Party favor

I forgot something important. I was driving my red Plymouth Sport Fury convertible northerly on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The lodge and lake at the Peaks of Otter were in full view. I was happy.

Then one of my tires blew out and the car came to rest along the parkway. I got out of the car and hunkered down to inspect the tire. As I did this, I heard a ripping sound as my suit pants ripped from the beltline to the bottom of the placket.

I jumped up. Fortunately, there was no traffic at this time of day on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Fortunately, there was a pair of jeans in the back of my convertible. I grabbed the jeans and dove down into the woods along the parkway, removed my torn suit pants and replaced them with my jeans.

I suppose that I should mention that as I got close to graduation, I stopped laundering my clothes. At the end, I ran out of underwear and just stopped wearing them. So when I removed my ripped suit pants and replaced them with the jeans, there was no underwear at the time.

I clambered up from the woods floor to the parkway and walked down the parkway to the nearest pay phone. You know the rest of the story, sort of. With the exception of this.

The next day, Dad and Frank and I drove down into some tiny little mountain town to pick up my repaired car. That day, Frank and I drove back home to Dunwoody. A day or two later, I secured summer employment as a morning room service waiter at the Terrace Garden Inn on Lennox Road. A day or so later, as I started my employment, I received an unpleasant party favor from my adventures on the Blue Ridge Parkway: a case of poison ivy in a spot on my body upon which I had never received before.

Damn difficult to scratch while delivering someone's breakfast.