A Collection Of Short Stories & Poems

On the Road with Anne

On the Road with Anne

I sat outside my motorhome with Anne, my dog, and my traveling companion. It had been a warm fall day, and it was beginning to cool off. Anne and I were enjoying the late afternoon sky change into twilight. I watched an elderly gentleman across the way with a cane as he hobbled and struggled to prepare a fire. He appeared to be old. I would guess the early to mid-eighties. As I studied his labored movements, I thought about myself just turning sixty-eight. I could not help but think that will be my future, sooner than I was willing to admit.

He got the fire started, and after a time, his wife, who was maybe seventy, joined him. An even more elderly woman and a small dog appeared with a blanket wrapped around them both. I would guess the woman’s age in the nineties.

I imagined it might be the wife’s mother. I put down the book I was reading, Ezra Pound Poet by A. David Moody, and sipped the last of my first martini of the evening. As I watched across the way, the gentleman beckoned me over to join them. I picked up the small chair I was sitting on, and with Anne, we walked over to sit by the fire with them.

“I see you travel with a small dog,” was his greeting.

I replied, “Yes, this is Anne. I see you also travel with a small dog, I said” referring to the small dog wrapped in the blanket with the elderly woman.

“We travel with two dogs, five cats, and eight turtles,” his wife replied.

I looked over at the ancient woman and thought to myself, “And a mother-in-law.” The mother-in-law gave a funny, toothless grin and nodded, confirming the wife’s statement. I then looked at the small trailer they had. My look of astonishment did not go unnoticed, and the wife said, “Yep, the rest are inside.”

Quick to change the subject, I asked, “How long are you staying?”

“We leave tomorrow. We have been here eleven days,” replied the gentleman.

I looked at the older woman wrapped in a blanket with the head of a small dog sticking out. She just smiled a weird kind of grin and nodded. Wrapped in the blanket, with no teeth and disheveled hair and the head of the small dog sticking out, she had the appearance of a strange two-headed animal. Just then, the wife got up and went to the trailer door. She opened it, and a large cat bounded out and took its place on a small table near the fire. Anne was in as much shock as I was and didn’t as much as flinch.

Because I had a career working with numbers, my mind went straight to calculating the number of cat boxes, dog clean-up, etc. I had not seen them walk a dog or empty a cat box the entire two days I had been here. I could only imagine the smell inside the trailer.

The gentleman then began a conversation about being twice retired: once from a bank and seventeen years later from a major university. This confirmed his age to be close to what I thought. The wife added that she was retired from a large hospital and enjoyed traveling with all their animals.

We talked about the life span of turtles compared to that of dogs. We talked about politics, this year’s election, and so many other subjects. They were intelligent, knowledgeable, and wel -read. We had the most engaging and interesting conversation for almost two hours. The older woman would express herself with that grin and a nod of agreement or a kind of frown and different headshake when she disagreed. What wonderful people they turned out to be, with such diverse and interesting points of view. I was sorry they were leaving in the morning. I would have enjoyed spending more time with them. Our first impressions of strangers are often so wrong and based on judging people by how we choose to live.

Finally, I excused myself; Anne and I headed back to our motor home. Walking back, I couldn’t help but wonder why at family events, like Thanksgiving, when you are with the people you love and care about the most, honest discussions with deep and varied opinions end with arguments and hurt feelings. Maybe it is because there are no agendas during brief encounters with strangers we will never see again. They are just brief interactions among strangers who enjoy each other’s differences and company. This night underscores what I find most enjoyable about travel with Anne. It’s a wide variety of people we meet. We got to the motor home. As we entered, I paused. I still couldn’t get my head around traveling with two dogs, five cats, eight turtles, and a mother-in-law.