Addendum

Wow - The steel trap that is my mind just gets rustier and rustier. And so I've had to come back and finish off the relating of the Great Trip South and Back Again, because I had neglected to tell you about the final chapter: The Return Voyage.

We loved Waynesboro, Virgina so much (and I'm not being sarcastic - it's a delightful place, with a clean, affordable Best Western with an indoor pool, exactly halfway between Birmingham and Williamstown) that for the return trip, we decided to have it be our rest stop again. Even though we weren't going straight home: we were planning to spend a day with my brother Jess, his wife, Stephanie, and our kids' eldest Johnson cousin, their son, Jack.

They don't live in Waynesboro. They live in Waldorf, MD, a suburb of DC - which, Mapquest informed us, is twelve hours from Birmingham. Too dang long a drive, we said. Mapquest then informed us that it was three hours from Waynesboro - and that Waynesboro, as we had previously known, was nine hours from Birnimgham. Ergo, we would lose absolutely nothing, time-wise, if we went to Waynesboro on Day One, stayed the night, and headed out bright and early the next day to arrive in Waldorf.

And so it came to pass: another night in Waynesboro, where we ate at a lovely local Italian restaurant (owned by an Argentine, whose niece was the hostess, and who confirmed for us that Argentina is not the place to go if we plan to spend a year abroad - too many kidnappings), and then hit the hay. (But not before picking up dessert at Arby's, a restaurant I had had a hankerin' for for a while, but which circumstances on the highway had prevented us from patronizing up to then. The kids had shakes for dessert. I had a roast beef sandwich. And, by the way, of the 10 or so patrons and staff we saw there that day, 9 were on the verge of morbid obesity. Just saying.) Up and at 'em the next day, and the drive went through at least three Civil War battlefields. Can't name 'em off the top of my head, but I recognized all of them. Weird - sooo long ago, the landscape totally transformed since then, but that's the place. Saw several roadside shacks that hawk battlefield gear, probably dug up with a metal detector. And so on towards Waldorf, though we got stuck in some traffic because of a big-rig wreck. Chemical spill, so we gathered; news helicopters circling overhead, the whole bit. Got some great advice on how to skirt the blockage from the patrons and staff at a stripmall hairdresser's, and then cruised on to Waldorf.

Auntie Stephanie received us, and Uncle Jess and Jack came home in the afternoon, and the kids got on great. T charged around the yard in Jack's battery-powered car - not, by the way, fantasizing about being a race car driver, or a getaway car driver, or, even, as I would have hoped, a postapocalyptic gasoline pirate. (Still thinking about Georgia, I guess.) Nope: T was going shopping. Frankly, I expected better.

Jack is a ball of fire, running pretty much everywhere he goes. And not slowly, either. He also seems to be built on a par with his cousin Liam, whom the Packers should draft, like now. Those boys are going to be tanks - add Jack's stoutness with his need for speed, and soon Jess and Steph's lovely house is going to be sporting some Jack-shaped holes in a number of its walls. Quite the talker at 3 years old - answers every question with a complete sentence: "Yes, I do." "No, they aren't." "Yes, she is." "No." (Ooh- Wait! Maybe he's not going to - ) "...it's not." He wasn't shy with us or the kids, but he was a little reserved - I managed to extract a hug out of him when it came time to go. But it took some work. Not surprising - last time I saw him, or he saw me, he was a baby. And, to be honest, I was just out of rehab at the time, weighing only about 120, and still hadn't had my facial tattoos removed. Didn't have my prosthetic nose yet, either. So if he has any memories of me, they probably aren't pleasant. Time flies, boy...Man! How does that happen...!

Anyhoo, we spent the afternoon playing football in their green and happy back yard, ordered in pizza, chatted until bedtime, and then off to dreamland. But not before Q chimed in that he liked both their house and the Pajaros' in Birmingham more than ours, because the Pajaros had had a pool, and these guys had a pool table. Nice. Good to see those guys, even if only for a bit - it had been a while. We always seem to miss each other back at the ranch in Wisconsin.

Out like a rocket the next morning for seven and a half more hours of drivin'. Up!, Up! we went, and as we moved northward certain things started to disappear. Cracker Barrel, Waffle House...Civil War battlegrounds (which sparked a fascinating conversation with Q, still continuing in fits and starts to this day: "Why are there no Civil War battlegrounds where we live?" Think about it - that's a complicated answer), armadillo roadkill. And African-American men on motorcycles. Strange - Saw a lot of that in the South, Maryland and Virgina in particular. Up here? Honestly, just about never.

New Jersey. New York! VEMONT!

MASSACHUSETTS!

Ahhh. Richer and wiser for the experience, but happy to be back.

Here endeth the reading.