Day 569: Cheese, Please!

The Mind’s Eye group left Laurel and crossed Chesapeake Bay to Delaware. Their destination was Milton, near the shore of Delaware Bay. They spent the day hiking and bird watching at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge and visiting the lighthouse at Cape Henlopen State Park. The day’s limerick arose from some gossip about a local fellow named Josh and his successful but expensive courtship of Mildred.

When Josh courted Mildred from Milton
With crackers, Bordeaux, and some Stilton
The wine and the cheese
Did her so much please
That she said, “Let’s check into the Hilton.”

Day 568: Laurel Quarrel

Laetitia and her group were once again in the Washington, D.C. area in Laurel, Maryland. This was another museum day; this time they spent most of the day at the National Air and Space Museum. Back in Laurel, some happy hour gossip about a marital spat was the source of the day’s limerick.

A wife from the city of Laurel
With her husband was having a quarrel
For it was his intent
To have sex during Lent
Which she thought was a sin and immoral.

Day 567: Treasure Pleasure

After Bel Air, the Mind’s Eye group headed toward the capital city. Their destination was Largo, a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. Once again they took the Metro into the capital to visit the places on the mall. They also visited the National Museum of Natural History.

Laetitia’s barstool perch during happy hour was near a table of young people who were avid movie fans. The most vocal of the group was Margo, a twenty-something assistant theater manager who was so into movies that the distinction between movie fiction and real life began to blur. All at the table were fans of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo, and were enthralled as she described her plan to drive to Minnesota on her next vacation and find the lost briefcase of $100 bills buried next to a barbed-wire fence by Steve Buscemi’s character somewhere near Brainerd. She allowed that her family and some of her friends were skeptical and amused when she talked of her plan, but she would show them. After all, the film opened with, “This is a true story.” Laetitia smiled as she wrote a limerick on her napkin and went off to join her group.

A moviehouse fixture named Margo
Amused all who knew her in Largo
When she bragged of her plan
To drive west in her van
And find the lost treasure from Fargo.

Day 566: Bare in Bel Air

Laetitia traveled east with her group toward Bel Air, Maryland. Their first stop along the way was at Union Mills Homestead Park, a museum of early American culture centering around the Shriver family homestead, built in 1797. Next they visited the planetarium and aquarium at Bear Branch Nature Center near Union Mills Reservoir. Their final stop before reaching their destination was Prettyboy Reservoir Park, where they went hiking.

At happy hour in Bel Air, the bartender’s story was about Rob and Joan, teenage lovers who wanted to add spice to their relationship by doing something highly unusual. When the carnival came to town, they rode its tall Ferris wheel, with its closed cars, and concocted a plan. After practicing a few times with a timer, they concluded that their plan was doable and decided to carry it out. Their plan was to get out of their clothes as the car began to ascend, make love, and get their clothes back on before it completed its circuit. The flaw in their plan was that in the heat of the moment they forgot about time. So when the car reached the bottom and was opened by the attendant, they had to run from the car and through the crowd clutching their clothes. Laetitia made the story the subject of the limerick of the day.

On a Ferris wheel high o’er Bel Air
Rob and Joan made wild love in a chair
And it shocked the whole town
When the chair came back down
And they both emerged from it quite bare.