We started the day way too early for us retired types by taking Charlotte to the local Ford dealership at 7:30 in the morning for an oil change, a change-out of the fuel filters and a new air cleaner. The guys in the dealership here in East Berlin must be a lot more savvy than the clods we had perform the work in Tallahassee a few months back because these guys did the oil and filter changes in about an hour and twenty minutes while the experts in the big dealership in Tallahassee did an oil change only in 3 hours and we had to arrive at 6:30 to get it done that fast.
After parting with $330 for the work, we adjourned to Emig’s for breakfast which was great for me but not so terrific for Peg. I got usual breakfast fare but Peg decided to go with the chicken pot pie special which had quite a bit of the pie but very little chicken. She said it tasted okay but pot pie with substantially more crust than filling resulted in her leaving quite a bit of the meal on the plate after we were done. Bummer.
We left Emig’s with half of us perfectly satisfied and cruised around the countryside east of East Berlin which seems to be mostly farmland with very tidy farms. After a bit of this form of entertainment, we drove into the bustling metropolis of Abbottstown, population maybe 3000, where we went into a Wal-Mart to stock up on groceries. Wal-Mart is world famous for the strange folks you may encounter inside and this one was no exception. In this case, the strangest person we encountered was the cashier who seemed to be handicapped at checking since she would give each of our 50 items a good, long look before passing the item over the laser reader, always in such a way that the reader could not detect the price. After some more staring at the item while slowly turning it over in her hands she would give it another pass and some of the time the reader could see the tag and allow the item to be bagged. She seemed to believe that each item required it’s own bag so we ended up with not too many items but a shitload of bags. This was enough excitement for us for the day so we took our ample supply of bags back to the Invader where we celebrated by drinking some of our favorite beverages – porter and whiskey.