“It looks like a big, heavy box.” A gasp escaped Carrie’s mom’s mouth. “I bet it’s the drugs!”
Two pairs of widely-opened eyes took in the scene in front of them. There were the two cars, of course. One was a sleek, black Cadillac. The other was an average-looking, dark-colored car. Standing around the cars were three men. One of the men looked to be several inches shorter then the other two. He was bald and wore a ring on his pinkie finger.
“Momma, is that a diamond ring on that guy’s hand?”
“I guess so. It keeps reflecting a light from somewhere.”
The man was smoking something. It was too dark to tell what it was, though. The second man was average height with a head full of dark, slicked-back hair. When he turned his head, Carrie shuddered. His sinister eyes were as black as coal. For a split second, Carrie could have sworn that he was looking straight at her. She turned her head away. When she looked back toward to group, the man had turned his head. He was towering over the third man. As much as a man could tower over someone a half of a foot taller than he. Carrie giggled at the sight. The third man was obviously taller than the others, even while straining under the weight of the box. He was not nearly as nicely dressed as the other two men who were wearing expensive-looking suits. The third man was wearing dark jeans and a tight black shirt. His muscles bulged under the sleeves of his shirt. It seemed obvious that the shiny, black car belonged to the short man and the less impressive car was the third man’s car. It turned out that the box was being taken from the Cadillac to the other car.
“It’s a box of drugs, I just know it is.” Carrie’s mom didn’t stop looking out the window.
“Which is why it says ‘Linguini’s Car Repair’ on the side, right?”
“Oh, shush, I bet it’s just a cover-up. That way no one thinks that it’s drugs.”
“Oh, brother. I’m going to say hello to them and ask what’s in the box.” Carrie straightened up and turned to the door.
“No! Even if they weren’t the mafia, which, I must admit, they probably aren’t, I would never let you go out by yourself to meet three men who are strangers.”
“Well, then you can come with me.” Carrie turned on the light.
“Oh, I don’t think so, young lady. I wouldn’t provide protection in the least from just that guy in the jeans alone. Now if it were just the little short guy alone, that wouldn’t be much of a problem unless he had a gun. Anyway, there is no way I’m going out there.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Carrie headed to the stairs.
“You’re not opening that door without me there, Carrie.”
“But you just said that you wouldn’t be any protection. What difference would it make if you were there?” Carrie continued down the hall.
The knock sounded once again. Carrie’s mom ran to catch up. The two arrived at the door at the same time. Carrie reached for the doorknob and turned it. The door swung open. There stood the man in the jeans. Carrie and her mom froze.
“Sorry to bother you so late, but would you happen to have any packing tape?” the man said in an unexpectedly kind tone.
“Uh…I…um, there’s some over –” Carrie’s mom stuttered and pointed.
Carrie recovered and ran to get the roll of tape.
“Like I said, I’m terribly sorry, but I just got a box of car parts that got shipped to the wrong address, and the box is open. The parts keep spilling out, and I don’t have any tape.”
“Oh…well, it’s fine…there’s tape in the kitchen, I’ll go get it.” Carrie’s mom came back to her senses.
“I think your daughter just went to get it, ma’am.”
Right on cue, Carrie returned with the roll of tape. She had heard everything the man had said and was giggling to herself. “Here you go.”
“Thank you so much, I’ll go put some on the box and be right back.”
“Come on, let’s stand on the porch so we can see him,” Carrie’s mom whispered as she stole a glance to see if the other two men were still in the road. Sure enough, the shiny, black Cadillac was still sitting there. The car’s lights turned on right then, and within seconds, it sped away. Carrie looked up at her mom.
