Another Black Friday

Whew!!!!  I ate too much and now what to do with all the leftovers!!!!  John and I’ll be eating leftovers for a week, but so be it.

I just have to share a Black Friday story from old.  The year must have been 1960 or 61 and I was driving a beautiful white 1956 Cadillac.  My teenage daughter and a friend were going to downtown Atlanta to Rich’s to shop. Now in those days when one went downtown to shop they dressed up in the best they had — no pants, but dresses, stockings and the whole nine yards.  I don’t remember that we had on hats, but. . . .  If you are familiar with downtown Atlanta, five points is (was) a main crossing and it’s along there that the Henry Grady statue stands.  So here it is a busy Friday morning and a cop is standing out in the middle of all these streets directing traffic (and its bumper to bumper) using his own whistling — not a store bought whistle.  I can just see him now — it was cold and he was not a young man and had on a gray top coat and gloves — whistling and moving the cars along.  Then I enter the picture — just ready to turn right to go to the big store.  Uh Oh — the engine dies right there and I’m the one first in line to move when the light changes.  The car wouldn’t start and I hollered and asked the whistling cop what was I to do and he said, “Lady, I don’t know, I’ve never had this happen before.”  And he kept on whistling and directing  traffic. A lot of help he was!!  Well, some men — from where they came I don’t know — pushed the jalopy up on the sidewalk.  No cell phones back then, so we had to find a phone in a booth to call for help.  You guessed it — I was so excited about going shopping that I forgot to buy gas and the car won’t run without it.  Embarrassed is not a strong enough word to use, but my vocabulary is short of one to use.  When I got gasoline and the car started, I went home.  I left the friend and daughter shopping and somebody else had to go back to pick them up.  Wow!! what a memory of a Black Friday from years past.  That definitely was not country living.