Woody Cavenaugh

This blog written live before a dental audience....

We got home last night to discover two hundred yards of phone line leading from the junction box at the street to the service pannel; and at the very end of the line, a dial tone. Just in time too.

I'm in a waiting room. It's perhaps one of the plushest waiting rooms ever created, but it is still a waiting room. What do you do in a waiting room? Sooner or later you're going to find yourself parousing the magazines. Today a treat was in store for me on the stylish desiger coffee table, Our State Magazine. This issue was a double treat, first because I hadn't read it yet, second because my cousin Misti C. Lee is one of the writers in it. Her article is about a Carteret County tradition also known as El's Drive-In.

She is not from Carteret County like I am. She is from Duplin county, home of all things Cavenaugh since 1800. Like me she left her birthplace after getting eduated to seek her fortune. Unlike me she got it and found it, I'm still looking. I'm not jealous though, even though she is a publised writer and I'm nothing more than literary vagabon.

Introductions aside, she's got an article in the August 2004 Our State magazine and it made me homesick. Back when I was being misled by the councillors at West Carteret high school, I would walk across the street from class at Carteret Community college and have myself a shrimp burger. On tough days I would have two. Were it not for El's shrimp burgers and Cheerwine, I'm sure I would not have turned out as well as I did.

Wow, 45 minutes and its already time to load up one size swolen drugged Sara. Apparently, everything went stellar. Her's was a great deal easier than mine. Drug store, drugs, oooh! Two refills on the vicodin. Wow, I hope she won't need both refills. I hear just one pill will make the walls move and the cats talk to you. When in doubt aim for the one in the middle, if the numbers even, split the difference.

Let?s see, what else, five Jello cups, four pudding packs, three ginger ales, two ice packs, and a box of chicken for me.

Now we can find out what kind of a man I am. Will I make a good nurse or will I get squeemish at the sight of all of that bloody gause?

12 Hours of changing ice packs and bloody gause later I think I'm doing pretty well. Every one of Sara's friends must think so to, or they wouldn't keep calling like this.

Hey! Wait a minute!!!