“Thank you so much.” The man walked back up and handed the tape back. “You know, it’s the strangest thing. This really rich guy keeps getting packages of car parts that are supposed to be sent to me. I run a car repair shop, you see. Well, this rich fella sends his fancy-schmancy car over to my shop, so I know him. Well, I suppose I don’t know him, but rather his right hand man who always brings in the car. Boy, I sure do make a lot of dough off that guy and his car. Anyway, every few weeks, he’s been getting one of my packages. For some reason, he didn’t want people to see his car and the people in it associating with me, so I suggested that we meet over in that little stretch of road.” He gestured to the spot that Carrie and her mom had been watching only minutes ago. “I drive through it on my way home sometimes, and it always gives me the creeps. I figured no one would be paying any attention to that part of the road, so that’s where he would give me the boxes.” The man finally stopped for air.
“I see.” Carrie’s mom nodded. “I’m glad we can be of assistance, sir.”
“So am I!” he joked. “Thank you again! Good night.” He strode back to his car and drove off in to the night.
Carrie looked at her mom for a long moment. “I told you it wasn’t the mafia,” she said, and she skipped back inside to finish her homework.
Bitter as Quinine
“I’m going outside to tend to the dogs, Sweetie. I’ll be back in a little while.” Papa planted a kiss on his wife’s forehead.
“Don’t be too long.”
Papa strode out the door and closed it behind him.
“Momma, I’m hungry,” wailed two-year-old Audnette from a chair in the kitchen.
“Francis Audnette, where do you put it all? We just ate lunch,” said her mother.
“I don’t know. I’m a growing girl. That’s what you tell Charlotte when she won’t eat.”
“Here, have a few crackers,” Sweetie told her daughter. “You need to take the quinine, too, or else your malaria will get even worse than it already is, and you’ll infect the whole town.”
There was a soft noise in the hall, and Charlotte, Audnette’s six-year-old sister skipped into the room. Charlotte slowed her pace and plopped her tiny self onto another chair. After wiggling back into a comfortable position with her feet several inches off the floor, she looked at her mother.
“Are we going to get daddy the billfold for his birthday?” she inquired.
“I already did, do you want to see it?”
“Yes! I do,” Audnette squealed eagerly.
“I asked, so I should get to see it first,” Charlotte insisted.
“Girls, no one’s going to see it first. I’ll show you both at the same time.” Sweetie pulled the precious billfold out of the pocket of her apron. She had saved extra money here and there for several weeks, and the girls had both saved their allowances to buy the birthday present.
Audnette gasped. “Oh, isn’t it bee-yoo-tee-ful!”
“He’s going to love it!” Charlotte grinned.
Sweetie tucked the billfold back into her apron. She had planned to give it to Papa that night at dinner, but she didn’t think that the girls could wait that long.
“When do you want to give it to him?” she asked.
“Right now!” the girls said in unison.
“Right now? Well, he’s busy right now. He’s taking care of the new puppies. I don’t think he would appreciate an interruption.”
“I think that he would am-ee-see-ate it just fine,” Audnette said with a stubborn look on her face.
“Oh, please let us give it to him now. Pretty please?” Charlotte begged.
“Let’s give him ten more minutes, okay?” Sweetie compromised. “That way he can finish taking care of the dogs.”
“How about we give him until I finish my crackers and take my quinine?” Audnette bartered.
“How about after ten minutes?” Sweetie suggested again.
A look of defeat came over Audnette’s face, but only for a moment.
“Five minutes,” Audnette said with a look of determination in her eyes.
Sweetie laughed. “Okay, then. Five minutes it is, as long as you finish your crackers and quinine.”
“Yes!” Audnette hopped around the kitchen triumphantly.
“If you don’t get to work on those crackers, it’s going to be a lot longer than five minutes before you get out there to get your daddy.” Sweetie turned back to her work.
Even though Audnette could eat a lot, she took a long time to eat it, so Audnette finished her victory dance and climbed back up into her seat at the table. She began to nibble at her crackers. The crackers seemed to be disappearing faster than usual, though. Sweetie smiled at her daughter.
“Charlotte, will you come dry these dishes while you wait, please?”
Charlotte groaned and slid out of her seat. “Sure.”
The threesome did their duties for several minutes in silence. After four minutes, Audnette broke the silence.
“I’m through with my crackers,” she said.
