the plan: my friend gil arranges bus trips to see different shows. we were to spend saturday night taking a bus down to st. louis to see the musical comedy “the drowsy chaperone,” which looked very funny.
the reality: we were supposed to be at the JC Penney parking lot at 5:00 and the bus was to depart at 5:30, for an 8:00 curtain. in his e-mails to people going on the trip, gil mentioned that we could bring snacks, and NON-ALCOHOLIC drinks.
we all took this to mean that we should bring snacks to share with all the people on the bus. our party consisted of me and kevin, randy, his mom, bev, and my mom. kevin and i brought tortilla roll-ups and cookies, randy brought cheese and sausage and crackers, mom brought cucumber sandwiches and bev brought crackers and a box of fannie may candy.
we all arrived at a little after five and the bus wasn’t there yet. so we waited and it finally showed up at about 5:20.
we got on the bus, along with the other theater folk, most of whom i didn’t know.
we sat on the bus waiting to leave, and decided to break out the food. nobody else seemed to have any snacks, or if they did, they weren’t sharing. but that was ok; we had more than enough food for our group, and we kept offering it to others. almost nobody wanted any.
we continued to eat and it got later. and later. finally, the bus driver climbed aboard and made an announcement. something about the serpentine belt, which had to be replaced, and he didn’t seem very certain about the whole thing and the owner of the bus company was going to be on the phone telling him how to fix the bus.
which was broken.
the driver inspired no confidence whatsoever in us. he staggered off the bus and we waited and waited. and waited.
the show started at 8. it’s an hour and a half to st. louis, as long as there’s no accident delays or anything.
at six we talked of leaving the bus and driving down by ourselves. at 6:15 the driver reappeared. the bus couldn’t be fixed, so we were to all drive down to litchfield (50 miles away) and another bus would take us to st. louis (another hour at least).
all 30+ of us dashed to our cars. we could take five other people in our minivan, except it was loaded with fencing gear. we crammed all the stuff into mom’s car and seven of us piled in the van to join the mad dash down to litchfield, as the clock ticked.
6:55 – we got off on the litchfield exit. all seemed fairly lost, because we had to get into st. louis and then make it to the fox theater. it seemed very hopeless.
7:00 – the bus left. it wasn’t as clean as the first bus, but at least it moved. the bathroom was unspeakably disgusting. it seems they hadn’t had time to clean this bus.
somebody got a call on their cell phone; in the time we’d been gone, there was some kind of explosion at the CWLP power plant at home. a fire. roads closed. terrorism? the rumors flew around the bus. but then it was confirmed that it wasn’t terrorism, but some kind of accident. springfield would still be there when we got back.
we got closer and closer to st. louis, and before we got to collinsville (right outside of st. louis) traffic came to a standstill. up ahead, the lights of cop cars. now what?
we inched along and pretty soon saw the cop cars – and then, in the ditch on the right hand side of the road, was a dog. “cadaver dog,” said kevin. and there it was – a dead body. the person must have been ejected from the car. thrown so far that they had to get a dog to find it.
after all that commotion, traffic picked up. but now in my head was the vision of that poor dead person by the side of the road. some anonymous person, somebody loved this person, and now they were dead. it made our worry about missing the show seem trivial in comparison.
of course there was now no chance of getting to the show on time. gil called the theater and asked if they could hold the curtain and the person there said “of course not.”
we continued into st. louis, but by now things had taken a surreal turn and it all didn’t seem to matter.
but then suddenly there we were, outside the theater. 7:59.
we hurried inside. they had held the curtain for us, but we were only a couple of minutes late.
we made it to our seats and the show started and it was delightful. fun and silly and full of dancing and singing and the costumes were lavish and all very sparkely which i liked a lot.
except every once in a while i thought about that poor dead body.
and before we knew it the show was over. back on the bus, a completely uneventful ride back to our car in litchfield, and then back to springfield.
in the van, bev broke out her box of fannie may. i had two pieces and they were perfection.
the air looked still smoky when we drove into town. they had put out the fire, but the smoke lingered.
this morning the story was a giant headline with a big photo in the paper about the explosion.
but what about the dead body? it happened too far from springfield to make our news.
things have been much quieter today.
spring has returned. i wore my shorts when taking mollie for a walk, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
i hope your weekend was good, but perhaps not quite as eventful as ours.
ok then,
sunday night grace.