Queen of the Road

by Doreen Orion

  That was the point. About a decade after Disneyland opened, Walt realized it was going to be way too confining for his dreams. He hated that cheap hotels, attractions, and billboards crept right up to his Land’s borders, easily visible from within the Kingdom. It particularly galled him when he asked a father why he was leaving the park and was told that up on top of the rides, Dad could see the freeway traffic getting bad and wanted to beat it.

  By the early 1960s, Walt and his team started buying up land in central Florida, a super-secret mission, referred to only as “Project X.” (Maybe I should start referring to Tim as “Project N.”) To achieve their objective, brother Roy set up multiple dummy corporations to buy the land, which at the time went for only about a hundred dollars an acre. People started noticing the massive purchases and speculation became rampant. Who was behind the land grab? Was it an automaker? Defense contractor? Airplane manufacturer? Finally, at Disneyland’s tenth anniversary party, people got their answer.

  Reporters from around the country had been invited to the festivities in Anaheim, including one from the Orlando Sentinel. The newspaper had 130 reporters at the time, only three of whom were female, and its editor decided just to send “one of the girls” to the party. But Emily Brevar had done her homework. During the Q&A, she pointedly asked Walt, “What are you planning to do with all the land you’re buying in central Florida?” He, of course, denied that he was building a park at all, but did so with such detailed knowledge of the area, throwing out obviously well-researched facts about the water basin and easily citing weather statistics, that his staff had to pull him off the stage. The very next day, the Sentinel ran with the headline “It’s Disney,” and land shot up to $250,000 an acre. (The names of some of the dummy corporations—like M.T. Lott Real Estate Investments—can be seen in the upper windows along WDW’s Main Street.)

  All that effort was in service of Walt’s dream to maintain the illusion that one is truly in another world: from the lake that, as in all fairy tales, must be crossed to get to the enchanted land, to the removal of Christmas decorations in the dead of night while guests sleep (also done on Disney cruises), to the strict requirements for “cast members.” They must appear in costume, but only in their areas and never with any extra accoutrements (except at MGM, where, as would be the case on a real Hollywood lot, “cast members” can walk around anywhere they like in costume, even carrying backpacks or eating lunch).

  It’s all so realistic, in fact, that in Frontierland, I nearly made a mistake that would have gotten me kicked out of the park forever. I guess Tim’s right about how concrete I am: Trying to keep hydrated all day, then holding it while waiting an hour for a ride, I had to go to the bathroom, bad (yeah, I know it’s badly, but…). My eyes darted about, desperate (ditto). I finally spied a couple of outhouses near a playground.

  “Be right back,” I said to Tim. Fortunately, he immediately grasped the situation and, within a few steps, grabbed my arm.

  “Sweetie,” he said, concern in his voice. “Have you had too much sun?” He then explained that the outhouses were part of the playground and not really outhouses at all. Score one (and possibly a number two) for Disney realism.

  Our favorite day in the park was the one spent at Blizzard Beach. We’d never been to any water park before and now fear that all others have been ruined for us, ever after. It was simply six straight hours of exhausting fun, climbing endless stairs to the tops of various waterslides, throwing ourselves headfirst onto “toboggans” or butt-first into rafts. I had sworn for months I would not do Summit Plummet, the 120-foot, near-vertical drop, billed as “the world’s tallest and fastest free-fall body slide.” But Tim dragged me up the slopes of Mount Gushmore and, being the gentleman that he is, said, “Ladies first.” (He told me later the only way he could be certain he’d do the slide himself was if his wife took the initial plunge, rendering him too humiliated to back down.) My decision to go ahead was fueled more by laziness than bravery; those were an awful lot of steps to retrace. So after giving Tim one of my patented “what do you want from me”s, and with a look I hoped portrayed disgust, rather than the terror I felt, I purposely didn’t glance at the slide as I swung my legs over the side. The moment I slowed to a stop from 55 mph, I turned around, smiled, waved at Tim, and started the climb to do it all over again.

  While we went to every park at least three times each, Blizzard Beach was the only one we didn’t return to. It had just been too perfect a day.

  Tim and I have always been able to play together like children. I think it’s because we trust each other so completely. Yes, we have our fights, but in all the time we’ve been together, neither of us has ever said anything in anger to the other we regret (or that’s even so memorable we remember) later. I think this allows us both to regress completely, on demand (whether the situation calls for it or, in my case, often when it does not) without any fear the other will use our behavior against us.

  The only crazy ride we didn’t like (and, thus, only rode once) was Tomorrowland’s newest attraction, Mission Space. This G-force extravaganza just made us want to puke. The paper bags attached to every seat should have been a dead giveaway. We felt so awful after riding it, in fact, we even canceled our dinner reservations.

