Jan. 2, 1998: Together in Texas

I won’t go into detail on the hours we spent standing at a payphone, having our patience strained by the customer service crew at the other end of Budget’s 800 service number. For the most part, we kept driving and stopping to check to see if they’d found us a new car carrier. Even doped-up on their kitty valiums, Callie and Maggie came out of their holes to sit in Beth’s lap and keep her company during her miles with them. Finally, we phoned in and found that a trailer had been located in New Orleans. If you look at your map, you’ll notice that New Orleans is a little out of the way of the westward trek, and that travelers with speed in mind would avoid it by taking Interstate 12, which reconnects with I-10 at Baton Rouge. But they’d found the trailer, so we aimed toward the Paris of the West, and made one more stop for Diesel fuel just after passing I-12.

While I refueled the truck, Beth refueled the car, noticing an awful lot of Budget trucks sitting around. Wound up this was a Budget rental location, and — what do you know? — they had a trailer, too. It only took about 30 more minutes for them to speak to the (nice people) at the 800 number to determine, yeah, it would be okay for us to take this one. I had us hooked up and the car strapped down on the new trailer in no time and soon we were traveling together again and the cats were snugly back inside their cubbies.

That was at about 2 o’clock, and it took us another 6.5 hours to get into Houston. One of my calls before we’d left the hotel this morning was to let my friend Tommy Ewasko know we’d be arriving in Houston tonight, and to ask him to beep me when he got the message. The beep came while we were on the road, and when we stopped to return it, Tommy insisted we stay at his place for the night. When we rolled up to the entrance to his condo, the big, clumsy truck and trailer was conspicuously oversized for any parking we found. I finally pulled the truck up along the side of the road, near some ‘No Parking’ signs. We went in and had a drink, checked out Tommy’s place, and let him know we and our cats really appreciated their offer but would need a little more room. Half an hour later, they were picking us up at a nearby La Quinta. We went to a local hangout and met several of Tommy’s friends, then went to a great seafood restaurant where a host/waiter named Rene served us the most incredible swordfish we’d ever eaten.

Soon, we were back to the hotel for another big night of sleep. We slept so heavily, we didn’t hear Callie knocking everything off every table in the place: keys, watch, pens, pager…. Fortunately, before we left the next morning, I did find the watch….

How to Change Neighborhoods In Only Five Days by Roger Darnell
. Day 1: Thursday, January 1, 1998 – Flaming in Florida
. Day 2: Friday, January 2, 1998 – Together in Texas
. Day 3: Saturday, January 3, 1998 – Tex Take Two
. Day 4: Sunday, January 4, 1998 – Praising Arizona
. Day 5: Monday, January 5, 1998 – Glad 2BN Glendale