It’s summertime, and many snowbirds that live on the road year-round have abandoned the blazing hot Arizona desert in search of cooler climates and old friends.
Our Canadian friends stopped by in April en route to the Edmonton area. This week, it’s our longtime friends from Missouri, Chuck and Sue Gose. He’s a short, plump retired truck driver infamous among his peers for wearing shorts regardless of rain, snow, sleet or sub-freezing temperatures.
Things happen to Chuck.
He can’t go to the supermarket anymore because strange women kept advising him on his shopping selections or how to get rid of his girth.
And though he stayed out of Safeway and Wal-Mart, last winter was not without excitement.
We last saw Chuck and Sue in August as they headed south to their winter camp, Desert Palms Resort in Salome, Ariz.
Since then, he’s acquired new teeth and two new passengers in the cab of his Dodge Ram: Olly the tin can man and GPS Woman, who, along with Chuck’s wife, directs his driving. It appears driving is now as complicated for Chuck as supermarket shopping.
Before Olly and GPS Woman, however, there was the denture adventure.
Limited financial resources and the darn high price of diesel fuel forced Chuck to risk Mexican dentistry. Shortly after arriving in Salome, he drove a hundred miles to Los Algodones, a border town near Yuma, to visit a dentist recommended by another snowbird.
The dentist did not speak English. His nurse did, after her own fashion. Chuck explained that he wanted new teeth. No problem. They took him right in and did impressions. He made an appointment to return a few days later.
On the second visit, he expected they’d talk about extraction procedures, maybe remove a few teeth.
This dentist had other plans.
Lots of shots of painkiller and two hours of pulling left Chuck minus 21 teeth. They also split open his gums, smoothed out the bone structure, sewed the gums back up, installed his new dentures, gave him a towel to staunch the flow of blood and sent him on his way.
Boys and girls, this is not the way to get dentures. I do not recommend this as an option under any circumstances, even if it only costs $1,200 and many seniors do it.
Chuck may be a tough old truck driver and he did live to eat prime rib again, but the whole process seems as bloody dangerous as a real-life “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Apparently his appearance was not all that unusual for a Los Algodones sidewalk, because Chuck recalls that a guy directing folks to drugstores asked if he’d been to the dentist or just had a fight with his wife.
The next visit to Los Algodones, weeks later, was with John from Colorado who was buying cheap drugs and could not resist the siren’s call of a 5-foot cast iron chicken. John planted this new acquisition next to his fifth-wheel at Desert Palms. Most folks just plant flowers or cactus.
Given John’s propensity for the outrageous, Chuck should have anticipated the parting gift the chicken guy gave him at the last happy hour in April: Olly.
Olly may have started life as a bank. He is about six inches tall, almost that round, with an egg-shaped head. He is not attractive. His task is to travel with Chuck in the truck and report on Chuck’s adventures via e-mail to snowbirds from his happy-hour circle.
Initially, Chuck filled him up with rocks so he’d stay put on the dash. After one big bump, Olly lost his rocks. Not good. Chuck glued Velcro on Olly’s butt and reinstalled him on the dash.
The happy-hour crowd got e-mail from “Olly” as the Goses trekked from Arizona to Missouri and then headed west again in June.
Olly has not been happy about having his butt stuck to the dashboard. He was further humiliated when Chuck made a strategic error at a fuel stop in Nebraska.
Most often, diesel gas pumps have a green handle. At this service station, however, many pumps had green handles, a detail Chuck failed to notice, given the crowded conditions.
Well, 13 gallons of regular gas injected into that Cummins diesel led to big trouble for the Dodge, which had to be towed 50 miles to a repair facility. Poor Olly, Velcroed by the butt and under tow behind a Ford. He complained bitterly. Chuck was equally mortified.
Then there’s the GPS Woman, a $300 electronic marvel of instant information that was Chuck’s special gift at Christmas.
For a time, it appeared Olly might be attracted to the feminine voice near him on the dash. Chuck says it’s just like having another wife in the cab. If Sue doesn’t tell him where to go, GPS Woman sure will. And if he dares to disobey and go past his programmed destination, GPS Woman is very firm, a dominatrix of sorts.
“Reprogram, reprogram … turn right at the next corner, make two more rights return to your primary destination.”
And, “Do not attempt to reprogram this system while driving.”
Sue says Chuck never listens to her anyway, so she’s not surprised he sometimes gets into it with GPS Woman.
He just wants to know why GPS Woman’s instructions invariably lead to a freeway exit with his wife’s favorite store, Wal-Mart.
Olly refuses to advise Chuck on this issue. He may just be a tin-can man, but he’s way too smart to get into an argument with two women.
Besides, in their short time together, Olly has learned that, well, things just happen to Chuck.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo. com.
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