It's a big-un!

OK, I promised a story about the trip. Here goes...

Driving through the mountains of Virginia is beautiful. Winding roads with new, spectacular scenery around each corner, the woods bursting into the new growth of spring...the problem is that when you are traveling with 11 people, 6 of which are kids, bathroom stops become pretty important and the few "buildings" visible from the road would make the Clampitt's cabin look like a palace. Oh, there was the occasional Mom and Pop gas station, but they were few and far between and if they had a "restroom" (I use the term loosely), they were outhouses out back complete with signs written with magic marker on a torn piece of cardboard that read something to the effect of, "Bathroom for paying customers only". For some reason, the females in our party balked at the idea of using the structures complete with a cutout of a crescent moon on the door. So while we were actually willing to become "paying customers" if necessary, some of us would take one look around and high-tail it back to the safety of the minivans.

So it was that while we were transversing said winding, mountain roads, anxiously on the lookout for the neon glow of a modern BP or a Marathon station, that we came up behind an old pick-up truck, circa early 70's, so rusty that the original paint color was a mystery. We followed the pick-up for a few miles before spotting a country store and pulling into the gravel lot eagerly. We poured out of the vans and pushed into the small store, not even noticing that the pickup had pulled into the lot too. It didn't take long to discern that this stop was not going to produce our longed for potty. We went outside to discuss our options. My sister wanted to take the girls to the woods and let them pee there (yes, peeing in the woods was preferable to the outhouses), I was wondering why we didn't bring a "pee-can" like my parents did on long trips when we were young, my dad was voicing his frustrations that a US highway didn't have any rest-stops...and it was in this general hubbub that the man from the pick-up intruded onto my consciousness. He was an African-American man, dressed in worn overalls, holding a huge, smelly carp by it's tail, swinging it back and forth as he strutted around the parking lot calling in a sing-song voice, "It's a big-un! It's a big-un! It's a big-un!" (To whom was he talking to? We were the only ones there.) In my confusion, I thought he must be a local selling it to the store, but he never went in, just stood outside the plate-glass window, lifting the fish high and showing it off by swinging it madly and yelling through the window, "It's a big-un! It's a big-un!" with a huge smile. The fish was indeed a "big-un", about four feet in length and probably weighing 50 pounds. It hung to the man's shins and there were at least four long, bloody strings of unknown origin coming from it's mouth. (I think it was saliva.) After the man showed off his catch to the store keeper, he turned towards me, still swinging and calling out "It's a big-un!" For a moment I was frozen in place, watching those bloody streams of saliva whipping ever closer with each mad swing the man took. "Please don't touch me," my mind screamed as I hurried away. Everything is kinda blurry after that. I do remember that he stopped by my mom's open window to show the carp off to she and my dad before flinging the big fish willy-nilly into the back of his truck and hopping in the cab. By this time I was safely ensconced in our vehicle myself with the door tightly closed. When we pulled back onto the road, the man's pick-up was right in front of us. We noticed that he would slow down each time we would pass a house or a structure and we knew he was just driving down the road looking for places to show off his "big-un".

In hind-sight, we would have done things differently. I would have taken his picture to put on my blog (and make his day), my sister would have responded to his "big-un" comments by saying, "I've seen bigger." Regardless, the phrase, "It's a big-un!" will live in infamy in our family get-togethers from here on out.

And yes, we finally did find a bathroom.