The 2011 Southeastern Mad Dash, Pt. 1

Let me begin by saying that my first red-eye flight was not what I expected, but I should have known. It was crowded, crammed, late to board, and I didn’t sleep a wink.

More travel joy awaited in ATL. Ah, Hartsfield. Thou certainly art a ring of Dante’s hell unto thyself. Has anyone ever, ever, ever connected to a flight through ATL via Delta and NOT had something go wrong? In this case, my connecting flight was delayed by a couple of hours, but it was all very up in the air (soooooooo punny!) and I needed to probably not leave the Gate Area. You know. Justincase.

Well, a two hour layover turned into four, and cost me over a hundred dollars. The little devils put a foot massage/facial place right in that terminal. Crafty bastards. I was feeling out of sorts at the beginning of the trip. This feeling would persist, and get worse by degrees, throughout.

When I arrived in the Tarheel State, no one was there to greet me. Turns out my Great Uncle had been dispatched at the last minute to retrieve me. Did I have his cellphone? Can you page someone multiple times and never get them? Can two people somehow fail to meet in an airport smaller in width than a football field? How many relayed phone calls does it take to get someone to meet you at the ticketing counter? I leave you to ponder these timeless questions of the cosmos on your own. Just know that I know the answer.

By adopting the Turtle/Ostrich style of Kung Fu (standing really still in one place), I was eventually retrieved and driven out to my relatives place. 

Before I even hit the main house we had to stop by “the barn.” Seems my almost 80 year old Great Unk had “a few spare weeks” and had decided to redo the interior. He fitted the whole thing up as a guest house.

He used juniper, which smells like a mixture of cedar and perhaps some type of Douglas fir or Spruce.

That’s right. This guy gets more stuff done in three weeks than I could in three months. You could give me 3 years and I wouldn’t be able to rig something up by then. He also built, essentially by himself, the other structures on the property. The main house has tongue in groove ceilings.

He also does stuff just for fun, like building a miniature version of the house “for the kids.”

Crap, that thing is better constructed than half the apartments I’ve lived in.

So go on ahead and take a moment to feel worthless. It’s okay. I certainly do, every time I visit. I’m not even going to show the pix of “the garage” with the various Model T cars that he refurbishes and drives around. It would be absolutely disgusting, if he weren’t so damn cool.

Well, after arriving and being unable to eat—(which was a BIG mistake and should indicate how whacked out I was. You ALWAYS eat. ALWAYS. Failure to eat is tantamount to running around nekkid or using the living room as a toilet. It is simultaneously insulting and indicates an obvious mental deficiency. You are both crazy and rude)—my Great Aunt mentions that my Unk or maybe somebody might need to pick my cousin up from school.

She says this in a peculiar way, and I realize something is afoot. I offer my chauffeuring services and away we sail in the boat that passes for her car.

While in the car it comes out. “Well, Cousin X was supposed to pick you up from the airport, but he couldn’t. He’s in jail. We sent Cousin Y over with the bail money, but we haven’t heard from him or her since. I haven’t quite told Great Unk, but we probably need to go on ahead and pick up Cousin X’s kid, since he may still be in jail right about now.”

I would like to pause here and note that Cousin X is actually one of the good cousins. So while this is some ways very typical of this part of my family, it is also a bit unexpected. My only question was “What do we say to the kid?” The reply was “He’s held up on business.” Not a lie. We just weren’t going to mention that it’s the sort of business that becomes a matter of public record and what not.

Well, as it so happens, my Aunt has left her cell phone at home and what do you know? The young teen we are to retrieve is no where to be found at the school pick up spot. A sketchy source tells us, “Oh, she walked.” Being miles from either her mom or dad’s, it’s highly unlikely she walked all the way home. 

This is the beginning of what I like to think of as the “Pedo NASCAR Rally.” My Aunt and I looped back and forth between the connected parking lots of the middle and high school, looking for signs of the kid. In the big white car, cruising super slow, passing the school's sheriff’s car, I was sure we were going to get pulled over. I mean, who cruises the high school parking lots right before school gets out? Pedophiles and drug dealers, that’s who. The only way it could have looked worse was if my Aunt was instead a scraggly bearded and bandana sporting redneck and we were driving an Econoline vine.

In between making these endless, skeevy looking loops and driving up and down the highway and checking gas stations, I’m trying to help my Aunt use my cell phone to call the house and see if any of our key players have checked in. After a few moderately insane conversations with my Uncle, I gently suggest that she have him retrieve the desired phone numbers out of her rolodex, so that we can call people directly. (I don't usually like to jump into the complicated intricacies of spousal communication, but we were getting nowhere fast). Of course we can’t get the digits for the kid in question, but we get her sister, her stepfather, and a few others.

I finally park and several incredibly painful phone call attempts later, I take the phone, dial the sister, and finally connect. She has no idea who I am. I say, “Hi, this is your cousin, Hawk. Here’s Great Aunt.” Turns out the kid in question had made her way to the sister’s car, and was waiting for the high school to let out so she could catch a ride home. Alas, Cagney and Lacey we were not. As we pulled out onto the main road to go home, who should call but Cousin X?

At this point, I’ve been up for approximately 32 hours straight, and I answer the phone with a jaunty, “So, the man of the hour! Got any new boyfriends?”

And to prove that he really is one of the good cousins, he laughed and showed up later to take me out for sushi and sake. I think it’s fair to say we both needed a little nip by about 6 that night, anyways.

On our way out we passed my mom and little bro, just driving up from the Gulf Coast. I was such a zombie that I didn’t even think about it till he said, “Are you gonna be in trouble for driving right by your momma who hasn’t seen you for months and months?” My mom’s general awesomeness is well documented on this blog, so I knew I was basically okay. But still.

I think that day ended around midnight or one in the morn. A little post dinner visiting on my Aunt’s couch, and then off to the bunkhouse to sleep badly and have the strangest dream about Kevin Costner, of all people.

Next installment: cousins of exponential relations, questionable farming practices, and more food than you could shake a stick at!