Plucky Survivors See America 2006 Epilogue

September 10, 2006
We got some sleep and now the final day of Plucky Surivors is posted!

Before you read, we want to thank a few people who made Plucky Surivors so successful:

Our friends (we consider them family now) at the various hotels and B&Bs that provided us with accommodations along the way. Those who have read our stuff in other outlets know that if we don’t like something we say it, but we couldn’t find a serious negative about any of these wonderful places along the route.

The folks at Frommers.com for featuring us on their website.

Chuck at Looka! for his continued support of our trip.

Steve, Nettie, and Diana for pre, post, and during encouragement and tactical support.

And most of all you, dear reader, for coming along on our journey with us. We felt like you were in the car!

September 16, 2006
A week later and we’re still basking in our post Plucky Survivors glow. We saw a lot and wrote about a lot of it but a few things slipped through the proverbial cracks, so some updates and a couple of additional stories for the road…

After thinking it over, we realize there are very few places on this trip that we wouldn’t want to visit again. We would love to have more time in Hot Springs, Little Rock, the Clinton Library, the Rosa Parks Library, Memphis, Oxford, and of course, with Miss Mary’s Pies and Carl’s BBQ across the road.

Regrets, we have a few, and high on that list is that we drove the Pig Trail Scenic Byway and we DIDN’T GET A PHOTO TO PROVE IT. There must also be a reason no photo was taken of Mary in Monroeville, and Rick screaming when he realized he was forty, but we can’t think of one.

We had only a couple anxiety driving moments, the first when a car two vehicles in front of us, leaving Eureka Springs on a narrow mountain road, struck a deer, which did a somersault into the ditch. None of us could stop (too much traffic behind us, not enough passing room) but Mary saw the deer immediately leap to its feet and bound away. We later saw the car in quesion, and while it had a softball size dent in the right front fender, it clearly struck the deer a glancing (if still forceful) blow. We hope that since the car was going rather slowly (moments before we had been snarking at it to go faster; they were right, we were wrong), and since the deer was moving on all four legs, and fast, that it was only banged up and bruised, and not suffering from internal injuries. That’s what we are assuming; please don’t disabuse us of this optimistic notion.

Our second near-miss came when a drifting truck choose to move into our personal automotive space outside of Birmingham; luckily, Rick’s driving skills got us away in time.

In case you were worried about her, we actually sent Plucky Passenger Jessica home via Greyhound. Here is her own delightful and touching write-up:

After two dubious looking guys eyed me and smugly said “How you doin’?” I honed in on the first female companion I saw. There she was, a determined, interesting face, an aged African-American grandma from NYC with a 6 year old little rascal wallowing about on and around her. I struck up a conversation(on the advice of the Plucky Survivors…Choose the way that will give you the best story to tell in the end) and found out that the kid had an 8 year old brother running around there someplace and that the boys’ father(her son) had passed away 2 years prior and their mother was in Puerto Rico, possibly with another younger child, their half-brother they’d never met. The kid seemed like a typical 6 year old, wiggly, antsy and a wee bit mischievous, while the older 8 year old brother seemed detached and too serious for his age, almost. Well, I didn’t give up talking to them. I followed them about, carrying their bags and directing the boys to do as their grandma was saying (“Come stand over here,” etc.). I began focusing on talking to them and not so much her. She was single, elderly, and taking care of those 2 beautiful children, even sharing a bedroom with one of them. She seemed devoid of hope for herself, having desire only enough to get by, to exist only just barely. She told me she was born in B’ham, went to NY as a teenager looking for summer work to pay her way through school and then went again later for work and one year led to another and another passed by and she’s been there ever since, working for minimum wage. And yet, there was part of her that garnered hope for me. She told me I should go back to NY and look for somebody better ( Having told her about my whole romance issue). She told me where to look— the financial district, coffee shops,…she passes by the windows of Starbuck’s and looks in from time to time, spying all sorts of possible attractive mates for a young woman like myself. “They wear suits and read newspapers,” she said. I ended up sitting with the older kid, Jonathan. I coerced him into some conversation about his 8 year old likes and dislikes. Aside from his being able to quote all the shows on Cartoon Network, the fact that he watches Fear Factor and listens to 50 cent and Usher tells me that he is probably missing out on some of the naivete of childhood. So, in the spirit of child-like fun, I asked him to play me in a friendly game of Cow. It didn’t take long to get him smiling and laughing at my miserable imitations of various cartoon characters, and his confidence began to come out. He showed me an incredible drawing he did of a comic book character and some of his science homework about the solar system. We practiced Spanish and I taught him how to say “hello” in a few languages. By the end of it all, he became a silly, bubbly little boy, just as it should be. And about that game of Cow, you ask? I didn’t quite have the heart to tell him all the rules about cemeteries and the like. He beat me 12-0. Grinning heartily, he told me, “I’m James Bond. I got game.” And I couldn’t help but think…….GAME ON!

