Chapter XV - SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Patricia decided that we should move to a warmer climate and to a cheaper area, as Maryland, and especially Howard County, was quite expensive to live in. But also because she loved the beach very much. I was very comfortable with my job as executive chef of the Ramada Hotel on the Capitol Beltway and really didn't want to move to Florida, but what can you do?

So we went on the trip to Florida to check out the house that we could rent in Satellite Beach and to find me a job, I had a job interview lined up with the Hilton Hotel in Indian Harbor Beach for a head chef's position.

For the first bit to North Carolina, we took Route 1, the old historic road to the South, which runs all the way from Maine to Key West, Florida. Eryn and Aubrey were in the back of the Pontiac with David in between them. We decided to make it into a little vacation and stay a couple of days extra, Patricia booked a nice Hotel on the beach.

Our first stop was in Virginia, in a truck stop-diner. The waitress was a spitting image of Flo, like she just stepped off the TV screen: blond big hair, a pencil behind her ear, a notebook in the pocket of her white apron, calling everybody honey or sweetheart and she memorized all the pies and cakes they had: peach cobbler, blueberry pie, apple pie, rhubarb cobbler, key lime pie, and chocolate-walnut cake. "The peach cobbler is the best!" she recommended. We all had our favorite foods and enjoyed being in such an old-fashioned American place and we admired the waitress for being like Flo.

I started realizing why she wanted to drive over Route 1, as Patricia was a history buff, she loved to tell me all the history of the places we were passing, Williamsburg, Jamestown, Fredericksburg, Richmond. I learned a whole lot about the American Revolution, the Civil War, where the battlefields were, and about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the Presidents who came from Virginia.

The girls started to be excited because they had driven before to Florida and they could tell me all about "South of the Border", the famous highway stop on the way to the South.

The rest of the way to South Carolina we went off Route 1 and continued our trip on Interstate 95.

Every so many miles we saw the signs: "ONLY 258 MILES TO SOUTH OF THE BORDER".

They hyped it like it was Disney World. ONLY 162 MILES......

WELCOME, AT SOUTH OF THE BORDER!

Well, we made it, it was a giant parking lot with Western-style souvenir shops where you could buy a whole lot of things with South of the Border printed on them, a couple of restaurants, a hotel, and a reptile museum. I didn't want to spoil the fun, as the whole family was still excited about being there. Yes, the next time we will stop here again!

We found ourselves a motel with a giant room where we all fitted in and the next morning we had breakfast in the International House of Pancakes, these days better known as IHOP.

I loved it, the waitress didn't look like Flo, but for the rest, she had all the ingredients. She took our orders in no time, I saw her hanging the ticket with our order on the wheel in the open kitchen, the cook was reading it right away and before we knew it she was bringing out the eggs sunny side up, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, hash brown potatoes, pancakes, coffee, and hot chocolate. It felt almost like a miracle, you order your food, and 3 minutes later they started bringing the dishes out. "Do you want a refill, sir?"

We were halfway, driving thru boring Georgia. The name already, Georgia the peach state, yes really exciting, peaches. On your left side, you'll see the swamp and on your right side, you'll see.....uhhh...the swamp. Speed limit happily 85. Eryn and Aubrey also decided it was boring, so they started, initiated by Eryn, to have a verbal fight, calling each other names, which lasted almost all the way to Florida, another two hours. I promised myself when I became a father never to hit my children, which I happily didn't. But at a certain point, I turned around and slapped Eryn one time in the face, it helped. As my whole life, it bothered me that I did that, I said almost 30 years later to Eryn, "I did hit you that one time". "I sure had it coming," she said.

In Florida we did one stop just over the border in San Augustine where it suddenly looked like Spain, I hoped all of Florida looked like that, but it didn't. A couple of hours later we found the hotel and sitting there on the porch of our room listening to the ocean I thought maybe I do want to live here.

to be continued...............