Friday Night Video

For Mother’s Day, we have a video that was taken in the same general area where Mom grew up- which was Asheville (or more precisely, Biltmore), North Carolina. I'm not suggesting you watch the whole video- it's kind of long, but it gives you a real good idea of how beautiful the area is. In my opinion, it’s one of the prettiest parts of the country (and this is coming from someone who’s driven through probably at least a half dozen states).

I have a lot of fond memories from my summers in the Asheville area- many of which I've written about here before. But one of my fondest memories is from about twenty-five years ago.

Mom was down at her sister Ellie’s house in Asheville. Ellie was getting ready to move into a retirement community and this meant whittling down the amount of things she could take with her- many of which had been in their family for years. It’s always tough to get rid of stuff when memories are attached to them. And it’s even harder when, unlike my stuff, they’re actually nice things that people might want.

So the plan was that Mom would fly down and Ellie and Mom would rent a van and I would fly down to load it up with at least the mammoth corner hutch, and then drive it back home with Mom.

When I got to Asheville, we went to pick the up the van, and it turns out the guy at the rental place had forgotten to hold it for us. As “luck” would have it though, he happened to have a box truck available. The good news was that it was a bigger truck than the van and we would be able to bring a lot more stuff back with us. The not good news was that the truck was a clunker. As we soon learned (“soon” as in trying to drive it off the lot), it would stall whenever it slowed down. To make it even better, trying to start it again was nearly impossible. Apparently, the old war horse had been beaten too many times and just wanted to go off somewhere to die.

We made it back to the house, stalling several time along the way, and since the truck was big, we were able to pack not only the large corner hutch, but a cement garden bench, the yard swing and a whole bunch of other stuff as well. By that evening, we were packed to the gills.

The night before we left, we went out to dinner at Little Pigs Barbeque, which, by the way, is perhaps the finest dining experience east of the Mississippi. Afterwards, we went back to Ellie’s to relax since we would be leaving early the next morning.

Somewhere around four or four-thirty, Mom and I took off into the early morning darkness after saying our goodbyes to Ellie. The truck protested right from the beginning.

As we headed out, I found that whenever we slowed down, I had to use my left foot to work the clutch and rock the heel of my right foot on the brake while I pumped the gas with my right toes. The truck would still cough and sputter, but at least it stayed alive- barely. Still, it was better than the alternative. I knew that if we stalled, we might not be able to re-start it, and that meant that I might have to send Mom into the middle of the highway with a flashlight to flag down semis for help. I sure didn’t want that to happen. Plus, I didn’t relish the idea of being in the breakdown lane with trucks whizzing by while having to offload all of the stuff from this truck onto another one- or more to the point, having to make Mom do it. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

Regardless, it was a pretty long drive home. But aside from nursing the truck the whole way back and worrying about whether or not we were supposed to be pulling into weigh stations, and having a sore back, it was actually kind of a fun trip.

What I particularly remember was a point early on when we were sputtering up a steep mountainside. We were pretty high up and I tried to hide my nervousness about whether or not we were going to make the rest of the climb. I looked over past Mom and I saw that the sun was just beginning to rise- and it was beautiful. The glow silhouetted the mountains in the distance, and stray rays of the golden sunlight lit the fog which nestled in the valleys. I thought about how beautiful it was and how lucky I was to share this moment, and this adventure, with Mom.

And I checked the flashlight one more time… just in case.