My Drive to Work with Eric

  I start my morning commute from my temporary abode in Monongah, West Virginia. Monongah is about 2 hours south of Pittsburgh. After you get off of the interstate at Fairmont, you drive 10 minutes on a road that runs along a creek.  I often visualize driving into that creek after a freezing rain. I guess sliding would be a better word. It would be so easy. But, it is through the woods and you do get to drive past Captain Boothes grave. That is important because he haunts the damn place. If you don’t believe me, drive on out there some night at midnight. You will see him. He’ll be easy to spot…well, because he would be the ghost.

 The road to Fairview each morning is not a fun drive.  The road is winding and littered with pot holes and suicidal deer. Coal miners who work at Loveridge mine  drive in their trucks and get right on the back of your bumper until they find a place to pass you.  Oh, there really isn’t a place to pass. But, they find one and give people coming in the opposite direction heart palpitations.

 Do you  ever arrive somewhere and realize that you don’t remember the damn drive because you have so much on your mind? Sometimes I talk to myself. But, most of the time I listen to the Eric and Kevin Show on WVAQ in Morgantown. The sarcasm oozes daily and I like it.  I have realized over the years of listening to Eric that people don’t understand sarcasm at all. They call in to his

photo borrowed from WVAQ

 radio show and give him a hard time. I find myself talking to the stupid people. “Good grief, stupid! He’s being sarcastic!”  Sometimes a guy calls up and just “moos.” Eric calls him Cow Man. He would call Melba and ask her what is in her refrigerator. Over the years we got to know many of the regular people who called into his show. Eric would torture most of the them. What fun.

 I found out today that Eric will be on the radio for the last time on Monday, after 15 years. I’m a little pissed that he didn’t talk with me about this. Oh, he has no idea who I am, but I have been listening to his show in the morning for years. His day ended at 10:00am and that’s what time I would turn off the radio. That’s when I was a stay-at-home mom and was ready for the funny farm. I had little adult conversation and listening to Eric  made me feel like ranting had such purpose. His sarcasm and ramblings  made my day.

 Once I started working, I took Eric with me to Fairview every day. He has no idea he is with me. I don’t think he has any idea how many cars he rides in each morning. I never pay attention to the road when he is  in the car with me. It takes me almost 35 minutes on that damn road each day. Now what am I going to do?

Seriously, what am I going to do?  It was my sarcasm tune-up for the day. It made me ready for my fourth grade students. And all that will change. I will probably become a very boring teacher now. I won’t be able to roll my eyes effectively when I get a strange answer from them.  Seriously, what the hell am I going to do?

 Eric has health issues that he needs to attend to. Something about a cyst on his neck that will need surgery and he may lose his voice. Something about a severe thing with his feet. I don’t really remember, because I am more concerned about how this will affect me.  In the end, Eric McGuire will be missed.  Terribly.

I probably will have to call in sick Monday so I can listen to his whole broadcast.  And it won’t have anything to do with the Super Bowl party I will be attending the night before.  Ok, so I won’t call in sick. But, I’m going to be lost without his radio show during my daily drive.  Many of us will be lost.

What is to become of us?

Wait……. Will Kevin still do the morning show? …..I like Kevin…… Kevin can ride with me in the morning.

Nevermind.

Junk Drawers

 Whether you like it or not, most children grow up with some of  their parents’  bad habits. Tis true. I read it on the internet.  I swore that I would be nothing like my mother, but there are things that I say and that I do that are pure “Georgie.”  Short for Georgiana Victoria.  I like the even shorter version, “Loon.”

 One of the major ways I am like my mom is in the fact that I have more than one junk drawer. Most people have a junk drawer. When I was growing up, I was “sent” to the junk drawer just as much as I was to fetch her a Cuppa coffee. (Yes, I thought it was a brand name.) 

“Vickie…in the junk drawer, under the telephone book, and to the right by the duct tape and the staples, and under the  pack of batteries is a little white button. Bring it to me.”

 So, I would go to the junk drawer and expect to see the items all organized like she made it sound. But it wasn’t. It was a mess.  The Sleeping With the Enemy crazy husband wouldn’t be too happy with my mother. Our junk drawer had weird things in it. I can picture it now. There was a little dog collar, package of sewing needles, tweezers, an index card with a recipe on it, matchbooks, a couple of my dad’s real estate calling cards, a small school picture of my sister looking like a boy, and a thousand other little items. The weirdest thing I remember being in there was a row of caps. You know, that red line that you put in a cap gun and shot? We never put them in a fake gun. We sould run a rock over them to set them off. How weird that I remember doing that. I guess it was a big thing in the 60′s to shoot fake guns at the bad guys.

 I almost forgot about the pills. I don’t know if they were aspirin or Midol or LSD. There were about 3 of them in there. For years. I don’t think she ever cleaned out her junk drawer. She just added to it. A drawer hoarder.  I should also add that she was a coffee table hoarder and oh, she had another junk drawer in the side table next to her precious spot on the couch. I should just call it the Smoking Section.

 Now, since that  particular junk drawer was beside her spot on the couch, it held her personal junk. I remember there being a magnifying mirror and tweezers in there. She was always picking at her face. That’s also where she kept the metholade. I don’t know why she didn’t keep that in the medicine chest in the bathroom, but she was always using that on us. If we had a scratch, we also had red metholade on us.

 When I got older, it troubled me if I did or said something that was like my mom. There was no way in hell I was going to smoke cigarettes or drink Cuppa coffee. I had enough second hand smoke in my lungs to match exhaust from a car. But, I did have a junk

This is my junk drawer circa 2011

drawer. Hell, I think everyone has junk drawers. But, I have one too many drawers.

I also have a pantry. It is organized, but not with food items. I turned my pantry into a junk pantry.

 You have to understand that my apartment is very tiny. I have an overabundance of kitchen cabinets, however, so I had this closet pantry empty and waiting for….junk… I’m going to clean this out soon….I really am.