Stranded in Nowhere, Florida

I was hoping to blog about all my adventures during the week-and-a-half I spent in Washington DC over Christmas.

I’d hoped to recount spending New Years Eve on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border with my Aunt Barb and her Biker Gang, and the few days I spent with her in her mansion and sanctuary for rescue pigs.

I’d planned to tell the tale of driving to North Carolina, spending the night in my car at the airport, flying to Oregon, and spending a week desperately trying to catch up with everyone. (Spoiler alert: I failed miserably, but at least I had ample time with my family.)

And finally, I meant to chat about the weekend I spent with my Aunt Margaret, Uncle Chad, and cousins Austin, Emma, and Nolan, in South Carolina.

But alas, I suppose I’ll have to save all that for my book. Stories are like iPhones. No matter how good the last one was, there’s always a newer and better one. Keeping up feels impossible.

So instead, I’ll tell the story that began roughly 24 hours ago. After spending the weekend with my Aunt Margaret, I prepared to drive south to Florida. Florida! I’d never been to Florida in my life.

Throughout my stays in Tennessee and Ohio, I had asked everyone I could think of if they had Florida connections. I’d heard so many stories of Pinecraft, the Amish Las Vegas, that I wanted to see it for myself. Finally, my friend Rani told me that her husband’s grandmother had a house in Florida, and was willing to let me stay with her!

I’d had a bit of communication with Rani’s grandmother, Erma, but not a whole lot. So that whole 9 hour drive, I had a niggling fear that things wouldn’t work out.

What if I showed up, and she’d forgotten that I was coming?

What if no one answered the doorbell?

What if everyone was already in bed when I got there?

Erma is from Holmes County Ohio, where people get up at insane hours of the morning. I think 5 am is typical. Early to rise means early to bed, right?

I called her, but she didn’t answer. So I left a message. I told her that I’d get in around 9 pm, and if there was anything I should know about getting into the house, she could call me back.

She never called.

So I drove along, and day turned to night, and my phone battery began to dwindle. I figured I ought to buy one of those chargers that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I almost never run out of battery, which is why I’ve never bothered to purchase one, but I am aware that routinely spending hours on the road, going to strange places, and not owning a car charger, is a pretty bad idea.

So I pulled into a gas station in nowhere, Florida, and went inside. Bought a car charger. I was starvingly hungry, so I used their microwave to heat up some food that my Aunt Margaret had sent with me.

But when I settled back into my car and prepared to resume my travels, I realized that the charger didn’t work. So I impulsively dashed back in to exchange it.

And when I returned to my car, and looked in the window, my heart froze.

There were my keys. My phone. My food. Just sitting there, neatly, inside my car that was most certainly locked.

“Cry now, find a solution later,” is my body’s natural response to situations such as these. So I dutifully burst into tears.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” I said to the kind female stranger who was watching me, concerned. “I just locked my keys in my car.”

“Oh man. Well, let’s see. Normally I have my tools with me, but…”

The kind stranger, who I later learned was named Annette, scanned the gas station for a solution. Her eyes rested on a truck full of tools, and she made a beeline for it. It was owned by a skinny guy with floppy hair. I never caught his name, but Annette talked to him, and he followed her back to me, carrying an antenna and a couple screwdrivers.

The two of them, along with a steady stream of strangers who passed by and offered their ideas, and the gas station cashier who gave us duct tape when we needed it, tried a number of strategies. With the screwdrivers, they pried the car door open a quarter inch, before switching to a crowbar and getting it open a bit more. The antenna, with duct tape on the end to keep it from slipping, pushed the door release button.

Nothing.

Annette looped the antenna through the inside handle. Some car doors unlock when you open the door from the inside, but not this one, apparently.

Finally, the male stranger with the floppy hair said he had a grabber tool, but it was at his house, a few minutes away. So he left his crowbar and screwdrivers with us so that we knew he’d come back, and drove off.

Annette and I chatted while we waited. She’s an electrician, which I thought was really cool. Both she and the stranger with the floppy hair have the life philosophy that if you drive everywhere in a truck full of tools, you can fix any problem you might run into. I was really enchanted by this. I’ve never really understood why you’d drive a gas-guzzling truck when you could, instead, drive a car with good gas mileage, but after this experience I could definitely see the appeal of constant access to tools.

Floppy hair returned with a pole that had a little grabber on the end. He used his crowbar to pry open the door a bit, stuck his grabber tool through, grabbed onto the lock tab, and pulled it up.

We’d done it! Well, not “we.” They’d done it. But we all got really excited, and floppy hair shook my hand vigorously and said, “Thank you!!”

Then, perhaps realizing that I should be the one doing the thanking, clarified: “Thanks for letting me help! That felt great!”

Annette gave me her phone number, in case I should ever be in the area again. After once more expressing my deep gratitude, I got in my car and drove away, the wind whistling through my slightly-bent car door.

The roads were wide and empty. I ate my now-cold plate of food, and prayed that Erma would still be up, despite my delay. She had never called me back.

A few hours later, the GPS led me to a dark, deserted-looking house.

I parked, and walked to the front door. Then pulled out my phone and called Erma again.

She answered. “Oh! You’re here! I didn’t expect you until tomorrow!”

She let me in, and we tried to figure out where our communication had broken down. My private opinion is that I told her the wrong day, because despite her age, I still seem like the most likely candidate to make a mistake like that.

She hadn’t gotten the message I’d left earlier that day. “But I don’t always check my messages,” she said.

Thankfully, it turns out that Holmes County people let loose in Florida, staying up later, and sleeping in until 7 am! So I hadn’t woken anyone out of slumber.

So yes, I’m in Sarasota Florida now. If you happen to be here also, or will be in the next three weeks, hit me up!