Morpethroad

The Funniest Vacation Ever!

Alan spent the winter of ’86 thinking about all the road trips he was subjected to as a child in the old family station wagon. His two children had never experienced hours filled with playing I-spy and highway bingo followed by staring out the window convinced you passed that cactus three hours ago. He decided the time had come for his family to have that experience.

“Everyone in the car,” he said on the first day of summer break in ’87.

“What?” Andrew had just settled onto the couch for a day of tv viewing.

“No!” Jenny shouted as she covered the phone with her hand. “I’m talking to Becky!”

“Why?” Alex said as he tossed his football in the air while he waited for the other players to wake up.

Alan stood in the hallway and shook his car keys. “Now!”

Three disgruntled children and a very confused wife slowly passed by on their way out to the car.

“Where are we going?” Patty asked her husband as they passed the last exit for their town on the highway.

“We’re going to a great place that I know you’ll love.

“Disneyland?” Jenny asked as her face lit up.

“Kinda.”

“Universal Studios?” Andrew asked, growing excited.

“Sort of.”

“Knotts Berry Farm?” Alex asked.

“You’ll see.”

Even Patty grew excited until Alan turned off the highway onto a dirt road and drove for five hours.

“Our first stop,” Alan declared as he pulled into a parking lot.

Alan grinned ear-to-ear while everyone else’s jaws dropped as they looked out the car windows and saw//

From Michael at Morpethroad

they had arrived at an authentic western town.

All around them was the smell of the west. Horse poo, mud, human excrement it was all there to be enjoyed.

The kids were not in the least excited. They recoiled from the scene, burying their noses in their handkerchiefs while urging their father to drive on.

Suddenly around them, there were gunshots. A bullet passed through the window next to Andrew’s head, his sister Jenny screamed, and then the car door was swung open, and a grizzled man shouted at them to get out and seek cover because the Irish Gang had hit the town and they were the meanest, most ornery cowpokes west of the river.

The kids and their parents did as they were told all finding themselves crawling through the mud towards the cover of a horse trough. Around them bullets flew, the children terrified and thinking their days were over made it to the trough where they hid holding onto their parent’s hands. The parents, Alan and Patty, clung to each other as bullets whipped through the water in the trough spraying them with water that tasted strangely like horse.

Then as unexpected as the gunfight, Alan was grabbed and dragged out into the middle of the street. Patty screamed in fear for her husband who was quickly tied up and made to kneel in the mud of the street.

One of the attackers, Snide O’Gorman, then produced a rope and flung it over a light pole. The rope had a noose, a noose that was placed around Alan’s neck.

The kids were beside themselves when…

I pass the story to Sadje – https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/