The Road Trip

Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I are known for taking road trips.  Seldom are they successful.  In fact, our road trips only seem to lack the presence of Fred and Ethel Mertz for inclusion in an I Love Lucy rerun.

Case in point, a few years ago, I booked a suite online at a hotel in Atlantic City.  Better, it was near Atlantic City.   Actually, it was in Camden, but five blocks from a bus line to Absecon, where I could switch buses and get to Atlantic City. 

On top of this, I had erred gravely on the date of Easter.  I hadn’t been to church in a while, and many parishes frown upon loaded semis in unreinforced parking lots.   So we missed the holiday by, uh, it doesn’t matter.  We missed the holiday, and I will not live it down at any point in the next three eternities.

When we got to Camden, the room was not so much a suite as it was a barracks.  There were three narrow beds in a row.  A black-and-white analog television was bolted to the wall.  I feared that our wake up call would be from a burly gentleman with a crew cut and tan clothes who would refer to us as “maggots.”

So we took a bus to Absecon, and found a nice, albeit retro, suite at Patel’s Motel.  It rained all weekend, but was two whole degrees warmer at 58 Fahrenheit than Easter weekend.   This required the purchase of copious quantities of shoes.

Our luck in Florida has scarcely been better.  Just before the recent unpleasantness, I found lodging in the kind of establishment which one normally finds in the pages of Conde Nast with a boatload of little symbols next to its name.  They were remodeling, and bonus, they were a mile from the nearest Lone Star Burger.

Then I got the brilliant idea to go out in the sun.  People who observe Mrs. Wandering Gentile, the Hijastras, and me together are prone to observe the three pretty ladies and, “…damn, Casper sure got FAT!”

I spent two months with my legs in the same peculiar shade of orange as John Boehner’s face.  And I learned that an extremely bad sunburn itches.  It itches A LOT.  I remembered to cover my coconut and arms, but I had NEVER had sunburn on my legs in 40 years of living.

I don’t ever want the second one.  From now on I wear a burqa to the beach.

This year, we had an abbreviated visit to Florida.  I went, in my burqa, reading British tabloids and periodically retiring to the mini mart for frozen beverage treats.  We found a pleasant room in a chain hotel, and I even got my trip to Lone Star Burger.

Mrs. Wandering Gentile was not as enthusiastic about us returning to Lone Star Burger for dinner.  She wanted chicken, and half a mile before we got to Lone Star Burger, there was an Admiral Squibby’s Connecticut Chicken.   I would not have chosen Admiral Squibby’s, being that we have one so close to home their grease spatters our back patio.

Mrs. Wandering Gentile, the Hijastras (Jasmine and Sasha), and I were to split 16 pieces of Hartford Hot chicken, two pints of El Morro Style black beans and rice,  four Big River sodas, and four Adirondack Apple pies.

As Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I were filling our sodas at the fountain, there came an unholy roar from the dining area.  The suction pulled my Red Sox cap straight off my burqa.

We entered to find Sasha, the younger, but physically more imposing of the two sisters hunkered in the corner in a Jet Li pose, defending a Hartford Hot drumstick.

Everything else was gone.  Our order; a table that the manager was pretty sure was there when he got there; and some New Haven Hush Puppies which were not technically ours, because they had been technically paid for by the polite senior Canadian couple at the next table.

As I made things right with the Canadians, I heard Mrs. Wandering Gentile ask the petite Jasmine what she had to say for herself.

“I was hungry.  Can we get ice cream?”

It wasn’t me this time.