Home From the Road, Playing Catch Up..

Time to rehash the last road trip: Billy talked me into driving down a day earlier, so I locked up my house on 4:15 Wednesday morning January the 20^th and hit the road.

I made excellent time stopping at Ozark, AL for my western omlette at 7:45. There were new workers in the restaurant that needed a lot of help. An experienced waitress had to retake my order. All arrived well in the end. My omlette was perfection.

It was a little after two in the afternoon when I arrived at the brick hoard. This is located not far from the intersection of I-10 and I-75. There were three people cleaning and stacking bricks. I paid the head of the operation $150.00 for 150 bricks. The workers offered to load the bricks onto my truck but I declined. One reason was they were not getting paid to do that and more importantly I wanted to hand pick my bricks. The main man had to work on another project so I was able to cherry pick the best marked bricks. It did not take long to get my 150 bricks loaded.

As I was working a dump truck arrived to deposit another load of these “pavers in the raw”. There were stacks of these pavers neatly lined up along with many piles of freshly dumped bricks. What a pretty picture!

It was a fast trip to Bill and Linda’s from here: Only some 30 miles using the back roads.

I was kind of dirty from loading the bricks. Billy just shook his head seeing me all grimy!

Thursday Bill and I loaded up his truck for the Music Box Society meeting. It poured rain all day. It was a good thing I did make the trip a day early. There was no way I would have been able to get bricks in this weather.

We enjoyed a special dinner of rouladen, red cabbage, and fresh kale. Linda is such a good cook. I get so spoiled staying at their house!

Friday morning we got on the road extra early for Orlando. The destination was the Holiday Inn for the phonograph show. Friday was the “outdoor swap” before the main show on Saturday. Bill usually does this show, but we must attend the MBS meeting in Fort Myers on Saturday. The pickings were pretty grim. One of the “big name” restorers showed up with a Multiphone that had been restored to the hilt. I’m not sure if this is the machine he had advertised for $125,000. or not. This machine is a rare bird, but it can keep flying at that price as far as I concerned!

Multiphone “juke box”. This is not the machine I’m describling. This shot was found on the web.

I found a painted horn that will work great with the latest phonograph purchase. It is the perfect size. The painting is still quite intact and not all scratched up. These horns were originally painted without using any primer to keep the costs down. Red especially is prone to flaking off.

The new horn in Alabama. It is propped up using bricks that were sent to me by my good friend Jean in PA. You have to love those flat rate boxes! She fit four bricks into that shipment!

I’m so glad we are not going to stay and do the show Saturday. Last year it was death. From the looks of dealers present, I imagine the cycle will be repeated.

We headed out at 2:00 for Ft Myers. We made good time arriving at Carraba’s right at 5:30. The place was just starting to fill up as we seated ourselves at the bar. Supper was a bowl of mussels. That dinner was such a treat for me. I was in heaven soaking up the garlic butter sauce with bread. I’ll have to do double duty on the Concept 2 when I get back home!

Once we got settled into the condo I contacted Charlie about the fire hydrant pick up. He is located just two miles from the convention hotel. It will be all set to pick up Saturday morning about 8:30.