Actually, I wasn't all that happy about it. My inbox that year was filled with depressing "senior citizen" cartoons in which we were drawn with drooping thisses and thats and broken down knees and missing teeth. I didn't want to join this stupid club of decrepit, memory-ravaged Old People one bit!
But I was also off-the-charts excited that September day because I'd bought my first Mini--and I'd been yearning for one for years. She was Pepperwhite with colorful little decals all around the border, and I'd decided maybe she, the car, was the closest I'd ever get to romance. Driving my little toy of a car down the back roads, no hurry to get There, I was euphoric and free and ageless!
When I pulled up to the Hope, Arkansas, depot-visitor's center to inquire about where I might find a Starbucks in town, I was not looking for anything but a cold glass of green tea.
The only other visitor in the depot (the Man-Stranger in Overalls) said, "You won't find a Starbucks in Hope."
(These words, I admit, are not particularly promising words on which to start a romance.)
But as we walked outside together, I was feeling something stirring in me that I'd long ago put to sleep--I was attracted to this man, to his voice, even to his then-serious face with soulful eyes.
He liked my car, he said. He kicked the tires, so to speak, man-style, as I turned on the ignition. Willie Nelson's voice blared from the speakers.
He liked the Hilary bumper sticker I'd just bought next door at the Bill Clinton house, and I told him he could get one if they were still open. He said he'd been listening to Willie, too, in his truck.
Mike was on his way home to Georgia and I was on my way to Cape Cod with a stop planned in Nashville and another in Virginia. We were both headed down the back roads to Little Rock.
We said good-bye. He gave me his phone number. I went to Sonic for tea.
When I drove out of Sonic and saw his truck was still parked at the depot, it occurred to me that we might as well drive to Little Rock in tandem, so I pulled over and suggested I follow him down the road.
Bold, brave move--one I'd never have taken at home in Texas or with anyone else in the car! But I was feeling bold and frisky and brave that day, and not so very old at all....
Here we are a few days later, when he'd already gone to Georgia and returned to Tennessee on his Harley to take me for a ride through the Smokey Mountains:
We were both traveling solo on the day we met, and we both preferred back roads to the main highway. But on the day this picture was taken, I rode for many curvy miles on the back of his blue Harley and by the time we got to Gatlinburg, I didn't want to let him go.
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