Vacation with the Haylwonnys
I've just sat down from a lovely daylong drive from the heart of nowhere back to Raleigh, NC. The heart of nowhere, in case you were wondering, is in Georgia, just across the state line from Chattanooga, where we were vacationing with my girlfriend's extended family.
Haha! Just kidding, of course, that's completely unfair. It's unfair for several reasons, including: A) As the one online review pointed out, "With a Wal-Mart 15 minutes away, what more do you need? and B) I think "the heart of nowhere" is actually my girlfriend's hometown.
Haha again! I do love to josh with Jess. No, really, it was a lovely time with lovely people, and the big house we rented really did have everything we needed, especially once Jess's family hauled in six tons of shrimp, chicken, steak, burgers and brats. I have rarely seen so much food, much less so much good food,* and so we justifiably spent most of our time preparing it, eating it, and talking about it afterwards. I believe Jess's sister-in-law, Kayla, will post a retrospective on cooking for 15 people over at her blog, The Non-Stick Cook, just as soon as she recovers from her food coma.
*Scribes & Scribblers, my old summer camp, had similar quantities of food, but much of it was more accurately described as "wood paste" than "food."
But I am not an expert on cooking food, just eating it. Instead, I'll talk about something I am an expert in: terrifying old houses.
And truly, the house we were staying in belonged in a horror movie. I won't tell you its rental name, but let's just say that it might as well be "The Dead Teenager Inn." It's located on a private drive, set off from the main road, which doesn't make much difference because there's nothing on the road either. The property belongs to an old woman named Greta (not her real name), who I desperately hope does not read this blog,** and I know it belongs to Greta because she made no effort to hide that it is her home. Pictures of Greta and her family decorate every inch of every wall of the home, making me feel like a burglar in someone else's house. I'm pretty sure their eyes were following me from room to room. One giant portrait showed a blonde woman in a wedding gown gazing sternly out at any tourists who dared to defile her ancestral home. One of her lace-gloved fingers points straight down at the ground, where I'm certain the dead child is buried.
**Actually, I hope Greta does view this blog, because I need more readers.
The best part of the decor is in the master bathroom. There, hanging next to the toilet, Kayla discovered a painting that she tactfully described as "antebellum." It depicts a group of cherubic, caricatured black children, dressed in period clothing, dancing around and eating watermelon. Oh, and some of them appear to have demon eyes.
That painting, though, isn't so much scary as weird. What is scary is the area around the house. The property is billed as a Yorkie breedingfarm, and while we were there the dogs were confined to an old shed behind the property. I poked around back there on our last day, and you could smell the poop from twenty yards away. As far as I could tell, they were just walking around in their own feces. The shed was dark at all times, and kept without AC in the 97-degree heat. Peering through the windows I could make out maybe a half-dozen Yorkies, mostly confined to cages, mostly in a fairly sad state. What I couldn't make out was Elmer, the deranged son who is kept chained in the shed until the night he gets ahold of an axe and avenges his years of abuse.
Ha! That was another little joke, I think. While the dog situation was... concerning, the house was largely everything a large family reunion could need. It was a nice little vacation. Come back next time, and I'll talk some more about the trip, including how to destroy everyone at Blitz and how to avoid becoming that weird guy Aunt Jess is dating.