Some Damn Good Life Experience(through the eyes of Stephanie): end-of Georgia flotsam

Living in hotels and motels for six months means a consistency: dealing with maids. I can’t count on all twenty of my fingers and toes how many times we have had the Do Not Disturb sign (or, as the Spanish side of the sign says, NO MOLESTE) hung on the door and, before checkout time, a loud knocking begins. I know that maids get some sort of printout sheet that tells them which rooms are supposed to check out that day. I HAVE SEEN THESE PRINTOUT SHEETS. If we stay somewhere more than one night, we don’t get maid service in our room – we just get more toilet paper and clean towels when we need them. So if the DO NOT DISTURB sign is present on the doorknob…and we aren’t checking out…IT MEANS DO NOT DISTURB. We always slide the chain on the door too and if we don’t initially wake up, or they don’t hear us yelling to leave us alone, they will slam the door open as far as the four inches of chain will allow them. Once or twice, the maids have completely entered our room when we’re in our beds. It is very disturbing to have a stranger with a cart of cleaning supplies try to barge in while you are still half asleep. Ahhh, hotels, motels…sometimes the towels are stained with any sort of color smear; I just try to ignore it. Sometimes other people’s disgusting hairs are visible in the bathrooms, in the showers, stuck to walls. I try to ignore those too. And if you are staying in a hotel that has a visible box spring beneath your mattress, my advice is simple: don’t look at it. Some of the most colorful and unforgettable stains reside on the sides of box springs. I don’t even lend my imagination to those. I have implemented exercises in blocking scenarios out of my head. After this trip one word I will certainly not ever miss is “HOUSEKEEPIIIIIING!” I’ve heard that word a million times. And always in the same lilting tone. No matter the race or accent of the maid in question, it’s always said the same way. It’s universal…universally infuriating! House-keep-iiiing!

Somewhere on I-16, after we left the glory of Pooler, we noticed what looked like a pile of cloth and flotsam stacked in the back of the dusty silver pickup truck in front of us…and perhaps some sort of blow-up doll…but then we noticed it was a human face, facing us, with a hat on, leaning up against the window of the truck’s cab…and the random cloth was, in fact, two bluejeaned legs. There was a man chilling in the back of the pickup truck that was going 80 miles per hour on I-16. I had to re-state that. As we pulled closer, I was unabashedly taking pictures of the man and as he waved dully at us as we realized that there wasn’t anyone in the passenger seat of the truck beside the guy driving.

Someone was being punished!

My favorite billboard in Georgia would have to be the one saying JOIN THE SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS. I went to their website and man, I wish I could live in Georgia because I’m telling you – I’d be shellin’ out the dollars to get me a SCV license plate with a big ol’ Confederate flag on the left-hand side. I actually saw Confederate flags proudly waving outside of peoples’ houses. The state flag of Georgia is: half the state seal, and half Confederate flag. Are these people certifiably insane? THEY LOST. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE YEARS AGO. THAT’S A LOT OF YEARS. MOVE ON.

On our way to the Augusta suburb of Groveland, which is where we ended up next, we stopped at a Chinese restaurant. I swear I have not eaten any Chinese food on this trip that is as good as New Hampshire Chinese food. Maybe it’s just what I am used to, but after the experiences I have had with American Asian cuisine across the country, if I was a food critic I would give New Hampshire five stars for Chinese. I haven’t had a decent crab rangoon since December. A consistent element of the American Chinese restaurant is the décor, however, which gives me a sense of comfort. Mirrors, tanks with koi, (I want some koi in a tank. Those suckers are AWESOME) gigantic pictures of nightscaped cities covering the walls, fake plants, perhaps a string of white Christmas tree lights for ambiance. The buffet has similar food items across the country, and similar white signs expressing which delectable dish lies beneath (and these restaurateurs don’t like pluralizing. It’s always ‘boneless sparerib’ and ‘beef with mushroom’ or my personal favorite, ‘donut’.). You can always count on some sort of red Jell-O in the dessert section of the buffet, and some pudding. But it does taste different. It was a Sunday, too, so the place was full of people wearing suits and dresses that poured out of one of the hundreds of Baptist churches we’d passed. Jesus and duck sauce – the ideal Sabbath tradition.

Bill’s friend Matt Plumlee met up with us in Groveland; he’s a UNH associate professor who just finished the semester and was on his way to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and help rebuild houses in Texas for Hurricane Rita victims. (That brings the images of upside-down trucks embedded in swamps back to my mind…something I could never forget…) The four of us spent our Mother’s Day dinner together at a very crowded Cracker Barrel. I’d never eaten at a Cracker Barrel before, but the food was pretty good. Country style, with the cornbread and green beans and friiiiied chicken! (I love that kind of food, but I think my jeans are getting a little tight.) Half of the restaurant is a ‘country store’ with T-shirts and John Deere clocks and jellybeans, and I half expected them to have a glorious refrigerated room full of Cracker Barrel cheese, but no such luck. Whenever we’ve passed a Cracker Barrel restaurant, all I could think of was some sharp (not extra sharp) cheddar cheese. And they didn’t even sell the cheese. Actually I don’t believe there is even an affiliation between the restaurant and the cheese. Man, life does throw you curveballs. Although I did learn that the ‘cracker barrel’ was a staple at old country stores – there was an actual barrel filled with crackers, and you’d pay a nickel for a handful of crackers and then the shopkeeper would cut you a wedge of cheese to go with it, and Cracker Barrel stores used to do this. Sounds good to me, although perhaps a bit unsanitary.

-stephanie

Some Damn Good Life Experience(through the eyes of Stephanie)

What will certainly in the future become legend: my attempt to capture true adventure - the drama, pain, and hilarity of our largely unplanned six-month trip across the country. It's like reality TV, except you're going to read it!

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