We love our Plucky Passengers.

Speaking of Cow, we totally forgot our final score! We realized that on the last day, since we were driving along the coast, we would see plenty of cemeteries and no cows after a point. (In fact, if we entered New Orleans the usual way to Mary’s house, there would be cemeteries on both sides of the street, minutes from getting home. That’s no fun, and hardly a way to finish cow.) So we decided that the Louisiana border would be the final Cow finish line. It was looking bad for Rick–nothing at all on his side except highway, and cows galore for Mary. But reversals of fortune are always possible, and so it was, in the end….Rick 20, Mary 0. Which makes the final tally look like this:

Rick – 4 matches
Mary – 3 matches
and 2 matches as a tie

Rick will stop beating his chest in King Kong like triumph at some point. But probably not soon.
Finally, the Merry Maladies section of this website will continue to be updated so be sure to check back occasionally for more news from Cancer Chick. As far as Plucky Survivors Part II? Well, it may very well happen and if it does you’ll be the first to know.

Thanks again for reading!!

February 18, 2007
Hello Plucky Survivors Fans and friends. If you are wondering what’s been up with us since the road trip, you can always stay tuned with Mary by reading the Merry Maladies on CancerChick.com, which are updated often, or at least more often than this page these days.

But two pieces of big news!!

First, if you read Plucky Survivors See America you may be wondering, whatever happened to that book Mary left for Harper Lee during our stop in Monroeville, Alabama. Well, here is Mary’s Merry Maladies entry entitled Postscript and Serendipity.

O Best Beloveds, I don’t know how many of you might have followed my road trip adventures back in Sept, but before reading the rest of this entry, please read Road Trip Day 9 …because this story won’t make sense until you’ve read the part about Monroeville. I’ll wait.

So Friday was my father’s birthday, and my brother and I went to see our mom, that we might all go view the spiffy new headstone, and have some cake, and mourn. The cake, by the way, came from Lisa’s excellent new Big Sugar Bake Shop, and it was superlative. Also fine were her buckeye candies, consumed graveside as a toast to a man who spent the first several of his very-nearly 84 years on Buckeye Rd. in Cleveland.

But the following happened before all that. Right as we got to Mom’s, Steve calls from home. “There is a package in the mail from Monroeville for you.”

Now, I had looked in the mail, not expecting a darn thing, and yet totally so, eager and optimistic anyway, for days after the road trip ended. Each day that went by without a certain white padded self-addressed envelope made me less encouraged about my literary longshot. When it wasn’t in the pile of mail post-Serbia, I mostly gave up, and even more or less forgot about it, though occasionally it would pop into my head, and I would think “Wonder if I’m ever going to see that book again? If she won’t sign it, which is totally fine, will someone at least send it back? I really liked that particular volume.”

And now, all of sudden, on my Dad’s birthday–

OPENITOPENITOPENITOPENIT, I shouted at Steve, to solve the mystery of what was Schrodinger’s book, at that moment both signed and unsigned and neither signed nor unsigned. He complied.

Right on the flyleaf. “Harper Lee” with a nice underscore.

No, she didn’t date it, or write “best wishes” (her only salutation for these matters) or my name, as I had asked, which was a disappointment so teenyweeny it feels churlish to even think it, because after all she doesn’t sign books any more, she wasn’t going to sign my book at all, no way, this was a Hail Mary pass, and yet HERE IT WAS. She did it, she really did. I want to carry it around with me like a teddy bear.

“Is it worth something?” my mom inquired, meaning dollar-wise, as she knows just how much means to me emotionally and sentimentally. (And she was the one who found that very hardcover for me, in a thrift shop, after I wore out at least four paperbacks.) Sure, I said, but what does it matter? Right, my brother said, the one who gave me the book in the first place, three decades ago, because he loved it, and when I loved it, too, it was our first sibling connection. “After all, it would be a sin to sell `To Kill a Mockingbird.’” Which was awfully darn funny of him.

My dad would have loved this story. So we went to the grave and told him about it.

Of course I’m sending her a thank you note.

Harper FREAKIN’ Lee signed my copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird,”

Second, for all those who have been asking, the answer is “YES!”… we are in the early planning stages of a sequel to our great road trip, this one tentatively titled: Plucky Survivors See America 2: The Plucky Nor’Easter, where we will blow through a couple thousand miles in New England in ten days of lobster rolls, moon pies, maple syrup, and Lenny the Chocolate Moose. Join us this fall, won’t you?