“Here’s a rag, wipe the crumbs off the table and your face.” Sweetie handed a damp dish rag to the little girl.
Audnette hastily swiped the rag over the table and her face and returned it to her mother.
“Can I go now?” she asked expectantly.
“Now what was our agreement? Five minutes, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Charlotte spoke up. “And she had to take her quinine.”
“Thank you, Charlotte,” Sweetie said. “Did you hear your sister, Audnette?”
“Yes ma’am, I did. Can I have it so I can go get daddy?”
“May I have it. Not can, may.” Sweetie awaited a response from her daughter.
“May I have my quinine so I can go get daddy?”
“Just a minute, let me get it out.” Sweetie opened the cupboard and withdrew a container full of quinine capsules for malaria victims. She opened the container and took out one capsule.
“Here, hold this, Audnette.” She handed the capsule to Audnette and turned to get a glass of water, but before she even turned on the faucet, Audnette had run out the back door.
“Momma, she left! May I go with her?” Charlotte asked.
“Did she just take the quinine without any water?”
“Yes, may I please go? Please?”
“Sure, go ahead.” Sweetie looked at the empty glass in her hand.
That girl doesn’t know what she’s in for, Sweetie thought. Just as she thought that, the loudest scream Sweetie had ever heard rang out.
“Oh, dear, she’ll be crying for the rest of the day,” Sweetie said aloud. She filled the glass with water for Audnette to drink. Sweetie knew it wouldn’t get rid of the taste, but she also knew that a two-year-old couldn’t be convinced of that.
Audnette came tearing in the back door with Charlotte and Papa on her heels.
“What in tarnation is going on here?” Papa bellowed over the screams of his daughter.
“The quinine dissolved in her mouth. Will you get another glass of water?” Sweetie asked him, taking the wailing child on her lap. Audnette nearly inhaled the first glass of water, took a breath, and did the same with the second. While she waited for the next glass, she sobbed into her mother’s chest.
“Why on earth didn’t she just wash it down with water in the first place?”
“Do you want to tell him Charlotte?”
Charlotte was pleased that she ended up with the honor of disclosing the secret.
“We got you a billfold for your birthday, and Audnette wanted to tell you about it and she didn’t take the time to drink the water, so the quinine dissolved in her mouth, and then she screamed.” Charlotte spit it all out at once.
“I think the whole county knows that she screamed.” Papa smiled and handed Sweetie another glass of water.
Audnette wouldn’t stop screaming even after gulping down four more glasses of water. Charlotte returned to drying dishes, disappointed by the unexpected turn of events, and because of that, Audnette, Sweetie, and Charlotte didn’t get to give Papa his billfold until dinner that day.
April Fool’s Joke Gone Wrong
“Nama, when is Grandaddy coming home?” asked Malinda impatiently.
She had been waiting for an hour for her Grandaddy to come home from work. It was April Fool’s Day, and Malinda had what she thought would be the perfect practical joke all ready.
Grandaddy had a shed out back where he kept his tools and worked on projects. There were always rats scurrying around on the floor and across the workbenches. Grandaddy had set a rat trap behind his worktable to start getting rid of some of the creatures. The trap sat on the ground for about a month, and it was soon forgotten.
For the past week, Malinda had been trying to think of a good April Fool’s joke to play on Grandaddy. Just that day, while Grandaddy was at work, she had decided to tell him that there was a rat in the rat trap.
“Oh, I suppose it’ll be any minute now, dear,” sighed Nama. “Why are you so anxious about him getting here?”
“I have to fool him for April Fool’s,” Malinda replied with a grin on her face.
“What’s your plan?”
“Well, I’m going to tell him there’s a rat in the rat trap outside, but there really isn’t one.” Malinda’s smile got even bigger.
“Oh, I see. Are you sure there isn’t one? No one’s checked that rat trap for weeks,” Nama pointed out.
“No, I didn’t. I bet there’s nothing th-,” Malinda was interrupted by the sound of the back door opening.
“Anybody home?” The deep voice thundered through the house.
