Just how does a mid western Iowa girl end up living in the south? Well, she did exactly what her momma did (she grew up in Wyoming)... falls in love with a sailor and moves far away from home!
Actually, the moving away part came first, when I enlisted into the Navy and went to Orlando, Florida for boot camp. That's where I first met Harley. While in boot camp, they pair up two female units with two male units and they are considered your "brother and sister" units as we all go through our training together. That just means every time we eat at the chow hall, perform calisthenics on the field, march, worship on Sundays or just whatever... you'll usually do these types of activities with your brother and sister units.
During meals, Harley and one of his buddies would come over and sit with me and my bunk mate, Darlene every time he got the chance. Seems he was smitten on her, but she had her eyes set on some other dude with short hair. Pfffttt... Ain't that just the shit? Anyway, being raised in Iowa (where they do a great job of talking normally), I was fascinated with this stranger spewing a foreign language from his tongue.
"Hey y'all."
What the hell did he say?? My pal, Darlene, who was from Tennessee says to me... "he said hi."
"Oooohh." I responded in my Iowan long "o" fashion, to which she looked at me like
I was the strange one. Good grief, I thought he was talking about that stuff horses eat!
And so it goes. Before long I realized that if you were
fix'in to do something, you didn't really need tools, you just needed to be ready. I don't have to worry about ever walking anywhere, cause someone can
carry you anywhere you want to go. (don't worry... there is a vehicle involved!) And soda is not just for baking. Speaking of sodas... they don't sell pop in the south. Just sayin'...
Well, to cut to the chase, we all (or most of us anyway) made it through boot camp hell and were soon disbursed into several different directions to our perspective "A" schools or duty stations. I had chosen the dental field so after a short leave back home to Iowa so my parents could see that I survived my first leg of my Naval journey, I was off to San Diego, California. Guess who I should run into on my first day there? Yep... that foreign speaking southern boy (whom I now affectionately refer to as Harley)!
I walked up to him when I spotted him and said, "Hi! Remember me?" He just looked at me and grinned from ear to ear and said, "Some others are goin' over yonder to the Enlisted Club. We could go meet 'em... yon't to??" I looked at him a moment and reminded him that he was after my bunk mate, the last I heard. He gave me a cockeyed grin and looked at me with the sweetest blue eyes and said... "I thought you were a foreigner."
And the rest is history! A year or so later, I married that southern boy and after we played sailor for awhile, we settled down right here in the sunny south... a thousand miles away from home. Just like my momma! Oh, well... she got 50 happy years out of her sailor before he left this world. I've got a long way to go yet, but after 31 years... I 'm not doing too bad!
Adjusting to life in the south has not been terrible. There is a great reference to help you along in this process in the form of a book titled,
"How To Speak Southern" by Steve Mitchell. It's a really great read and totally reliable. The heat took a little getting used to, and I miss the snow at Christmas! However, as far as riding motorcycles and playing on the lakes, living here has been awsome!! For the last 8 years of our riding days, we've been able to ring in the new year... on the Glides! How cool is that?
Glider Rider is sad to bow out, but Southern Comfort is more than willing to step up and take it from here. This is the same blog with all my archived posts still intact, I'm just giving my blog the freshening up it desperately needed. Stay tuned for more tales from Southern Comfort.
Y'all come back now, ya hear?
Lady R
It was back in the late 80's when Leather Face made his comeback in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The party was in full swing with drinking and dancing and some of the prize producing games had already begun. We were wall to wall with merry makers when all of a sudden the front door slammed opened (that's what happens when the door gets pushed open with such force that it crashes loudly into the inside wall) and in came Leather Face... wielding an extremely loud chainsaw over his head and yelling at the top of his lungs.
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today!
The state of Alabama has 7 State Prisons and 2 Federal Prison Camps, so it's not unusual for us to pass one of these facilities when we venture out of the city limits in any direction, since most of them are near Mongtomery. For some of these poor dudes, chasing rainbows to obtain their pot of gold didn't turn out so well.
It's time! I've been toying with the idea of changing things up a bit, and after almost 4 years of blogging, I figured now was as good a time as any. When I started this blog, it was all about motorcycles and riding. Being able to share my passion with others, while sharing where I lived, has allowed me to show you all just how beautiful our sweet home Alabama really is.
Don't fret now! I still have a hoard of motorcycle related pictures and experiences I want to share, but I'm also planning to expand my blog content to include other exciting "adventures" as well. Before we acquired our two motorcycles, we used to have a pontoon boat that kept us on the water every weekend. Trying to camp on it with two giant sized German Shepherds always proved to be a mistake... that we never learned from. Before we had a pontoon boat, we used to "tear up" some woods in our little '78 Ford Courier, jumping ditches and dodging quicksand, as we tried our damnedest to beat that truck to death. We lived in Puerto Rico for three years where we got to spend Christmases on the beach, but had to share our house with lizards the size of alligators!
The man says to the dentist, "Doc, I'm in a hurry! My two buddies are in my truck waiting for us to go bass fishing, so forget about the anesthetic. I don't have time for the gums to get numb. I just want you to pull the bad tooth, and be done with it!"
I looked up the word tranquility in the dictionary. It said... the stage or quality of being tranquil. 
So, on our first topless outing, we stopped in at Camo Country in Wetumpka, a great little camping supply store stocked with everything from boots to hats and lots in between. I walked in... shopped... paid for my purchase and walked out smiling... in less than 2.5 minutes. How many women do you know can do that??
Maxine... my heroine!! To be able to go through life, doing what pleases you, without the shackles of worrying what others think sounds mighty nice. I've discovered that the older I get, the easier that becomes.
Harley was looking over my shoulder when I was posting this pic, and he said... "I'd go to the one on the far end. She looks ready." Buwahahahahaha!!
There... wasn't that nice?
