Ma's Excellent Driving Adventure--Part 2

Sunday evening and Monday were spent visiting with Ma's family in the Goshen/Elkhart area.

Finally, it was Tuesday...time to head home. Ma would be on her own, with none to help her save her trusty diet Coke, Dove's Dark Chocolates and a small package of Ranchy Doritos.

Could she do it?

One could assume from this post that she did, but one or two excellent points of interest should be mentioned:

Driving through/under Chicago always has a certain deathly flair to it. Large schools of semis weave to and fro across the highway, their sole purpose in life being to obscure the green directional signs from honest, hardworking Lincoln Towncars.

NO MATTER! Ma safely traversed the busy roadway, with no incidents until....her attention was drawn to a large, hairy, tattooed arm, suddenly thrust straight out from a truck driver's window. The truck was slightly in front, on her right, and it seemed his left blinker had been hidden by the front of Ma's vehicle.

Now, despite living a sheltered and bucolic life in Iowa, our heroic matron is not totally unaware of certain social gestures. There is an international language, understood by all, in which a large, hairy, tattooed arm demands immediate fear respect. In addition to this attitude of...*cough*...esteem, there are incontestable words associated with the sudden appearance of a large, hairy, tattooed arm sticking out perpendicularly from a truck driver's window. They are as follows:

"MOVE OVER, YOU CRAZY-OLD-LADY-LINCOLN-DRIVING-BROAD!"

Well sir, Ma was only too happy to comply! She slammed on the brakes eased off the accelerator, accommodating the owner of the LHTA in his traversing 4 lanes of traffic in the space of 1.75 seconds.

It was a particularly beautiful maneuver, especially considering Ma was allowed to keep all her particulars.

But adrenaline thrills aside, most of the trip was uneventful.

Ma next concerned herself with finding a Wal*Mart and an eatery. This is not as easy as it seems, for most Wal*Marts pop up rather inconveniently after their exit has been passed. If the highway department truly wished to be helpful, they would post the little Wal*Mart star on the blue signs designating hotels and restaurants...

Nevertheless, the keen eye of our fearless traveler did not disappoint. The town of LaSalle, IL presented itself as a harbor of pedestrian retail. In fact, there may well have been an actual harbor, nearby...

Certain members of the avian family--25 to 30 of them--waited in the parking lot...not moving...not blinking...just waiting.

Ma suppressed a Hitchcockian shiver and beat it for McDonald's, drowning her cold sweat in a scrumptious 1/3 pound Angus burger with mushrooms and fake Swiss cheese.

Oh, the bliss! Ah, the juice! It was almost as if they had used real beef....from real Bovines!

Ma crowned it, "Ultimate-Yummo-Factor-of-messy-foods-to-eat, while driving."

The remainder of the trip was blissfully quiet, disturbed only by the piercing tones of the Lincoln, announcing a diminishing supply of fuel. Ma engaged in a small contest to see how far past "0 miles" she could go before stopping for gas. When it became apparent that she could not---quite---make it home on one tank, she succumbed and stopped with a mere 13 miles past the empty mark.

After all, at the age of 50, one should certainly show some maturity and good sense, shouldn't one?

Well, maybe next time.
 

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