“Grandaddy! Malinda squealed as she leapt out of her chair.
Grandaddy grunted as he picked up Malinda. “Goodness, child, you’re getting big,” he exclaimed.
Malinda giggled.
“Don’t you two have a project to finish in the tool shed?” Nama looked at Malinda pointedly.
“Oh, yeah, we do.” Malinda looked at Grandaddy. “We have to go finish the birdhouse.”
“Okay, let’s go!”
“Have you checked the rat trap lately?” Malinda asked as she winked at Nama.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t in awhile. Have you?”
“Yeah, and there’s this huge rat in it!” Malinda struggled to keep the smile off her face.
“Really? Well, I suppose we should go and get it out, then. Come on,” Grandaddy tramped out the door carrying Malinda.
They made their way to the tool shed and Grandaddy opened the door. He set Malinda down on the floor. Malinda smirked after Grandaddy turned his back.
This is the best April Fool’s joke ever, Malinda thought.
Grandaddy reached his hand behind his workbench and groped around for the trap.
Oh, no! Malinda thought. His hand’s going to get eaten by the trap! Malinda started to say something, but she was interrupted.
“Goodness, Malinda, you were right,” Grandaddy grunted.
“Um, what?” The smile disappeared from Malinda’s face.
“I said that you were right. This thing really is a whopper.” Grandaddy pulled the trap from behind the workbench.
Malinda’s eyes widened. In the rat trap was the biggest rat Malinda or Grandaddy had ever seen.
“Uh, yeah, I, um, I told you that it was big,” Malinda said with a weak laugh.
“Yuck, this guy smells horrible!” Grandaddy held the trap at arm’s length, holding his nose with the other hand.
“Uh, hehe, yeah, he sure does smell nasty.”
Grandaddy tossed the whole thing into the big garbage can outside the shed.
“Come on, let’s go tell your Nama about what we found,” Grandaddy suggested.
Malinda jumped into his arms again, still bewildered by how her joke had backfired.
“I guess I should have checked like Nama said,” Malinda muttered to herself.
“What was that?” Grandaddy asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Malinda sighed.
The Holes in the Wall
Cy struggled to finish the last of his math homework. Being a ten-year-old boy whose friends were waiting to play with him, it wasn’t an easy task. He had been working on his math homework for twenty minutes already, and he wasn’t allowed to go out and play until it was finished.
“Cy, honey, are you almost through? Bill wants to know how long you’ll be,” his mother called up the steps.
“One more problem, mom!” he shouted back. Cy bore down with his last ounce of power and in thirty seconds, he was dropping the pencil on his desk and tearing toward the door.
“Coming!” He nearly tumbled down the stairs head-over-heels, but he caught himself at the last moment. He hooked his hand around the end of the banister, jumped off the last step, and swung himself around to face the kitchen. He was greeted with shouts of excitement.
“All right, man, we’re gonna go have some fun!” one of the boys yelled.
“Let’s go!” Cy whooped in response.
The four young boys ran out the back door, cramming through it, each boy attempting to be the first one out. Cy’s mother smiled at the scene. She jumped when a hand rested on her shoulder from behind. Spinning around, she started laughing again.
“Hi, sweetie!” she giggled. “Isn’t this entertaining?”
Cy’s parents both laughed as the last boys squeezed through the door.
Outside, the boys scrambled in an unspoken race to the playhouse next door. The playhouse had once belonged to children living in the big house, but when they moved, nobody used the playhouse anymore. Since the big house was now occupied by an elderly couple, no one minded if the boys played inside, which was exactly what they did.
The boys reached the little house, out of breath. Bill, the oldest boy, reached for the door handle. Bill was usually the one in charge. He turned the handle and stepped inside the playhouse.
“Come on, what are you people waiting for?” Bill’s voice echoed inside the empty house. “Get in here.”
The boys followed exuberantly.
“Okay, I thought of something this morning, and I’ve been waiting all day to see if it might work. We could punch holes in the walls and hide stuff in them. It’ll only work if the walls are hollow, though. I’m going to try it now.”
