Category Archives: Life reflections

That Margarita, Though

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Bad days that follow good times feel somehow worse, as though reality wishes to remind you that you’re not on holiday anymore, you have responsibilities and the occasional wild card, so here’s one to remember that with.

I left my last aunt’s house at 6:30 am on Sunday. Four days of visiting relatives, attending conferences, making strategy, and running around with childhood friends from my old neighborhood would culminate in getting to my parents’ house in time to see my sister, who was there helping them get their wills finalized.

This was a big deal, the moment when “what happens if” became a certain plan involving who had what decisions to make and who would come live with them and inherit the house, all the things. My sister and I had agreed an amiable plan, and we really wanted to celebrate it with Sunday fun before they went to the lawyer’s office Monday.

My tire blew at 9:30. There was a rest area right there and off I wobbled–knowing what that smell, that sound, and that pull to the right meant. But hey, I had Triple A, hurray hurray!

Yeah, right.

Four hours later the tow truck took me five miles on their dime and another three on mine. Every time I called to check progress, they told me the tow truck would be there within 45 minutes. A nice truck driver offered to help me, but the Prius had no spare. A couple of people asked if they could do anything, but the tire store open on Sunday was behind us, northbound, and everyone at the rest area was going south. So Triple A got a scathing review, and I got a new tire at 3:30 pm.

Which meant the day with my sister was lost. I should have been there at 1, but still had three hours of driving. After a few phone calls (hands-free, of course) we agreed I would shop up Monday after the wills and we’d all grab lunch before I had to conduct business in Knoxville for my day job.

So I drove another couple of hours until the emotional and physical exhaustion of a packed week of extroverting coupled with the anger of realizing Triple A was a scam and I’d been took suggested now would be a good time to pull over.

I pulled off in some little town called London, Kentucky, and found a hotel with a pool. By then I was starving, and 600 feet straight down the road was this little shack of a restaurant labeled “Mexican Grille”

Whatever. I stashed my stuff in the room and walked to the place, decorated like every other Mexican foodery in America. I ordered a veggie quesadilla and the house margarita.

A minute later the waitress brought me a party in a swimming pool. I’ve seen hotel bathtubs smaller than that thing. I stared at the sparkler, which seemed to be singing something to the effect of “THE SUN’LL COME OUUUUUUT TOMORRRRROWWWW” while simultaneously promising immediate delights.

It had five pieces of fruit, three pieces of candy, and a rubber duck hanging off its rim in addition to the sparkler. Forget salted rim; there was no rim showing beneath that stuff.

The waitress openly laughed at my face, and then she patted me on the shoulder and left.

I don’t think I’ll ever know if she read my face and added a few things, or if that’s the way the margarita sparkles in London, Kentucky, in this tiny little shack of a restaurant by the side of the road in this deserted small Appalachian town.

It was the next day, talking to Jack (hands-free!) as I drove down to Knoxville that he pointed out where I had been: THAT London, where the guy had shot up the highway before disappearing. Well, maybe that explained why the place was so empty and the hotel and the restaurant were so friendly and kind. They were recovering from a very bad week as well.

The sparkler told the truth: in all the hard times and strange circumstances, we still have Light to guide us, some fun to have, a few delightful surprises to lift our spirits in bad times, and always, the friends and family who undergird our lives. Thank God for London, for sweet waitresses who makes amazing margaritas, and for sparklers.

Looking for your Childhood

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I used to have a wooden plate from when I lived in Germany. Around the rim it said

Wo do als Kind gespielt and gesung der Glocken der Heimat sind nicht verkglungen

Word for word translated, where you played and sang as a child, the bells of homeland never stop ringing.

It’s an interesting concept, contrasted to “You can’t go home again,” because after a speaking at a conference in Ohio (talking about medical mistrust and rural rage) I went out to my grandparents’ old farm. It’s not a farm anymore. The pond has been filled in and the dirt driveway that led to their 80 acres of cows and trees was now paved drive shared by three houses going back into the former pasture. Another big beautiful pre-fab aluminum sided house that screamed “we’re retired” had gone up across the street, on top of the ridge for the best view.

We grew up in innocence. Nanny’s house was amazing because it had curtains instead of walls. It had light in daylight and after dark you saw thousands of stars and lightning bugs, and you got to work an oil lamp. Handling matches at eight years old was so cool. The music came from whistling and singing – although Nanny had things to say about whistling girls and crowing hens.

This is the second time I’ve been back there since we all moved away for good, and it’s kinda funny that both visits have been after some milestone of professional accomplishment. In 2018 I was writer in residence at Lafayette Flats, an amazing artistic opportunity that resulted in one of my books (Bad Boy in the Bookstore, my first full-length fiction). This time I was the established expert on rural rage and medical mistrust–something NPR put an interview out on in their THROUGHLINES podcast the same day I spoke.

And both times, I was looking for something that wasn’t there, at the old home place. My childhood. That innocence of how sweet it was to be loved in this weird and wonderful house where my grandparents didn’t have enough money to fill in their framed walls with lumber and hung curtains instead. Best hide and seek games ever. We could run over those hills and nothing but a skunk would harm us. Sweet freedom, happy blissful ignorance of why people lived on borrowed land and took part of their garden produce to that rich guy in town.

Forty years later, drove along Nanny and Grandpa’s old road, which didn’t used to have a name. It was just Rural Route 40, and their house sat between Big Hill and Little Hill. So we called the road that ran out front–the same road–Big Hill Road if you turned right and Little Hill Road if you turned left. And we loved riding our bikes between them very fast. Nanny’s house was the center of this small, safe universe.

Reconciling what I know now with what I loved then made for a bittersweet drive as my Prius went down Little Hill and up Big Hill. The road is called Bethel now, and it has a post office address in New Plymouth–which is still a wide spot in the road. You went out Little Hill Road for the airport, which was a great place to ride bikes. They would shoo you off the runway if a plane was coming–which never happened.

Vinton County Airport still does small planes only. And my heart still lives, at least part-time, between Big Hill Road and Little Hill Road.

You can go home again. You just have to be prepared to fold the truths into the innocence and take it in as part of adulting. It doesn’t negate the memories. Perhaps it even sweetens them. Here’s to you, Vinton County.