“I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside...”

“Look, a meth deal!” I really said this. In the car with my wife and children. In Williamsburg, Virginia. It just came out. Perhaps you know that words just tend to pour out of my mouth without my brain filtering them. (Have you ever read “The Word Birds of  Davey McFifer”? A solid read, according to my memory as a seven-year-old. Great pictures of birds crawling out of a boy’s mouth.) It’s probably not something I would have said if my brain got into the act, but fortunately my children are pretty oblivious to the seedy underbelly of the world, so to them I might as well have said, “Look, a mess reel!” Plus they don’t really listen to me, so I could talk Klingon all day long and be no worse off.

It all started when we checked into our campsite across the James River from Williamsburg. Looked like a really nice state park, and the campsite was impeccable, but...it was raining, and the tent was still wet from the night before, and none of us wanted to sleep in the tent in the rain, and I had no compunction this time about wimping out, so we took the ferry across the river and drove into Williamsburg to find us a nice hotel. 

But first, CVS for diapers! Not far from William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg was a CVS, according to TomTom. So we buzzed over,  and I was in and out in no time. We saw a Super 8 across the road, and while I wouldn’t put it in the category of “nice hotel,” it was likely in our price range and would be a good benchmark for how pricey a hotel would be here. As we waited to pull out into the road, I noticed a person standing on the grass looking down the road. For a bus, I guessed, but something didn’t seem right about the way the person was looking around. Also, I couldn’t tell if this was a man or a woman. Then we turned into the street and I got into the left turn lane and stopped at the red light...at which point I noticed a man standing on the opposite corner from the first person. A car pulled up to the red light next to him and the window came down. The man walked to the car, leaned over, stuck his hand in, and pulled it out, returning to the corner as he glanced up and down the road. 

And that’s when it all came together. Like Shawn Spencer, I had an instant flashback to all the evidence my brain had filed away: meth dealers! Working in tandem on their corners! “Look, a meth deal!” I said as we turned, actually pointing at the man on the corner, and I thought to myself, if not for  Breaking Bad, I’d never have noticed that! But it gets better.

We pulled into the Super 8 parking lot, and in a span of point-five seconds, both Stefie and I noticed a woman in jaguar print short-shorts and high heels walking to a car and a man with no shoes sitting on the outdoor staircase with his head leaning on the railing. We both said something to the effect of, “I don’t think we’ll stay here tonight,” and I pulled right out of the other exit without slowing down. Again, it was like a set piece from Breaking Bad, minus the stunning desert landscape. Fortunately, my inner Clark Griswold stayed asleep and did not suggest that this would be a fine place to stay.

We found the Fife and Drum, an awesome inn down the street from a great coffeehouse and a greater ice cream and hot dog joint, and I called. The nicest man, the owner, answered the phone and told me in about the most polite way possible that our family was a bit young for his establishment--they didn’t accept guests under ten, since it was such a small inn, and the sound would carry...he did have two unattached suites in the yard that would fit our family in a few years...he had four kids, too, and he understood.... I wanted to be all grumpy about it, but he was just too nice. He pointed us to the Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel, a family-oriented place next to the Colonial Williamsburg visitor center. It was the right choice for us. In addition to being designed very smartly for families, it was actually a nice room. Not spectacular, but nice.

Williamsburg was a great place, and we could have easily spent more than two nights there, but now we get back to the whole thing about bring an 18-month-old along to places like this, and it can be summed up like this: either Stef or I walked around with a manic Freddy while the remaining four toured the buildings. I did get to see (Freddy let me stand and watch) some workers putting up a new building. They were working on the rafters. It really hasn’t changed much in 250 years--we just have much bigger tools to cut faster and lift higher. Makes me think I should be able to build a silly little shed or carport....

Which is a nice segue to next time.