Every pair of eyes in the room stared intently at Bill’s hand. His hand drew closer and closer. In it was a little pocketknife. He planned to stick his knife in, then twist it and create a round hole. He jabbed the blade into the sheetrock and gave it several sharp turns. Slowly, a hole was formed. Every boy in the room stared with awe.
“I want to make one.” Cy broke the silence.
“Okay, here, make another one over there.” Bill handed the pocketknife to Cy.
Cy grabbed the knife and jammed it into the wall. He repeated the process several more times, producing a star-like shape. He eventually started to twist the knife, and the hole materialized much faster than Bill’s had.
Over the next hour, each of the boys took a turn with the knife. None of them figured on getting caught for their deeds, so they put around twenty-five holes in the wall.
“Boys? Cy?” A voice rang out from outside the playhouse. “Are you in there? It’s time for dinner.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll come home in just a few minutes.”
“Okay, make it snappy.” The boys could hear Cy’s mom walking back home.
“I should go too,” said George, another boy who had participated in the vandalism.
The boys all jumped out of the playhouse and scampered back home. Cy ran across a few backyards and crashed through the back door of his house.
“I’m back, mom!” he hollered.
“Don’t yell inside. Come sit down to dinner.”
The next day, a few hours after school, Cy was just getting around to his homework. He finished the first few problems, but before he could get any further, he heard a booming voice calling up the stairs.
“Cyrus Leighton, come down here this minute,” it bellowed. “I need to talk to you.”
Uh-oh, Cy thought, what did I do this time?
Cy trotted down the stairs and into the kitchen, swinging around the end of the banister again. He arrived in the kitchen to find only his mother.
“Your father’s waiting in the study.” The expressionless look on his mother’s face told Cy that his father was not at all pleased with him at the moment.
Cy let out a long breath and plodded into the study.
“Sit down,” said his father. Cy sank into a chair.
“Now, I understand that you played in the playhouse next door for a long time with your friends yesterday.”
“Yes, sir, I did.” Cy was beginning to realize why he was in trouble.
“What did you do inside the playhouse?”
Cy was sure his father knew what the boys had done, but he didn’t want to confess until he had to.
“Well, we, uh…we just, um…played.” Cy knew his father didn’t believe him.
“Did anyone have a pocketknife?”
“Bill was playing with his.” Cy was careful to leave out the fact that he had also “played” with Bill’s knife. “He was just, um…yeah, um, just playing with it.”
“Cyrus Leighton, you tell me exactly what you boys did to that house yesterday.”
“Bill poked holes in the wall.”
“Oh, Bill did, huh? He did that for an hour while all of you other boys just watched?”
Cy knew he was cornered, but he still wasn’t going to admit to anything. “Uh, well, yeah…and George and the other guys poked some too.”
“Other guys?” his father pressed.
“Yeah…well, I poked a few.”
“Ah. Well, now, that’s not a very nice thing to do, is it?”
“No.” Cy stared into his lap.
“Do you think that you should get a punishment?”
“Well Bill started i–”
“I don’t care who started it. Bill’s going to get a punishment, too. Don’t you be worrying about Bill. Do you think you should get a punishment?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Your mother and I decided that an appropriate punishment for you is to keep you home from the baseball game.”
A look of distress crossed Cy’s face. He and his dad went to baseball games together a lot, and there was a big championship game coming up. The team from the town where Cy lived had made it to the championship, and Cy and his dad had gotten tickets to go. Cy had been looking forward to that game for a long time.
“I know how badly you want to go to that game,” the deep voice continued, “and I want to go too, but maybe this way you’ll remember not to ever do something like this again.”
Cy hung his head and shuffled back to his room. He certainly wouldn’t forget.
Just in Time
The sun had just risen and Caroline, her mom Carrie, and her brother William were all in the car on the way to the airport. Their flight to California was scheduled to leave at eight o’clock that morning, and the family had left with a thirty minute time buffer in case of traffic, and traffic there was. There had been an accident involving several cars, and it was blocking all of the lanes. The three had been sitting in the standstill for almost five minutes when they were jostled by a powerful impact from behind.
