Meeting Axom - 1 FEB 2008

The building next to work has a tubular cactus. All week I’ve been trying to figure what it is. It has a hole at the top of each arm, each in a different direction...not a bird house; it's under the patio next to the back door. And then when I put TW in its arm, I saw a cigarette butt and I knew instantly, it is a ‘Cigarette waste disposal device’ (don’t you like the way I’ve picked up on government-lingo).

Also saw this sign in town and couldn’t help thinking…”oh, guess that’s where they teach boys how to use condoms.”

I had an incredible adventure tonight. I met Axom, the River Forest Manor Innkeeper who is named after Ellen Louise Axom who had been a high school friend of his mother. Ellen Louise married Woodrow Wilson (the college teacher who became President). So his mother named her first born after her renowned high school friend. Axom has a chocolate lab named Maggie, very sweet, large and low to the ground. He runs the River Forest Manner which his father bought in 1947. Here’s how my evening unfolded: After work I took off for the far East (North Carolina), the real boonies. Around 6:00 when it was getting too dark to drive, I stopped for gas and asked the clerk where to find a hotel. He said there were none but down the road a bit, was a B and B, Belhaven Inn, which was the only place to sleep between here (Belhaven) where I was going (Swan Quarter). Stopping at Belhaven Inn, I found out it was sold out but the owner, Karen, sent me down the street to River Forest Manor (a large Southern Mansion which was closed for the season but had a couple of phone numbers on it’s door to call for service…only there was no area code. I tried calling using the Raleigh area code and that didn’t work. So I went several blocks back to town to get dinner at the only open restaurant, Fish Hock Café. While sitting there considering my options…I could drive back over an hour and find lodging or an hour in another direction but not anywhere near the 20 miles east where I wanted to be in the morning to catch a ferry. While I kept trying to remember my mantra on the trip, “Spirit will provide me with what I need to be successful,” I remember Kathy (at he Belhaven Inn) stuffing a pamphlet in my hand. Maybe it has a phone number with the area code. And so it did. Having the newly acquired area code in my hand I redialed the phone posted on the door of River Forest Manor (love cell phones which keep the numbers you dialed). Got some lady who said she was out of town but took my number to have someone else call me back...which turned out to be Axom, who was off running errands. Seems he also performs AAA type services for boaters. Twenty minutes later I met Axom at the Manor and he opens up a room in a side house for me to say in. He said it was a converted Sears Roebuck house. Which, I happen to know were mail order houses sold around the turn of the century (check it out on Wikipedia.com)…this one having been converted into three apartment/beach house hotel rooms. Axom gave me a bit of a tour of the hugh Manson telling me it was all shipped in pieces by railroad car and showed me a turn of the century time clock (and I just happen to work with computer time clock systems).

Hope I get to talk to him some more in the morning before heading for the ferry. Spirit has sooo taken care of me...here I was thinking I wouldn't have internet access to do my blog, but everything worked out! And so it is!