We had another great day in the Deep South yesterday. We road tripped to South Carolina to visit the Drayton Plantation. Very historic, but everything around here is historic, including the Savannah cottage where we are staying.
Our cottage is part of a row of cottages built in 1906 for working black people. Ours is the one with the hanging plant and the rocking chair. The interior is nicely decorated, very trendy and just right for three vacationing AARP ladies. It’s also tiny and whenever I think back to 1906 and the probability of parents raising a family in it, with no yard and a privy in place of the charming deck outside the back door, I shudder.
I shudder a little when I think about my whirlpool bath experience in the cottage’s trendy bathroom. After a couple days of travel, I was looking forward to a good soak. But, when I pushed the whirlpool button and the engine revved up, water began spraying everywhere. I pushed the button to turn the thing off. The motor kept running. The water kept spraying.
Finally, desperate and soaking wet, I drained the tub. The water quit spraying. The motor kept running. I hollered to my sister. She called the landlord while I toweled myself and the trendy bathroom, both of which looked like we’d endured a power wash of cataclysmic proportions. And we were really, really clean.
By the time everything was dry, my sister still on the phone with the landlord, located the breaker switch to the whirlpool and turned it off. Later in the day, he called to tell us this is apparently a common defect with American Standard brand whirlpools and not at all my fault. Whew.
Everything else in the trendy bathroom is in perfect working order and the trendy kitchen and the trendy living room and the trendy bedrooms. But I’m not touching any more buttons or operating any electronic devices, except for the trendy flat screen TV/DVD in the trendy living room. We found the first season of the Mary Tyler Moore show in the trendy landlord’s DVD collection. In the evenings, I escape to Mary Richards’ 1970 version of trendiness: electric typewriters, push button phones with cords, mini-skirts, nylon stockings, and pocket books. After a few episodes, I’m ready to return to 2008.
Modern technology spooks me out sometimes, but for the most part I like it. If I steer clear of whirlpool baths from now on, I should be just fine. On the other hand, the bathroom and I were clean in record time. Maybe I’m onto a new trend.