“What was that?” little William asked sleepily.
Looking in the rearview mirror, his mother replied, “We just got rear-ended.”
“What’s that mean?”
Caroline broke in. “Someone just hit our car with his.”
“Oh.” William pondered this new-found information for a moment. “So are the police going to came and take him to jail?”
“Not quite,” Caroline laughed. “They will make him pay to have the car fixed though, right Momma?”
“Well, yes, but I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon,” she responded.
“Why?” William gave his mother a quizzical look.
“For one thing, we’re never going to get to the side of the road when no one’s moving, and for another, any policeman in the area is going to be too concerned with that accident up there to help us right now.”
Right on cue, the cars started to move. Carrie went against the grain and pulled to the side of the highway. The car behind followed her.
“Are we going to make it to the airport on time?” Caroline wondered aloud.
Her mom didn’t have a chance to answer. An ambulance on its way to the big wreck stopped at Carrie’s window. She rolled her window down.
“Do you need me to call a policeman, ma’am?”
“Yes, please, that would be helpful,” Carrie replied. “Thanks.”
The paramedic and Carrie talked for a minute.
“Is anyone hurt?” the paramedic asked.
Carrie turned around to the backseat. “Are you two okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison, and then they laughed.
Carrie turned back around. “We’re all fine, just a little startled.”
“All right, then, someone will show up before too long to help you.” The man smiled.
“Thank you very much.”
The paramedic continued to the bigger wreck, and Carrie rolled up her window.
“Caroline, you might as well pull out some schoolwork while we wait.”
Caroline groaned and climbed over the seat into the trunk. After rooting around in her suitcase for a minute, she pulled out a textbook and tossed it onto the seat in front of her. She followed after it, bending the front cover on her way over the backseat. Carrie turned around to see what her daughter was doing. She was met with a startling scene. One of Caroline’s legs was still draped over the backseat, and the other was on the floor. Caroline stared up at her mom with her head dangling upside-down off the seat.
“Oops.”
William snickered into his hand as Caroline untangled herself from the backseat. Finally, Caroline ended up back in her original seat with her seatbelt on and her book in her lap. She opened the book and pretended to read, glancing out the window every so often to check and see if the police car was approaching. Eventually, she peeked out the window to see a blue and white car sailing down the shoulder of the highway.
“Momma, the cop’s here.”
“I see, hon.”
The police car pulled to a stop behind the car that had hit Carrie. A female police officer got out and strode to the car nearest to her. She stood and talked to the driver for a moment, periodically jotting notes down on a pad of paper in her hand. After smiling and nodding to the man, she continued to the next car. Carrie rolled down her window.
“Hello, there,” the policewoman said in a friendly tone.
“Hi,” Carrie answered.
The policewoman turned her head at an angle so that she could see the kids in the back of the car. “You kids okay?”
Once again, they spoke in unison. “Yes, ma’am.” The policewoman smiled and William and Caroline giggled again.
The policewoman turned her attention back to Carrie. The two women conversed for several minutes, and after getting the information she needed, the policewoman told Carrie that she could go on her way.
At this point, the big wreck had been cleared, and traffic was moving again. Carrie pulled into the stream of cars and continued on her way. The thirty minute time buffer was long gone, and the threesome’s flight was scheduled to leave within the next twenty minutes.
In ten minutes, they had made it inside the airport and were checking in at the ticketing desk.
“Ok, I can give you the tickets, but I don’t think you’re going to make it, ma’am,” the ticket agent said apologetically.
“You mean time-wise or seat-wise?” Carrie asked, out of breath from running into the building. Since Carrie, Caroline, and William were flying standby, they got the lowest priority. That meant that they only got the leftover, unclaimed seats. Depending on the flight, a standby might or might not get on.
“Oh, there are plenty of seats, but I don’t think you’ll get there in time.”
