Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don't know
Oh no, oh no
--Mick Jagger & Keith Richards,
The Last Time
There is a museum in Dayton, Ohio, that I went to a few years ago called
the British Transportation Museum. I've decided to give them my little English convertible, because I'm getting too old to enjoy it and nobody else in my family wants it -- it is, after all, more than 20 years old now, and a little expensive to maintain in the style it's accustomed to. Just like a trophy wife, come to think of it, and all the members of the next generation of the family are a little too intelligent to want to take on that burden. Plus, it's really not their style. They're more the Back-Country Vacation types than the fading-luxury touring-car crowd. So it'll go to a museum devoted to cars of similar parentage, where it will be appreciated for its lineage and lines: the fine materials used in its construction, the achingly beautiful sweep of the hood, the sexy swells of the wheel arches, the evocative grille, the little Pegasus melting on the dashboard (which the museum will probably remove).
This trip started off as a final wander in
my beautiful car that would end at Dayton. But it turns out that the group that owns the museum doesn't have its tax affairs in order just now, having suffered the lot common to many small volunteer-run charitable organizations: its tax-deductible status has been suspended until its paperwork is brought up to date.
That was enough of an excuse to prompt me to put off my donation until, oh, next year. But in the meantime, I had already planned the trip to the point of arranging to visit someone in New York -- since I was going to be in the area -- that I had not seen in some years. I was
committed. So now the plan is a round trip: San Antonio to New York and back, and as long as I'm going all that way and probably will never be going back, I may as well tick some boxes on my bucket list. To that end, I will, on this trip, go through the last two counties in
Tennessee, the last eight counties in
Kentucky, and some of the many remaining counties in
Georgia (on the way back,
if I actually stick to the plan. I have a history of not doing so, but I still make the plans).
So this morning I headed off for what could well be my last wander in my convertible. A bittersweet thought. I cut across Texas today from San Antonio to Texarkana, and have pulled up for the night in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. This morning I listened to a short (2-hour) audiobook written and performed by the late TV personality Steve Allen, a sort of quickie murder mystery involving the Japanese mafia in Las Vegas. I enjoyed it, and since I was just zipping along highways in broken weather I had the top up all day and could actually hear it all. (Didn't get any rain to speak of despite the forecast.) I met my friend Hank in College Station for an early lunch, and we spent a pleasant hour making plans that may or may not ever come to pass. You know how it is. After lunch I started another audiobook, Every Crooked Nanny, another light-weight murder mystery. And since I'll be on freeways until after Memphis tomorrow, I should be able to finish it before the top goes down and audiobooks become an iffy proposition.
I'm hoping to get through Little Rock before the rush-hour traffic gets too bad in the morning, and I hope to get through Memphis in the mid-morning lull; though drivers are so bad in Tennessee that I fully expect to hit back-ups and slow-downs caused by accidents before the city limits are behind me. Then, when my audiobook is finished and I'm off the freeway, the top will come down and, I hope, stay down until Westchester. The forecasts are good -- clear skies and moderate temperatures -- and I have more than enough time for a relaxing, laid-back voyage, with lots of winding mountain roads and a smattering of interesting stops noted along the way. And even if I do make it down to Georgia on the way home, I will still have a week or so to decompress before we pile into the Subaru and go off to the Lake for the annual Huntsman Trip.
Fingers crossed.
