Marco Island

In February of 1983 my mom and dad rented a condominium on Marco Island, FL to spend a few weeks away from the harsh Iowa winter. They were both retired at the time. Ann was 16 months old, and Jean and I were living on a single income. John didn’t exist yet, but we were thinking about him. When my folks invited us to spend a week with them at the condo we jumped at the chance.

We were young and stupid, or I should say that we were young and I was stupid, so we left Stone Mountain, GA for Florida on a Friday after work. It was a 10 hour drive and we wanted to maximize the amount of time that Ann was asleep. We drove through the night figuring that the folks could take care of Ann the next day while Jean and I slept.

I vaguely remember arriving at Marco Island in miserable shape from lack of sleep after the long drive. We slept fitfully throughout the next day. I suppose the important thing is that Ann arrived with little muss or fuss during the nighttime drive. If baby ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. That’s a corollary to the “momma” statement.

One day, after spending several hours on the beach, it was time to head into the condo to grab some chow. As we made our way through the doorway into the condo Ann squeezed between our legs and ran to her highchair in the kitchen. She climbed up the highchair, plunked her butt down, slapped her hands together in a prayerful position, and called out “Amen, Amen, Amen!”

Apparently Ann was hungry and knew from past experience that food magically appeared at the highchair only after the word “Amen” was spoken out loud. She might have missed the part about food preparation, bowing heads, and giving thanks, but she had the endgame down pat. The rest would come with time.

When it came time to drive back home to Georgia we again drove through the night so that Ann would be sleeping. It’s too bad that I didn’t learn anything from the nighttime drive the week before. We took caffeine pills to stay awake through the night and arrived in Georgia jumping out of our skins. Doubly stupid one week after the first time stupid. I guess that’s how young people learn. We vowed never to do an all-night drive again.


P.S. When it started to rain on our drive back home the car kept fishtailing on the interstate. We had to slow down repeatedly to avoid having a single car accident. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the car. When we got home and had some daylight I inspected the car and found we had bald tires. Money was tight, but driving on bald tires was triple stupid.