Woolly Bull at the Durham Bulls baseball field
I had business with the Center for Integrative Medicine at Duke and the day being so fine, I decided to cruise in that direction. I counted cats and then ankled toward the door but before I opened it, the phone tootled.
"Can you please bring a box of those felted soaps to my office, please?" said a familiar voice.
"No problem, Poopsie, for I am just now on my way to Duke and when I leave there, I will drop by your place on Blackwell Street with the goods."
See how pleasant it all was? But don't let that fool you. No, no, no, you just wait. As soon as the car left the garage, the sky opened and forty days and nights of rain began falling.
Well, everything looks different in the rain, of course, and I made a wrong turn. You expected that, didn't you? But I'll bet you didn't expect this: as soon as I made the turn I was stopped by police cars and fire trucks. That's right, but they weren't interested in me and I can't say that I had much interest in them. I instructed the car to phone Wonder.
"Poopsie, I'm going to be a little late with the soaps and whatnot."
"That's OK," she said, unfazed as always. "Take your time."
"Oh, I will surely be taking my time, all right" I said. "I'm stuck in traffic. Someone's set fire to the road."
"Set fire to what?"
"The road, Poopsie, someone's lit up Fayetteville Street."
"But, I don't understand you. Why would someone set fire to a road? You mean there's been a traffic accident?"
"I don't see any accident," I said. "I only see the road ahead and it's blazing like the dickens. You ask a good question though. Why torch a road? Just a passing whim, do you think?"
She said no more but signed off rather abruptly. Probably some emergency in operations management. Eventually I was able to extricate myself from squad cars and fire hoses, and I began to drive Durham-ward. But it was still raining and I made another wrong turn.
No fire trucks this time and I reasoned the best course of action was a u-turn. It took very little effort to make the turn because some traffic engineer had thoughtfully built a convenient spot for doing just that. Effortless but interesting anyway. I phoned the Wonder Woman.
"Poopsie," I said, "I wish you were here. I just made a u-turn, in one of those specially prepared places in the road where one is encouraged to make a u-turn, and you will hardly credit it, but there was a sign warning "Do Not Enter." I would have photographed it but, as I say, I was u-turning."
"Probably just an extra piece of road signage that was lying about. I wouldn't concern myself with it if I were you. I'm amazed that they spend good tax-payer money on signs like those," she said.
"But the entertainment value alone justifies them, don't you think?" I said. She rang off again.
I was now headed in the right direction and had found just the road to get me there when I was stopped by traffic again. You will be happy to know that the road wasn't burning and there were no emergency vehicles. There was, however, a yellow ribbon of the type you see strung across the roadways when people are raising money for some charity or other. The sign said, Iron Duke.
I know a thing or two about these Iron Dukes. For one thing, they take no guff from the locals. Don't mess with the Iron Duke is the word that goes round town, so I don't. Now, I'm not sure how it happened, but I was able, eventually, to find a detour that brought me to the gates where they sell tickets to the Greatest Show on Dirt.
No Durham Bulls ball games scheduled for November, of course, so plenty of parking and I could walk to Wonder's office. Without further mishap, I arrived at the back door, underneath the Woolly Bull in left field.
"Thank you, Genome. You're one in a million," she said.
"I know," I said. "Don't mention it. It was quite exciting actually. Let's do it again tomorrow, shall we?"