Car Pool

Fairlane is punctual. He is also polite. We talk about mountain climbing some. He talks about his future mother-in-law and theory's about Hemmingway's suicide. His potential future mother-in-law is a florist and that makes flower purchases for Sierra, his fiancé, critical. We went through that at Valentines.

"What would Sierra's parents say if I got her Valentine flowers from Public's -- they would be indignant." Fairlane said.

Fairlane is a detailed thinker.

" I agree that it certainly would be an insult."

I bought my wife's roses at whole foods. My wife's mother has dementia.

Fairlane's car is spotless. The other day he bought ground coffee. His car smelled nice for several days. One day he ate lunch in the car and it smelled like Burger King.

I called him out on that and he denied it, said it was Paneras.

  Fairlane drives his car every day, I ride and pay a fee. I have a righteous Ford Ranger. Unlike Fairlane's car my ford is quite funky. It's unreliable and smells like motor oil. The dashboard has a place on it where the plastic has ruptured and believe this or not, the steering wheel leeks power steering fluid.

  Fairlane told me the following story. Once when Fairlane and his brother went out to Colorado on a skiing trip with his uncles family, his brother began to talk more than normal. Gradually he became louder, opinionated and assertive. He began to shout his opionions in an endless filabuster. He talked incessantly. Fairlain's Uncle became alarmed. His uncle feared for his children and wife. He ordered Fairlane's brother out.

    Fairlane and his brother got a cab and Fairlane told the driver to drive. It was cold and dark. Snow fell as they drove. His brother talked manically about nonsense. Fairlane couldn't take it any more.He ordered the cab driver to stop on a desolate stretch of road and told his brother to get out. Fairlane felt remorse; He had the cab stop at the next motel. He paid the sullen cab driver and got out and watched the cab drive away.

In the lobby of the motel Fairlane put his last dollar in the vending machine and it jammed. It would not give him his cheese crackers or his money. He knew his brother would walk to the motel. Fairlane was stuck with his obnoxious brother.

  He talked to the motel's night clerk. The clerk was an ugly pimply teenage girl "There's an undertakers convention in town.I have one last room and it's not clean." she said.

The room was a rat hole. Failane and his brother took it.

  The carpet was worn in the hall that led to their room and the door was hard to shut. Farlane sat down in the chair and his brother sat on the bed and they both stared at the phone. His brother began to cry. His brother was a big guy. 

  His brother explained to Fairlane that the reason that funeral home directors stay in cheap motels is because the funeral business works on a tight margin. "This is not known by the general public." he said. He explained that funeral directors need the money because embalming chemicals are expensive. Just because Funeral home directors wear suites nice shoes and there is mahogany furniture in the sitting rooms, does not mean that the owners are making "big Jack". That's why they try to push the plush Coffins. It's to cover expenses.

  FairLane's brother tried make sense in a nonsensical way.

"Forget it, it's OK" Fairlane said.

  Any way, Fairlane called his folks and told them to send them a thousand dollars for plane fare and another hundred for cab fare and some more money for the motel. Fairlane's parents are school teachers. This expense hit them pretty hard.

The next morning Fairlane and his brother took a cab to the airport and booked a flight back to Alabama. When they boarded the plane, they had to sit next to a drunk. The drunk looked familiar, Fairlane said he was a mortician that he met in the lobby of the motel.Failane's brother hit it off with the drunk and his brother and the drunk mortician began to heckle the other passengers. The stewards were afraid of them. Finally one of the pilots came into the cabin to see for himself. When they got to Atlanta the police came on board to arrest all three.