“We’ll try.” Carrie was determined. “Will you please give us the tickets?”
“Sure.” The woman looked doubtful as she handed Carrie the tickets. “Your gate is T5, and the doors are closing in six minutes.”
“Thank you,” Carrie said hastily. “Kids, let’s go.”
The three were off in no time. They managed to make it on the plane, but just barely. The rest of the day was uneventful, but all three remembered it for that one stressful event.
Do Dreams Come True?
“We’re leaving in ten minutes,” Spencer called.
He had been planning a trip to eat lunch at a secret place for his wife, two daughters, and son. None of them had any idea where they were going. Spencer had been planning to take them to the Barnstormer’s Grill in Williamson, GA. He and Carrie had stopped there once before when it was closed, and he had liked the looks of it and wanted to go back. The restaurant was just steps away from a grass runway for old planes. Equally close was a hangar for antique airplane repairs.
“I’m coming!” Caroline shouted in reply. All morning had been devoted to schoolwork that Saturday, and Caroline was ready for a break.
Blonde-haired William skipped out of his room. The four-year-old was ready to get out of the house after being cooped up inside all morning.
Carrie opened the door of her bedroom and came out with her purse, ready to go.
Sarah was already in the car, reading the book she had recently checked out from the library.
“Caroline, let’s go,” her mom yelled.
In exactly thirty seconds, Caroline’s door was heard opening. She appeared from around the corner. Her brown hair was pulled into a ponytail. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt, she carried a book in her hand.
“Ready.”
The family of five headed out the back door. Once they were on their way, Caroline pulled out her book and started reading. The ride was around forty minutes long, and most of the roads were gravel. After bouncing down the many gravel roads, Spencer announced that they had reached their destination. The GPS confirmed it.
“You have reached your destination,” it declared in a monotone.
William whooped and leapt out of the car. Carrie realized where Spencer had taken them, even though none of the kids did. The group plodded up the stairs to the restaurant.
Once inside, they discovered that they were the only patrons. Because of that, they got good, attentive service. A girl with a nametag that read “Kristen” greeted them.
“Hi, there, what can I get y’all to drink?”
The family made known their preferences, and the waitress went to fulfill their orders. Each person stared out the huge windows at the grass runway and the land beyond. In the distance was a log house with a green tin roof. Beyond that was a beautiful lake with a palatial brick home on the other side of it. White fences surrounded fields filled with horses. The scene looked as if it had been plucked from a magazine.
“Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to live in that log house? You could watch all the planes come and go.” Spencer remarked to his wife.
“It’d be like a dream come true,” she responded.
The waitress returned with the drinks. She distributed them and doubled back toward the kitchen. On her way there, she passed another woman headed to the family’s table.
“Hi, there.” The woman introduced herself as Trudy Gill. “Do y’all know about what we’re doing here?”
“No, we don’t,” Spencer said.
Trudy proceeded to tell the group about the half-built structure on the other side of the runway. It was to be a museum that would commemorate the first Atlanta airport. The long term plan was to have six more hangars built in the future. Once the first hangar was finished, the restaurant would move into that building. The other buildings would house things such as assisted living, lots of old airplanes, other antique machinery from the 1920’s and 1930’s, and possibly a hotel. The log house was part of a subdivision that backed up to the runway and to grounds of the museum. There were almost thirty lots in the development, and fewer than five of them had been sold.
The family was astounded that they had just been dreaming of having a house like the log house, with a view of the runway and access to use it. Here was the manager of the restaurant telling them that there were about twenty-five lots for sale nearby. The group asked more questions and found out more about the project, and Carrie and Spencer decided that they wanted one of the lots. The rest of the day was spent looking at the various lots and walking around inside the partially built museum.
Within a few months, Carrie and Spencer had bought one of the lots. Almost a year after that, Carrie had another boy. The family made plans to build a house, and now (in 2010), there’s a house on their lot, and the family, now including another member, plans to move there in December, two and a half years after they made that first visit to the Barnstormer’s Grill.
