It was New Years Eve and I was headed to Florida to see good friends. I had picked up a car in Beaumont, Texas that was headed to Daytona Beach, so my friend's beach house was not really out of my way. It was just west of Mexico Beach, where a hurricane had all but wiped out that little town in the fall. My buddy Chase has a real nice beach house, though I had only seen pictures. And my good buddy Frank was coming down from Birmingham to meet us. Any excuse to go down to the coast of the Florida panhandle was good enough for Frank.
Chase had sent me a text with his address on it. I entered it into my phone's GPS and got directions while I was still headed east through Alabama. When I got off on Interstate 10 in Florida, I headed down a two lane highway towards 98, the coastal highway. I knew all of the directions so far by past trips to Destin and Fort Walton but as I neared 98 I was not sure where to go next. It was 5:30pm and I knew that Happy hour had started. I wanted to get there in time for the big seafood fest I knew they'd be cooking. When I consulted my phone, it was dead. Not only could I not retrieve directions, but I had his address exclusively in my phone text, so I was basically clueless.
I turned right and drove for ten slow miles. The speed limit was 55, but most vehicles were big trucks pulling boats or construction equipment and doing 40mph. After ten miles, I turned around and headed the other direction. Fifteen miles beyond where I had turned onto 98, there was a small town called Carrabelle. The fifteen mile stretch had nothing but houses, which were a ways off from the highway. So when I passed a bar in this little town, I guessed I better stop and charge my phone.
It was 6:45 when I walked into the bar, and was getting dark out. I looked all over the place for an outlet to plug into but none were to be found. I walked up to the bartender and asked her if she had an outlet I could plug into. "It'll cost you a beer," she said, promptly opening a Busch and setting it in front of me. I handed her my cell phone with the charger plugged in, and she plugged the other end into an outlet behind the extremely cluttered bar.
I walked over and leaned on the railing over `the water. It was truly beautiful, I have always loved the Gulf coast of Florida and was soaking it all in. And then I felt a peck on my back, and spun around to find a large green parrot standing on the table right behind me. "Hello," said the bird.
The owner of the parrot was a large, burly, crusty old salt. "That's Janie, she wants to see if you have a cracker for her." I patted my pockets like I was looking for a cracker, then shrugged. The man pointed at a bowl on the table full of packets of saltine crackers. I reached over and picked one up, opened it, then looked at the man.
"May I give her one?" I asked.
"Well Janie is waiting on you." I held the cracker near Janie, and she grabbed it in her beak and moved it with her claws. "By the way, my handle is Teddy, but everyone calls me Skipper. Watch your step around here."
"OK I will."
"Carrabelle can be a dangerous place if you don't watch out. I gotta pee." He got up from the table and left. I walked down the railing to the other end, where a man stood shucking oysters to send to the bar or tables.
"Howdy," I said. He said nothing. "Are the oysters any good?"
"I sure wouldn't eat them."
"Why?"
"They are nasty," he exclaimed.
"Really?" I love raw oysters with lots of horse radish in my sauce, and had never heard a man shucking being so critically blunt about his oysters.
"They aren't the good ones from Apalachicola, they are from New Orleans. And they are all nasty." Then he shut down and was completely silent again. I sipped my beer for five minutes, and then he said "Giraffes."
"Beg pardon?"
"Giraffes," he repeated.
"What about them?"
"Watch out. A giraffe escaped from the local zoo, and is running free down around these parts. Also tigers and bears and elephants."
The closest zoo that I knew of was in Tallahassee, but I couldn't imagine that all of those animals traveled this far away on their own steam. Plus this guy didn't seem too credible. I told him my situation and how I was trying to find my friend Chase.
"I know him."
"You know Chase?"
"Yep." He gave me the address on highway 98, and I looked at my watch and saw it was 7:15. That would have been plenty of time for my phone to charge, so I went to the bartender and she handed me back the phone and charger. I hopped in the car and drove down the fifteen miles watching the mailboxes for an address. Sometimes they were hard to see, because of monster size piles of debris along the side of the road that had been collected from the mess the hurricane left.
It was the very last house on the left before you reached a long stretch of bare beach with no houses. The owner was in the front yard, and his name was Chase, but he wasn't my friend and he didn't know him. I had hit the power button on my phone but had no reason to look at it yet. When I did, I saw it still had no power. I drove back very slowly to Carrabelle looking in every driveway for my friends' cars. But again, this was difficult with the houses so far off the road and the pitch black night with a canopy of trees on either side of the highway.
When I got back to the bar, I found the manager and explained I needed to charge the phone. He said he didn't know why it didn't charge behind the bar, but let me sit in the corner of the kitchen next to an outlet and charge my phone. If I would buy a beer. It only took twenty minutes to realize that my phone wasn't taking the charge so I was high and dry.
I should mention that I'm a lightweight and can't drink on an empty stomach. It upsets my tummy and gives me a buzz. So I was driving in the dark, only knowing that the house was somewhere on this fifteen mile stretch. I want up and back that fifteen miles almost a dozen times. By 11:45, I was starving and sweating and feeling desperate and dizzy. I would look at each and every driveway but never saw either of their cars. Addresses on the mailbox meant nothing at this point.and I had no idea where I was going.
And then a flaming giraffe ran across the road in front of me. I've hallucinated before, but it was never so realistic and vivid. I could actually feel the heat as I past it running down the side of the highway. And that is when I saw what looked exactly like Chase's boat in front of a house. I had seen lots of pictures of it on Facebook. As I pulled slowly down the long driveway, I saw two cars but they were not Chase or Frank's. I parked next to them and walked around the house on stilts. I looked up at the two levels above, and saw no lights on in the windows. This could not be the place, because I knew for sure that Frank and Chase would be up partying on New Years Eve.
In desperation, I walked a circle around the house shouting their names. When I got to the front of the house, I heard a shout back to me from the back of the house facing the beach. I ran to see if it was someone who could help me find them. I looked up at the balcony on the third story and saw a figure in the shadows. "Bill, is that you?"
"Chase? Oh thank God its you, Chase."
"Meet me at the front door I will let you in." When I got to the door, Chase and Frank were both there.
Frank greeted me with a headlock and noogies on my head. "Bill! Billy boy! Can you bake a cherry pie, Billy boy?"
"I can bake a cherry pie, then I'll spit right in your eye."
"Where have you been buddy, we've been so worried."
"I couldn't find the place. It's a really long story. I didn't know the address so I was looking for your cars."
"I guess we both have new cars since you saw us last." replied Chase. "We tried to call and text you a lot."
"My phone is broken. So I had no address, no directions and no way to contact you. But it's New Years eve, why were the lights out?."
"We gave up on you and went to bed two hours ago," Chase explained.
"On New Years eve? Seriously?"
"There's no girls here, Bill."
"Yeah," agreed Frank. "It's not a party without girls." Frank is always the bartender, and immediately walked to the bar to mix us all a drink. "You did get here just in time to toast the New Year with us. And tell us your latest Driving Fool story, which sounds like it was tonight."
Chase patted me on the shoulder. "Bill, did you see anyone burning those big piles of debris left on the side of the highway? I can actually feel the heat in my car when I pass them."
And then it dawned on me. I had only partially been imagining things. "Oh, that would explain the flaming giraffe."
"The what?" asked Frank as he put my drink in front of me.
Chase was also confused. "You met a gay giraffe? This oughta be good."
