My Great Adventure

By G. E. Shuman

            I will soon be embarking on a great adventure; at least it is a great one from my perspective.  Other people have certainly been on bigger adventures, but this one is going to be fun. I am not heading for the top of Mount Everest, (thankfully), or to the moon, (I wish), but what I am doing is going to be pretty exciting for me.  Many times, I think, half of the fun of a big trip is in looking forward to it.  It’s fantastic to wake up one day knowing that you will soon be at Disney World, taking a cruise, or visiting another country.  For me, a camping and/or fishing trip is also something I look forward to a lot.  As I said, the ‘looking forward to it’ part, is nearly as much fun as the actual trip.

            The adventure that I am, at this point, very much looking forward to, is not to a theme park or to another country.  It isn’t even to go fishing. It is also not a family vacation, although I wish my family could join me.  My trip, near the end of April this year, will be to go south to pick up something that I bought way back last October. I have told many people that I know about this purchase of mine, and probably have bored them to tears with the story. So, now it’s your turn. You get to be bored to tears with the story, and I probably don’t even know you. 

            You see, I have been talking about buying an antique, classic, Volkswagen Beetle, probably since you could buy one of those adorable little cars brand new.  In fact, I know that is true.  I fell in love with those cars when my grandfather purchased a new forest green one in the mid 1960’s, and again when my dad bought a brand new baby blue one in 1974.  Believe it or not, I have since seen an exact duplicate of Dad’s VW, with zero miles on the odometer, in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Wow! Maybe I’m the one who is the antique.

            For years I wished I had purchased a beetle new, way back then, and just kept it, un-driven, until now.  In the ‘60s the newspaper ads were selling them for $895, including delivery from Germany.  Wow, again.  Of course, I was a kid back then, earning a dollar and twenty five cents a week, mowing my parents’ lawn, so $895 might as well have been eighty nine thousand dollars, to me.  That’s the way life, (and inflation) is.

            Ever since that long ago time, I have been occasionally watching for a really good deal on a really nice VW, and have come close to buying one or another of them a few times over the years.  That was until last fall, when my keen-eyed mom, a vibrant woman in her (early) 90’s, spotted one in a Walmart parking lot near her home in Florida. She wrote the information down, and called me the very same night. 

            I soon pursued the car, and it was a match made in heaven, or at least one made in Florida, which is close enough. After contacting the owners, who turned out to be fantastic people, and after agonizing over the decision for several weeks, I said ‘I do’ and purchased the bug, for real.  Sometimes I still can’t believe I did that. 

            So, several weeks from now I will fly to the Sunshine State, visit my mom for a few days, and start the long and gentle journey home, behind the elderly wheel of my new, 46 year old car.  I can hardly wait! I have thought of, somehow, sending out alerts to family and friends, as I make my way up the country, sort of like the ‘Santa sightings’ that used to be done on local radio stations as the jolly old elf made his way across the country from the north pole, on Christmas eve.  Hopefully, THIS jolly old elf will find his way back up here without incident, (or accident), thanks to an IPhone and GPS, which Santa never had. I’m going to take notes and record comments from people along the way, and I promise to let you know how the trip went, in a future column.  

            I hope you weren’t too bored with the tale of my recent purchase, or of my plan to bring my baby home.  Life is short, cute little antique cars are few, and we need to savor our great adventures, however they come to us. 

Standing In Line

By G. E. Shuman

            I remember that, many years ago, a pastor friend of mine said that he got many of his best sermon ideas from tea bags.  He wasn’t reading tea leaves or anything, but reading the tags that a certain brand of tea uses on their tea bags. You know, he was talking about the ones with the little proverbial sayings on them.  Anyway, at the time I thought it was fascinating that he not only did that, but that he shared that information with me. 

            I don’t get ideas for this column from tea bags, mainly because I don’t drink tea unless I am sick, and not very often, even then. I will admit that some of my columns do generate from thoughts of one thing or another either shared with me in passing, or shared with me in an email. Yes, I do still use email, as old fashioned as that might seem to some. I have not graduated to social media, and have no intention to do so. I’ve heard that face book is also becoming outdated and quaint; something only old ladies use, and I’m not an old lady. I’m waiting for the next revolution in communication, so that I can refuse to use that, also.  (Don’t mess with old people.)

            The other day I did receive an interesting email from a friend, with a list of admonitions to younger people regarding things that happen to us when we’re growing older, as both of us, somehow, seem to be doing.  One thing that caught my eye on that list was the idea that, when you are older, “Fewer things are worth standing in line for.” I immediately said ‘Amen!’ to that, and also immediately decided to write this column.

            It really is true. The older I get, the fewer things are worth standing in line for.  I think that the ’14 items or less’ aisles in my favorite supermarket are a great idea, but I’ve always wondered how they came up with the idea of ‘14 items’ in the first place.  Personally, I think it should be 3 items or less in that aisle, for this reason.  People my age might not mind standing behind a shopping cart full of groceries, driven by a young woman with a screaming child in the seat of the cart, if we have 14 items to buy.  For me, it’s kind of fun to be behind that woman in such a situation, and make stupid faces at the kid. I can’t spank him, but somebody should. I absolutely refuse to get myself into one of those lines if I have only 2 or 3 things to buy.  I want to see a 3 items or less checkout in my supermarket.

            Super stores, big box stores, and such monstrous places are even worse.  I don’t even go to those unless I intend to buy a cart full of whatever stuff it is I went there for. If I was alone I could save my list up for a year or so, to do that.  If I do any substantial shopping in one of those stores it means that my wife is there with me, and I can sometimes wander off while she checks out, AFTER I help her get that cart full of stuff onto the checkout counter. (That reminds me, in all sincerity, I used to have a brother in law who would stand in line at a store with my sister, and pass gas as she placed their items on the counter to check out. He would then silently walk away, leaving her alone there with the ‘goods’.  This could explain why I ‘used’ to have this brother in law.) 

            Fast food restaurants, these days, are also on my list of places I have trouble standing in line for. In these establishments, the line of customers is rarely the problem, I have found.  It’s just that some of the people working in those, these days, don’t seem to understand that I am there to get a burger, or whatever, and not to hear them talk about their girlfriend/boyfriend, whatever the case may be, to a fellow employee, or, worse, to watch them text that girl/boy WHILE talking to a fellow employee.  The idea that the customer pays their wages never seems to enter some of those people’s heads, I have thought, as I’ve waited to order my food. Lately I’ve taken to using the drive through windows if I decide to go there for food. (I might still have to wait, but at least I can sit in my car for the duration, and I don’t have to watch some teenager scowl in disgust over his/her phone.)

            In all of this, I’m not sure if I have just become more curmudgeonly and impatient as time has passed, or if lines really were shorter and service better years ago. As with most things, it is probably a bit of both.  I might just go over and order a cheeseburger and coffee, and try to figure that out.  I also might not.  One thing is for sure. I have fewer days ahead of me than behind me, and some things are just not worth standing in line for.