04-XI-1999.
Her birthday, and the only document I have is 132.11 spent at Walmart. Which isn't that far, just the other end of R29 - we're close to where it becomes a regular street, and outward from that it's just parking lots with commercial stuff lined around them - motels, gas stations, shopping malls, movies etc. Every city has at least one such street, which is mostly why there aren't any shops nearby. The nearest Kroger supermarket is just on the edge of it - next building in the city direction is that hotel where we first slept, then the building where Zero is. Then more commercial outfits, but at least on the left side there's a hill so they can't have huge parking lots. Within less than a mile you're on university grounds.
Even though it says it's Walmart, this wasn't shot there - it's more cramped and doesn't have their format of prices and self-advertising everywhere. Possibly Bed, Bath & Beyond, and we probably didn't buy anything there or else it would be on the bank export. Equally possible it's Keymart, the atmosphere of „light everywhere yet still looking gray and ugly“ is exactly the kind they sport. But it seems we did buy something, it's in the cart... looks like more pots and kitchen stuff. Or perhaps they redesigned Walmart since and I didn't quite remember how it looked before.
Rich invited us for lunch on 6th. He's somehow a pal of Ford, who knows where from, perhaps because they are almost neighbors, and Ford put us together via email, so there it was.
The guy built a hunk of a mansion in the valey, below the Blue ridge, near the resort, actually on the same road, just exit before it goes uphill. The house is... huge, the living room could hold a small theatre, it's all round and a hall circumnavigates it. All firmly built, façade brick (later I understood there's no ordinary brick made here), roof covered with real ćeramida*, no shingles nor that fancy tar paper with tiny pebbles. He was specially proud of himself for having installed Anderson's windows, where you turn a crank, like in older cars, to open or close them. „I won't have them guillotine windows in my house“.
Some old woman was serving, his mother in law or aunt or something, behaved like a real housemaid. And, just like it happened back in 1977, the diaspora will go out of its way to reconstruct the food from home, and will go overboard with it. Just as the soup back then was too greasy, this time there was too much onion in it. Lena was unwell afterwards, had to throw a little iron a couple of times, and avoided onion in dishes for years thereafter.
When we were supposed to go back, the Poozhoe wouldn't start. What now... but I noticed a slight downward slope. While the shif is automatic, oil type clutch, still doesn't hurt to try, if it can push all that power from the wheels, why wouldn't it receive some. So we gave it a little push, and it started. And they say automatic can't be pushstarted.
Drove around the „scenic parkway“ (both words sound stupid, and create a mighty synergy), so those who didn't ride with us last time, would see it.
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* too lazy to look up the word for those semi-cylindrical tiles; often seen on mexican houses too
Mentions: Allan Robin (Ford), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Poozhoe, Rich Petrovich, Zero Distance (Zero), in serbian