Alice, Kelly and I left about midday Monday, Dec. 20, to head down to Alabama for the holidays. God’s favor seemed to be on us for this trip…
We drove through Jacksonville at dinner time, about 10 minutes out of the way, and stopped at Roma’s Greek Pizza on the square. We ordered a half-and-half pizza, one part bacon and the other pineapple. We also had drinks and fried cheese sticks. We were acting a little giddy, laughing and poking fun, because it had been a long drive and a long day. The pizza was a little overdone when it was brought to the table and the waitress said Miss Tina wanted to alter our bill because of that, so she took the ticket from the table and never brought it back.
When I went up to the register to pay for it she asked me what I was doing there. I told her I wanted to pay for the meal, and she said I needed to talk to Miss Tina about that. Miss Tina said she wasn’t charging for the meal and wished us a Merry Christmas. We left a $20 tip (which was at least $10 less than it would’ve cost us), and rushed to the car before they could chase us down and give the tip back…
Then we checked into the Hampton Inn at Oxford. It was about 10:30 when we got there, and they gave us a room on the second floor overlooking the lobby. My roommates woke me up about 3:45 a.m. because I was snoring, and I couldn’t get back to sleep after that. We were right next to the elevator and I was hearing everyone come and go there. They would stop in front of the elevator and talk and laugh as they waited for it. I kept hearing other talking and finally realized the desk clerk had the TV in the middle of the lobby turned way up so they could hear it at the desk. Then at 4:55 the phone rang for our wake-up call, which we hadn’t requested. I called the front desk and asked why we were getting a wake-up call. She said the system must be wacky. I said I could hear the TV in the lobby too and told her I wanted my money back. I finally got to sleep again about 7:30 and slept maybe four hours total for the night. Alice and Kelly went down for breakfast and I joined them following a shower. After eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes I went to the front desk and asked for the manager. He already knew what I wanted, but I took him to the middle of the lobby, pointed at our door just above the TV, pointed at the elevator just behind the wall of our room, and told him if it was me I wouldn’t rent that room unless it was the only one left available. He apologized, and told me they weren’t charging us for the room. Plus they had two new policies now. The desk clerk wouldn’t be blaring the TV anymore at night, and housekeeping would begin checking the phones every day to make sure they weren’t set in advance to go off…
We stopped on our way through Wedowee long enough to say hi to Tom Norton at his family business. We stayed with Bonnie’s family in Roanoke, ate at Sonny’s, a great new restaurant with a buffet. They had perhaps the best fried green tomatoes I've ever eaten. My brother-in-law Ricky left a generous tip there. The waitress started crying and hugging necks. We went shopping at Wal-Mart. I picked out Alice’s gift, went to pay for it, pulled a Wal-Mart gift card out of my wallet and told the cashier to run it because I thought it might have 40 cents or so left on it. It deducted $25 from the price. We ate at Jon Boy’s the next day, visited my sweet mother in the nursing home a couple of times, where she seems happy and was being more verbal and doing more laughing than she has in years. She had us all laughing with the things she was saying and the way she was acting. We opened presents with Bonnie’s family and then headed back up the road…
On the way back we stayed at a Hampton Inn at Athens, Ala. I went out to get a Coke so I’d have something to take my daily bedtime medicines with, and put two dollars in the machine because the cost was $1.25. I got a dollar back in change.
About 60 miles up the road the next morning we needed gas. I stopped at a Shell station where it was priced at $2.95 a gallon. I told Alice I wasn’t gonna fill it up at that price, that I might put 10 or 20 dollars worth in. I noticed you could use your Kroger Plus card for gas there, so I ran the card through to see if I’d get a discount. It knocked off 40 cents a gallon, so I filled up at the best price we’d seen the whole trip. Alice had bought a few gift cards that knocked 40 cents off the price, but I didn’t know that. Another pleasant surprise...
I’m hoping all this good favor extends to Auburn’s upcoming trip to Phoenix on the 10th of next month…
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