Good stuff cheap!

Staying up so late last night (actually, this morning) was dumb. Forgetting to bring my earplugs from Gertie was dumber. I slept well—the bed in Nan and John's downstairs "guest suite" was very comfortable, and the soft pillows were sheer bliss after Donald's stiff foam ones—but I woke up early, as household noises began upstairs...and then the workmen came to seal the deck, so...well, I was up at 9:00, which may sound pretty lazy, except that I'd gone to bed just after 2:00 a.m.

I was afraid that I'd be half asleep all day and hence not very good company, but fortunately it didn't turn out the way. After a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs and blueberry bran muffins with invigorating "Lemon Lift" tea (I figured the caffeine would be a good thing), we talked over what to do. The plan we eventually came up with was to first visit Ollie's, a discount store Nan and John been telling me about; then go have a picnic lunch in one of the several state parks near here; and finally just drive around a bit so I could see what the area looks like.

Ollie's was quite an experience. We pulled into the parking lot of a huge gray building whose facade was adorned with a large cartoon portrait of a toothy old codger and the words "Ollie's Bargain Outlet - GOOD STUFF CHEAP!" Posters along the side walls of the building invited us to join "Ollie's Army" and become one of "THE FEW - THE CHEAP - THE PROUD - THE BARGAIN BATTALION!"

I knew this was going to be good.

Entering the store, we had a choice of a small shopping basket or a large cart. I chose the basket, figuring its limited capacity would help me to exercise restraint. That resolution didn't last long! Confronting us in aisle 1 was a stack of "Razor"-type folding scooters marked $7.99 apiece. I had always wondered what one of these would be like to have, but never could justify the price—even when they came down from the original hundred-plus dollars to thirty bucks. But for $7.99?

I looked the sample scooter over. It appeared well made, not obviously defective or flimsy. I walked back to the entrance, traded my dinky basket for a large cart, and put in a boxed scooter. I was prepared for some serious shopping. Nan and John saw me coming back with the big cart and laughed. They'd been here before...they knew how it went.

Now I have to say that Ollie's (he's dead, by the way) is not like Dollar Tree. The Dollar Tree stores are clean, uncluttered and well-organized, the merchandise is almost all of good quality...and of course everything's a dollar. Ollie's, by contrast, is messy, disorganized, somewhat dirty, and the prices (and quality) are all over the map. I saw some amazing bargains (many, unfortunately, on items I already owned)...and I saw some items with prices that you could have found in any Wal-Mart...and I saw some real cheesy schlock.

Nan, John and I wandered up and down the aisles for over an hour, exclaiming alternately over the bargains we'd found and the uselessness of some of the closeout merchandise—"No wonder this never sold!" They only bought a couple of hand towels and other small items, but I filled up my cart pretty well. Mind you, my total bill was only $31.78!

The items I took home with me included the $7.99 scooter (probably the day's biggest bargain); a $5.99 car seatback organizer identical to the one I have in Gertie that cost me $12.99 (I figured I could use the second one in my car); a very handsome $3.99 doormat made of thick black and beige polypropylene rope hand-woven in a striking pattern; a 99-cent book on emergency medical care for cats that Nan found; a large-format hardbound reprint of one of my favorite Little Golden Books, "Little Boy With a Big Horn"; a large $1.19 squeeze bottle of Grey Poupon honey mustard spread; a completely goofy $1.99 "Scenic Floaties" bathroom squeegee that I knew my friend Rick Farmer would love—it has a chamber with blue and clear liquids in it and three plastic tropical fish, including a bright red-orange Percula Clownfish, Rick's favorite...oh, I forget what else. At any rate, I had a thoroughly good time.

Now, you may be thinking that my thrifty father would have loved this place. Well, probably not. Donald shops at yard sales when he can, and at Salvation Army and Goodwill stores when yard sales are not in season. For example, the shirt he was wearing when I arrived in Pittsburgh had cost a dollar, although "I will sometimes go as high as $2," he told me with a grin. I'm afraid Ollie's would be too pricey for Donald! Dollar Tree probably would be as well—the stuff they sell for a buck, he's used to finding for ten cents on a yard sale table. Donald never buys new when he can find used.

From Ollie's we headed over to Caledonia State Park—only a few minutes away—where we parked next to Gertie. Working from Gertie's larder, Nan and I quickly put together three sandwiches with turkey, lettuce, tomato and whole-grain bread (from Van Wert), seasoned with Inglehoffer's whole-seed honey mustard spread. We brought along Nan's bag of potato chips, some milk for me, a peach Snapple tea for Nan and pink grapefruit/strawberry juice for John, and headed back down to the park's picnic area next to a small stream.

It was an idyllic location...except for the noise of mowers operating nearby. It had never occurred to me that lawns would be mowed in a state park, which I naively thought of as a sort of nature preserve. Fortunately, they soon stopped. We sat and gazed across the stream at the area where Nan told me that the park rangers had carefully graded a shallow ramp, so that individuals using wheelchairs or walkers could easily get down to the water's edge to fish or wade. It's great that the effects of the Americans with Disabilities Act are still rippling outward, making life better for everyone—the intended beneficiaries as well as we "temporarily able-bodied" folks who will need these amenities sooner or later as we age.

