A First Date With Florrine

On our first date, Florrine fell asleep on the way home, like in that song "Wake Up, Little Susie" and in response, I just kept driving all night long, winding up in another state. Of course, then my $300 car broke down...irrevocably.

I pushed the dang thing off the road and began taking all of my valuables - mostly spare glove-box lightbulbs and empty plastic toy alligator heads out of the trunk and putting them into the many pockets of my vintage GI field jacket.

Really, I hated to waken Florrine - what a damn mess I had gotten us into and she was so innocent and didn't really know me very well. How did she know I would do something this idiotic?

"Florrine, wake up, we're in Alabama or something."

"What?" Florrine looked askance at me, not really recognizing her situation. "What happened? I ought to be home! I gotta go to school!"

"What the hell? You're still in school?"

I was now officially absolutely beflummoxed. My usual course of action had resulted in bad troublems again. Troublems that reefer wouldn't cure.

After an hour or so of skilled negotiation, I got Florrine back on the same page with me and we were on the shoulder thumbing a ride. I was trying to form an image of what to do as the sun crested over a hill and into my eyes, giving me a massive head-ache. I choked down a couple of pain pills without the value of any water as a chaser.

A couple of wild rednecks in a muscle car stopped and admitted us to their world of automotive abandonment. "Have a beer," the driver said cheeringly, pointing to a cooler on the back seat between us.

I took him up on that, pulling a Schlitz (my favorite) out of the box. "Hey, buddy, we're kinda lost here. Which direction are we going on this road?"

"South," he said.

To be continued