Things were changing in the summer 2019. Our youngest daughter was entering her last year of college. Our oldest daughter had been out of the house for about a year. We were beginning to feel like empty nesters. My wife asked me what I thought about downsizing. We had been in our house since 2006 and were coming up on having been there for a full 13 years. One of the bedrooms upstairs had been converted to an extra family room when our son moved out and another bedroom turned into a music room when another child left. My wife didn’t like going upstairs to clean rooms that weren’t used that often. There were a lot of reasons that now seemed like an ideal time to downsize.
A syndicated movie show appeared on late night around 1987 featuring bad movies. One of the only movies that I saw on this program was Hillbillys in a Haunted House starring country music singer Ferlin Husky. Ferlin Husky was familiar to me because his song Wings of a Dove was on some 8-track tape that our family carried on vacation when we only had about 5 tapes. Hillbillys in a Haunted House follows Woody Wetherby (played by Husky) and his two traveling companions, Boots Malone and Jeepers, as they travel to a country music jamboree. Their car breaks down at an abandoned house that is haunted. The film is a showcase for country music performances by a variety of guest stars. About the last half of the film is a country music concert. The music gets old, but the haunted house and bad comedy keep the film interesting.
Robot Monster is another film that I discovered from the Golden Turkey Award books. It has a lot going for it to make it bad fun. The monster is a guy in a gorilla suit with a fake scuba diving helmet for a head. The opening credits lists the N. A. Fischer Chemical Products as the provider of the “Billion Bubble Machine”. The movie was made in 3-D during the heyday of 3-D movies and is a perfect vehicle for that technology. It has stock footage of stop motion dinosaurs and fighting lizards for no apparent reason. During one scene where a rocket is launching to escape the tyrannical Robot Monster creatures, you can see someone’s arm moving a rocket on a stick. Even with all these fun things to enjoy, the movie seems long at a 66-minute run time.
Plan 9 From Outer Space is the grandaddy of all bad movies. It is the film that has worn the title Worst Movie Ever Made for the longest. One review of the movie said that it might not be the worst movie ever, but it is the most entertaining bad movie you’ll ever see. I think this description is the best. Its reputation was established in the late 1970’s through the book The Golden Turkey Awards and has continued to grow over the years. The Tim Burton film, Ed Wood, about its director has added to the lore of Plan 9.
In 1980, the movie The Creeping Terror was featured in a book, The Golden Turkey Awards. The book shared information about a variety of movies that are considered the worst ever made. In addition to being an extremely bad movie, this one is also very fun to watch. It involves a creature in a spaceship that terrorizes the town where it lands. It sounds like a standard 1950’s science fiction film but the technical details of the film give it the boost that make it comedy gold. The monster appears to be made from a giant remnant of carpet with a bunch of kids underneath it to make it move. In several of the scenes, you can see the kid’s sneakers. The movie was made in a small town in Texas where the director had the people from the town pay him to be in the movie. This is one of the reasons you see so many people get eaten by the monster. The director also ran out of money before he could finish the film. Before it could be finalized, the soundtrack got separated from the film. They couldn’t get the people to overdub the dialogue because they were mad about the film. For the most part, the film is narrated like a nature film. In one memorable scene, a scientist and a military officer are arguing whether to kill or capture the monster. The narrator describing action says “The Colonel, more concerned with saving human lives than advancing Science, told Bradford to Go to Hell.”
I had been at Graceland a few hours when I was walking back from storing souvenirs in my car and overheard a lady saying “That pisses me off. $75 to tour that thing and then another $10 to park? What a ripoff.” Everything costs more at Graceland these days. And more people are angry. Most years, my Graceland trips don’t include a tour of the mansion. Now the least expensive tour that includes the mansion costs more than the VIP Tour we took just a few years ago. The focus of my trips has always been to people watch spending as little money as possible. When I started doing this around 20 years ago, the only money that I had to spend was on parking. I returned to that strategy this year. Because of this, my access to some of the good people watching areas was reduced. But I was also committed to keeping socially distanced, staying away from crowded areas.
Several years ago, my wife saw a bottle of pre-mixed margaritas called Stinky Gringo. She asked the store clerk if it was any good. Their response was, “Oh yeah! But don’t plan on going anywhere after you drink it. It’s strong!” We tried it out and liked it. It has about twice the alcohol content of most pre-mixed margaritas. A lot of margaritas that come pre-mixed along with the standard ones you get at Mexican restaurants taste like lime Kool-Aid. But you can taste the tequila in this one. It has become the go-to margarita at the Wheeler house.
The first time I met my wife’s grandmother was long before I was married. I was at the ballpark in the town where I grew up. It was the summer after I graduated from high school and before my wife, Andrea and I had started dating each other. We were good friends so when I ran into her at the park where her brother was playing baseball, she wanted to introduce me to her grandmother, Eura Mae. Later that night, I was on my way home, walking through the park. A small car pulled up next to me being driven by my Eura Mae. They asked if I wanted a ride home. I told them I was in the mood to walk home that night, but I thanked them for the offer.
My mother-in-law moved to San Antonio, Texas a few years before my kids were born. My wife and I have made several trips there both before and after our children were born. Our first attempt at a trip was cut short when we were rear ended by a drunk driver in Little Rock, Arkansas just after midnight on a Friday the 13th. The details of that trip can be seen in my Arkansas Stories blog post. This includes details of a race riot, an annoying “helper” on the side of the road, a nightclub at the airport Holiday Inn and a ride in a wrecker.
In October of 2003, I had an opportunity with work to go to a packaging show in Las Vegas. My wife’s birthday is in October, so I arranged to have her go with me as a birthday gift. At the writing of this post, this is the only time either of us has been to Las Vegas. The show was scheduled from Monday through Wednesday of that week, but we only planned to stay in Vegas through Tuesday. We would arrive in town early enough on Sunday to do some things before the packaging show began. We would also have some flexibility with the schedule on the show since we were there looking for some solutions for specific packaging problems at work. There was a guy from work who went on the trip with us. When we were doing most of the sightseeing, gambling, and eating activities, we all went. My wife stayed at the hotel and gambled any time that we went to the packaging show.