The impromptu lunch was delicious, and it was pleasantly cool in the shade of the woods. We sat and chatted for awhile before going back to the Carpenters' car. John drove, and we took back roads (which is what they have most of around here) through several adjacent state forests, and then through rolling farmland, finally ending up at Penn National (I almost wrote "Penn Central"), a huge golf course surrounded by housing developments for those obsessed with this sport. You can probably tell from my wording that I am not one of them, but this was one of the main reasons Nan and John chose to build here: golf is a big part of their lives, and their house is ornamented throughout with golf memorabilia, much as Donald's is ornamented with historical artifacts.

But although they live in this "golfing community," it turns out that Nan and John seldom actually play at Penn National, preferring to patronize the many smaller and less expensive courses in the area. (Even one of the state forests has one!) There's no doubt that the golf fad has reached a level not seen since the Eisenhower administration. (I hear that cigars and whiskey have made a comeback as well. I don't pretend to understand any of this.) While driving through Ohio, I had seen a string of cornfield golf courses with names like "Prairie Links" along the highway—something I'd never before encountered in the midwest. Apparently a number of farmers had reached the conclusion that roadside real estate could turn more of a profit if seeded with little white balls instead of corn.

It was cool and pleasant while we were driving around—especially in the forests—but when we got back to the Carpenters', we were all glad that they had chosen to turn on the air conditioning before we left. It was decidedly on the hot and muggy side in their neighborhood. Whether this was because they are in one of the lower areas or because of the complete lack of trees in their brand-new part of the development (houses are still under construction all around them) I can't say, but my guess is that it's mainly the lack of trees. I think that's the one thing Nan misses most about her old house in Lawrenceville, New Jersey: the magnificent full-grown trees she had there. It will be many years before her new neighborhood has a decent number of shade trees, such as we saw in some of the older sections of the Penn National development.

As the sun was sinking lower in the sky, giving everything a lovely late-afternoon glow, I took a number of pictures of the house. I'll email these to Nan and John after I get home. One of my favorites was of Nan posing with her "bargain rock." This large pink muscovite rock had been tagged at $19.95, and that's what she paid for it at Loewe's...but later discovered that it had been mislabeled and was meant to sell for $59.95! It's one of several attractive stones she has placed in strategic locations around the house, where they provide an agreeable visual contrast to the large expanse of lawn.

While visiting Gertie, we had picked up and brought back a bag of McIntosh apples that I'd bought in Ohio, intending to make a pie—until I discovered Gertie's oven problems. In Nan's spacious kitchen we set to work, with Nan peeling apples while I prepared a lattice crust from my favorite recipe. Once the pie was in the oven, along with a trio of potatoes, John prepared to grill some chicken breasts on the barbecue out on the deck. It all came together as a delicious meal: simple but wonderfully tasty, my favorite kind of food.

After supper we tackled a long-postponed task: moving Nan's "Rider River Runners" website, which chronicles the Grand Canyon rafting trip she and John took to celebrate her fiftieth birthday, to its new home on Comcast's servers. (The Carpenters switched ISPs from AT&T when they moved here, and are now enjoying a high-speed cable modem connection.) This turned out to be rather involved.

First we had to move all the site's files from the CD-R disc I'd given Nan onto their new Dell PC. That should have been easy...but the CD was undersized and the PC's tray was vertically mounted, so we had to pull out the PC and turn it on its side in order to read the disc without risk of jamming.

Then came the hard part: moving the files to Comcast's server via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). On my Mac, I'd just launch the "Transmit" FTP program and then drag the files from my hard disk into Transmit's window to upload them. But Comcast's PC users have to jump through many more hoops, and the task is not made easier by the fact that the supplied Windows software is buggy and frequently loses touch with the Comcast host. In any case, it took us about an hour and many false starts to do what should have been a ten-minute job. By the time we finished, though, John was pretty good at it—I'm sure he won't have any trouble uploading files this way in the future.

With the RRR website finally online at its new address, Nan called me into the living room to watch part of the tutorial tape for her latest community project: she's operating a life-sized Muppet-style puppet in a series of presentations to local schoolchildren. These little skits are designed to educate about kids with disabilities, and Nan's puppet "Mandy" is deaf. Since Nan is an experienced ASL signer (and much less rusty than I am!), she was a perfect choice for this role. She'll be dressed in a black outfit and will provide the puppet's hands, while another black-robed puppeteer behind her operates the head and mouth, and in part of the skit, a small cat puppet.

She had rehearsed this performance just yesterday morning—unfortunately, I was not able to get to Fayetteville early enough in the day to attend, though I would have dearly loved to. It's a great idea—the skits put across important information (e.g., yelling at a deaf person doesn't help, not all deaf people use sign language, etc.) and do it very well for the intended audience of young children.

By the time the tape was over, it was after nine o'clock and we were all yawning (especially me). Nan and John drove me and my stuff back over to Caledonia State Park, where we said our goodbyes. It had been a thoroughly enjoyable visit with these old friends, whom I'd missed since they moved away last spring.

Mindful of last night's debacle, I resolved not to even try to summarize the day's events, but to simply unpack, put away the folded laundry...and then go straight to bed. And that is what I did.