After a whirlwind weekend of hanging out in my office at work, watching Lo play with the turtle at my house, and having lunch with my mother and grandmother at Doc Green's, it was time for Minus-Five to return to her much less exciting life in New York. Her flight was at 9:10 p.m., and we left in plenty of time to stop off at Anne's, buy a year's supply of cigarettes in Hapeville, and still get to the airport by 7:00. Which we did.
Biggy had planned to take Lo for pizza, so I had another hour to kill keeping MF company while she smoked a carton of cigs. We sat on a bench outside, near the AirTran baggage check, and enjoyed some stellar people watching and problem solving, such as one woman's Ford Tempo dying curbside and three twenty-somethings trying to figure out how to get themselves AND their Buick-sized luggage into a Mercedes McLaren. In the meantime, we discussed everything from how feet get so dirty in Manhattan to why women wear thongs, during a conversation that lasted until I noticed it was 8:45 and suggested MF should probably head toward the terminal.
I was about twenty minutes into my drive home, reliving the finest moments of the visit (showing her the courthouse where I got my divorce and driving by the Big Chicken) when my phone rang:
TR: You did NOT miss your flight!
MF: Oh yes I did.
TR: You've GOT to be kidding.
MF: Are you going to make me spend the night in the airport?
TR: I'm turning around now.
When I pulled up right beside where she was standing on the sidewalk, she was too busy talking and smoking with her new best friends to notice, so I had to call her. She got in the car, and I waited for her to tell me what I already knew--that her bags were headed to LaGuardia, and we needed to stop by Walgreens to get hair products.
10 comments:
Oh Minus! Sorry you missed your flight. You flying back out today or tomorrow? If your'e out of product, I've got some you can use.
Ethel and Lucy? You guys remind me more of Thelma and Louise.
What's a Mercedes McLaren?
A $500,000 sports car. Your chances of owning one are right up there with your chances of scoring with jennifer Aniston.
I was thinking Frick and Frack.
I think this is MF's subtle way of letting us all know she REALLY wants to live in Marietta and not Brooklyn...
anne: check out my version when i post it by the end of this afternoon.
biggy: its a car that can't hold a suitcase in its trunk without first removing the tennis shoes you packed and exchanging them for the flip-flops on your feet. its also a car who's occupants wouldn't know the first thing to do with the beastie boys anthology kickin' from the speakers.
t: its always funny to me how two people can experience the same thing and choose very different parts of the story to bring to light.
mary: who the heck are frick and frack? you don't have to hate on my smog infested life in brooklyn. and anyway, shouldn't you be taking another nap right now to avoid seeing famous people who are only in town briefly?
Easy there MF...a girl has to rest sometime.
FYI, you have an open invitation to visit the 4th street design compound at ANY time...I'd even wake up from my nap and offer you cigarette and sugar-laden snack.
Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Frick and Frack were two Swiss skaters who came to the U.S. and joined the original Ice Follies show as comedy ice skaters. They skated in Alpine
Lederhosen and performed eccentric tricks on ice. One of the more famous tricks was known as the "cantilever spread-eagle" created by Werner Groebli (also known as "Frick").
"Frick" and Hansruedi (Hans) Mauch as "Frack" were one of the most popular comedy ice teams of their time. They found fame while performing in ice shows and films including the Monogram Pictures production "Lady, Let's Dance" (1944).
Frick and Frack skated in the Ice Follies for several years until Hans Mauch contracted Osteomyelitis. Hans (Frack) has since died.
Michael Mauch, the son of Hans, once described the origin of their names: “Frick took his name from a small village in Switzerland; Frack is a Swiss-German word for a frock coat, which my father used to wear in the early days of their skating act. They put the words together as a typical Swiss joke.”
Their partnership reached its peak in the later years of the Ice Follies, a revue promoted by Eddie Shipstad and his brother Roy, which began in 1936 and ran for almost 50 years. Their association lasted so long, and they were at one time so well known, that their names became a household term in many languages.
Performing well into his late years, Werner Groebli continued on as "Mr. Frick" and continued the ice duo's legend. Werner lived in the Palm Springs, California area for over 10 years until the death of his wife and was featured on a PBS TV special in 1999.
Together Frick and Frack made famous the "cantilever spread-eagle" ice trick which was copied by many skaters to follow.
Interestingly, "Frick and Frack" has become an English slang term used to refer to two people so closely associated as to be indistinguishable. The term has become sufficiently generic that people unrelated to the original pair have begun taking it on for themselves
I'm exhausted just reading about this across three different blogs. I think I need to go smoke a carton of cigarettes and check my armpits.
mary, i'v waited all my 60+ years for that bit of information.
Wow. Mary, that was just as informative as the Izod/Lacoste discussion from last week.
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