The Tiny Road
When Rachel turned forty, I wanted her to have a really special birthday celebration. I made a reservation for dinner at the La Cantera golf clubhouse for about sixteen of her closest friends. I invited them with a crazy invitation that I made which had a picture of some hillbilly farmer in a pair of overalls. The text was deliberately misspelled and full of bad grammar. It rudely explained that I was providing the grub and that they didn't need to bring gifts. The actual dinner, however, was first class all the way.
Our neighbor's daughter was the manager of the restaurant at that time. She was the one who suggested the venue. I asked her for directions. Unfortunately, I totally misunderstood her. I followed what she said, but started off by turning at the wrong place. I should have gone a little further and turned on a road that went up the hill to the resort entrance. Instead, I turned into the parking lot of the old temporary golf club house. From that point on, I continued following her directions. I just didn't realize I was applying them to the wrong roads.
I took the road that I thought would lead us up to the new club house which sat on the top of a hill with a splendid view of the golf course. It was extremely narrow. I grumbled several times that they needed to put in a wider road. This one was barely wide enough for my van. I worried about traffic coming the other way. What would happen then? There was no place to pull to the side other than right on to the golf course.
We finally reached the top of the hill and came into a parking lot. I wasn't sure where we were supposed to park, so I pulled up to a guy who was working the valet parking and asked him. He looked surprised and asked me how I had gotten into the lot without going through his gate. I pointed to the road I had used. He stared at me in disbelief and said, "Sir, that is only for golf carts!" I was totally embarrassed.
As I already said, the dinner was very nice. I had pre-arranged all the payment details so that I would not have to pay in front of the guests. I also ordered a huge cake, most of which came home with us. In fact, that was the only other snafu of the evening. They didn't have anything to put the cake in for us. They put a sheet of foil over it, and Rachel balanced it on her lap all the way home.
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I can not believe I actually found this on my laptop! I had to take a photo of the photo with my iPhone. This is from an old Microsoft Publisher file that I had to convert to PDF. Then I copied and pasted the text, but the photo wouldn't copy. Anyway, you can get the idea of the invitation.
Howdy ya’ll!
I’m gonna supriz the heck outta Rachel
by invitin ya’ll to be my guest at a supriz
supper just fer her. I done talked with
them nice folks up to La Cantera Grille
and made us some rangements for 7:30
on May 20th, 2000. The grub’s gonna
be delishus, and I’m even springin fer
some some wine and beer with yer
chow! To top it off, we’ll sing that old
birthday tune fer her and eat off a big
old chocolate cake. Heck, we’ll even
toast her with some of that fancy shampane
just like rich folks in the moving
pikshers! Ya ain’t even gotta bring no
presents or nothin. Now we all know ya
wanta come, so give me a secret holler
at my school voice malebox (XXX-XXXX
EXT 2052). You can call day or night.
Just leave a messuj tellin me if yer
comin or not by the 15th. Thanks!