A Ghost Story For Teresa

  Once, while visiting Savannah, Georgia, my husband and I decided to take a tour of the Maritime museum. If you've ever been to Savannah, you know some of the beautiful old historic homes have become museums. The Maritime museum is located in the Scarborough house.
 The house was built sometime around 1818. William Scarborough was a wealthy shipping merchant, who became destitute, after his biggest project, the Steamship Savannah, failed to become a commercial success. After being sold a couple of times, the house became property of the board of education until 1962. After years of abuse at the hands of school children, the historical preservation society took on the project, restoring it to it's original beauty. Soon after, it became the Maritime museum.
 You can probably tell, I am more interested in old houses than ships, but the museum is impressive, with it's ship models and wood carvings. At the time, I didn't know it had been a school, also.

  We visited the museum on a week day, when very few people were around. It's a self guided tour, so we went through pretty quickly. We walked back to the entrance, where the gift shop was, just as rain began to pour. We thought we would wait a while, hopping the rain would let up, and started a conversation with the gift shop girl.
 We waited and waited, but the rain just got worse. It started to thunder and the wind blew, until it was a real storm. We were bored and asked the girl if we could look through the museum again. She said sure, as we were the only people there. While we were looking through the old house, the power went out. It was very dark and, the wooden figureheads, lurking in every corner, were throwing eerie shadows around the rooms. I heard children laughing and decided a school field trip must have made it in from the storm. If they could handle the rain, so could we. It was time to go, but first, I needed to visit the ladies room, in the basement. Several children passed me on the  stairs down to the dark basement. They were dressed a little odd, long skirts and bonnets, but I figured it was part of their field trip. Besides, they were so cute.
 When we got back to the entrance, it was still raining, but we said we were leaving, anyway. The gift shop girl said she was leaving also.
 I said, "What about the field trip kids?"
 She suddenly turned very pale, and said, "You saw the children?"
 I said yes, I had seen them in the basement. At that, she started packing up her things to go, and walked out the door with us. I suppose, the children were my imagination....hmm
    

A Little Bump On The Road Of Life

 This past weekend, my husband and I were shopping in Rockwall. We pulled into a parking place and heard a noise. Jon had driven the car all the way up to the curb, which was pretty low, and the front bumper went over the curb. He decided he was too close and tried to back out. Well, the bumper got hung on the curb, and he nearly pulled the whole thing off. We got out of the car to look, and there was nothing I could say, that he would not hear as completely annoying. So, he said go on into the store and he would see what he could do.
 I walked around the store, looking at stuff, but couldn't see anything I wanted or needed, because I was too worried about the car.
  He walked into the shop, like everything was okay, then left again, real soon. This worried me, so I left, too.
  I asked him if he was able to put the bumper back on, and he said he tied it on with a rope. It actually looked pretty good and I thought we might make it home with the car intact. It's a good hour drive from Rockwall on a busy interstate.
 Driving home, he told me he had looked for some duct tape in his backpack. He thought that would hold the bumper better, but he instead found some rope.
 You may be thinking, how odd, that a man would be carrying rope around in his backpack, but I understand completely. This is a man who plans for any and everything that could possibly go wrong. Sometimes, I think I will grow old, waiting in the car, while he goes around checking doors and windows, I have already checked. Then he starts on the car. Do we have everything? Check the tires, the oil, the windshield wiper fluid.
 No, this didn't bother me at all. All I could think was, Thank God he didn't have any Duct tape. Have you ever noticed, when a man "fixes" something with duct tape, he seems to think it is "fixed"? He will never go back to it, as it is a finished project. I would be driving a duct taped car for the rest of my life.
 Fortunately, he took it to a body shop and got the bumper reattached, by professionals, who charged 189.00, but no duct tape was used.