Monday-it was the great Thanksgiving photo chase. Last week my editor started making noises about wanting something for the front page of this week's paper. The disadvantage of a Wednesday paper is that the deadline is too early to get Thursday holiday activities, and then too late to be of any interest if you run it the following week. Do you follow? If not, don't worry.
Last week I got NO RESPONSES at the school to my request for photo ops for Thanksgiving. It was just too early. So I went to the school first thing Monday morning to troll the halls and harass teachers into giving me something, anything to shoot by 10 a.m. I finally found a Kindergarten teacher who stopped her lesson plan, had all her little nippers put on their Thanksgiving headgear, and pose for this photo:
I started out to the farm to pick up our turkey for dinner. Got halfway there and found the road closed. No problem...just an inconvenience...there's really only one way to get to the farm, and I had to drive about 10 miles around to get back to the right road. While there I picked up some wonderful beets and carrots and collards as well. As I made my way home I thought about all the wonderful things I was going to do with my largess.
I got about 2 miles from home when the car decided it did not want to shift gears anymore. 3000 rpm...revving and revving...the transmission was being quite obstinate. So I turned around, put on my flashers, and crawled at 20 mph to my ever-faithful mechanic, Derek Patterson at J.P. Auto. I called Nate, who fortunately had just arrive home from school with all the kids, and asked him to come meet me. He was fine with that. But reality crashed down him like a ton of bricks when he asked me, "You have to leave your car here overnight?"
"Yes," I replied.
"How will you get around tomorrow then?" he inquired.
"I will drive my little red car," I said.
I so he was reminded that as a driver he is on the bottom rung of the ladder.
He accepted this reasonably well, but stewed all night about driving home from school the next day. It turns out he's been driving a GIRL home each day. There would not be room if I drove.
So. The day was getting long in the tooth and I was supposed to take supper to my friend Chris and her daughter, but I was getting tired and feeling a bit harassed, so I was going to beg off. Before I could call to do so, Chris called and asked if I still had the spare key to her house. No, I did not. Our friend Rena still had it. And I could not find her. After several phone calls, I narrowed down her whereabouts and her husband brought me the key. So with Chris and Sammy locked out of their house, I had no choice but to go there with the key. They had driven in from Nashville and were dead tired, so I hated to make her come and get it.
The evening ended well as I introduced them to tater tot hot dish, we drank half a bottle of a very good Red Lexia by Alice White, and laughed a lot.
And I'll write about Tuesday later.
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