Susan and Frank's excellent Thanksgiving adventure

Today, a guest column of sorts. Frank shares his take on What Happened at Thanksgiving, from an email to his family. Thanks, hon.

We had a Thanksgiving that was wild, not by Jack's job interview stories (delayed flight, personal note from Donald Trump), but a good one nonetheless. We drove 3 hours to Susan's sister Korie's home on the Russian River, where Sturmz, I and a macho little dog named Max were the only males among 16. Korie was seen with a knife. (Turkey may have been male too!)


Max peed on the floor when he arrived, Sturmz stole hostess Bella's bed, but then Sturmz waited until the peak of post-dinner poetry reading to begin howling for leftovers while farting out the other end. Naturally, this ruined the mood and cleared the room. I offered to take Sturmz to the car (along with Aspen, who as usual didn't quite realize she is too big to be under the table).


When I got to the car, I discovered we couldn't get in. This began a 3.5 hour search for Susan's car keys. Channeling great Dad searches for glasses or keys, we even laid out the garbage and sorted through it. Korie had converted her garage with some very cool wall hangings into the dinner space. We took the place APART! No keys.

So we stayed over. Highly amped AAA tow truck driver next door helped look for the keys. He is Korie's next door neighbor. We decided he might tow us home the next morning. But AAA sent him to Oakland (thank heaven!) and we got a former Napa-kin who now lives on an ocean bluff a half- hour south of Korie. He loaded the car onto the flatbed for 3 hour ride on winding blufftop road to Fort Bragg. Susan has AAA Plus, so 100 miles of the 107 were covered. He gave us the final 7 for free.


Seemed beyond ridiculous to me, but Dan, the driver said he does this all the time, towing people with perfectly good cars when only the keys are missing, Keyless cars get towed all the time and he recommends avoiding them. As we pulled out in the tow truck, the horn began honking on the car up on the flatbed, occupied by Sturmz and Aspen. Dan said, "I think they want us to go faster!"

I looked in the side rear-view mirror and could see Sturmz standing up on the driver's seat, paws on the steering wheel, barking and barking. After three sessions of horn-honking in about 5 minutes, the beeping ceased.

When we got to the gas station in Jenner, Dan discovered he had forgotten his wallet at home. He left the four of us for an hour while he went to get it.

We got coffee and Susan went off somewhere. The other three of us met a husky youngsta. She was bowing to Sturmz, but Aspen doesn't quite have the art of dealing with overly energetic puppies. She wants to herd them but then chaos ensues.

So on we went, past the most incredible scenery anywhere, cliffs are even higher than in FB.

Dan and I swapped Napa stories, even got to debate the veracity of valley rumors about a secret military base in the Macyacamas. Story is true -- there were tridents there at one time, and there were black helicopters there in 1990s, for whatever that is worse. Susan would have drifted off mid-conspiracy, but she was working too hard in the middle seat to keep from getting the gearshift slammed into her knee. Anyway, we got home.

Thanks to Korie for dinner and the fun and for giving up her bed! Gracie the cat may have been most impacted by having two more dogs overnight.

PS from Susan: Got a voice mail when cell reception came back: the keys were found in Korie's car, which I had entered only for a second to turn off the dome light, and which two guests had then borrowed as theirs had died.