  Quite a hardship that, since this ain’t your father’s Disney. The World is now a gourmand’s delight. We feasted one night in Africa, taking in the fragrances emanating from the wood-burning ovens. The next night found us in Germany at an Oktoberfest complete with yodeling and oompah bands. Then we might head to Morocco, treating ourselves like caliphs, reclining on sumptuous cushions, partaking of Middle Eastern delights while being entertained by belly dancers. No wonder we each gained five pounds during our eighteen-day stay.

  Although I’d heard flight attendants can be grounded for putting on weight, it was not to be for this bus attendant, as my union rep refused to budge on the matter and I was forced to leave the state with him. Even our bus itself had gained weight in Florida. When we left Colorado, it was 40,040 pounds. At the Prevost place in Jacksonville, we discovered it had packed some on, vindication of sorts for Tim, who liked referring to it as “she.” Now what I viewed as her at-times temperamental attitude made sense (for surely, the development of bus phobia hadn’t been all my doing): “She” was suffering from PMS (Prevost Menstrual Syndrome). How else to explain the gain other than water weight? I just hoped she didn’t develop cramps.

  Perhaps my bus phobia rearing its ugly headlights again could be traced to when we were in the Prevost place in Jacksonville and I saw our mutilated bus neighbor, done in by a mere two-hundred-pound tire. What appeared to trigger my tipping point (Oh, God) into renewed terror occurred on our way to New Orleans, at an RV park near Pensacola. We were only stopping for the night, and while I went into the office to register, a repair truck passed by. One of the gals behind the counter, in either a misguided attempt to be helpful or an utterly intentional attempt to be sadistic, proclaimed, “A refrigerator in someone’s rig caught fire.” To my astonished look, she was only too happy to expand on her inflammatory statement.

  “Oh, yeah!” she informed me with relish. “The repair guy said it happens all the time.”

  “R-really?”

  “Oh, yeah!” she repeated, as she added insult to injury by swiping my credit card. Then she offered, “It can even happen while you’re driving down the road.” I swallowed hard, signed the bill, and decided not to tell Tim. Why give the driver even more to worry about when we’re barreling down the highway?

  But when I got back to the bus, Tim immediately asked, “Did you see that RV pass by with all the fire damage?” My face must have gone ashen.

  “Look at you!” he exclaimed with more consternation than concern. “I thought you were over the bus phobia thing.” Geez. No wonder he had patients lining up to see him with that technique.

  He should talk. By this time on our trip, Tim had developed road rage. Yes, my darling husband, who always laughed and tol
d me to “chill” during those rare times I drove us in my car in Boulder. What suddenly seemed to be irking him now when he drove was specific to the bus.

  Of course our high-tech Prevost had a highly accurate computer-aided cruise control, identical to the one truckers use. Tim therefore liked to pick a big rig going the speed he wanted to go, slip in behind him, and “trim out” the cruise control until their speeds matched. When some poor, unsuspecting soul in a car pulled out in front of him and slowed down, Tim was—horror of horrors—forced to readjust his settings.

  “Oh, my. I’m sure that’s quite a hardship for you,” I commented with all the empathy I could muster (which, granted, wasn’t terribly much) when he first told me about his new toy within a toy.

  “Well, it also interrupts my daydreaming,” he explained.

  “You’re DAYDREAMING?” I started to protest that daydreaming while controlling twenty tons of heavy machinery might not be the best idea, when a car was kind enough to illustrate his point. Tim was then kind enough to illustrate mine about his road rage.

  “Idiot!” he exclaimed. “So, you only realized how slow you were going when I started to pass you, eh?” he said to the oblivious driver. I decided to leave my concerns about his daydreaming while driving for another day.

  Then, as we left Pensacola, Tim was in the passing lane about to move around a slow-going truck that had a car tailgating, when the car swerved out in front of us without stepping on it. We were gaining fast. To slow down, Tim put on his Jakes, but not as much as I thought he should. We were still gaining. I was sure he was doing it purposely, to “teach the guy a lesson.” But I figured the guy could get whatever schooling he needed on his own time, without a full scholarship from my husband, the Prevost Provost.

  “Listen, I don’t want to be a nag and I know when I tell you you’re getting too close, you just lament that you could have bought a system with radar, but don’t you think—”

  “Why would I need a system with radar when I’ve got the Nagavator?” he chuckled.

  “Sweetie. Please.”

  “What’s the matter?” he said with glee. “Afraid I’m gonna give him a chrome enema?”

  Can you blame me, then, when soon afterwards, I became particularly horrified as we seemed to be mounting an assault on a low, 13'6" overpass on a road that had been quite bumpy? I was sure I could see another bump right where we’d pass under.

  “Oh God, oh God,” I moaned, afraid we’d hit the ceiling of the overpass. “What’s our limit?”

  “Thirteen,” he replied, but when he stole a glance at my terror-struck face, amended it to “No, twelve-six.”

  “But with dolphining, we could easily hit the top!”

  “Dolphining?”

  “You know, dolphining…” I made a wavy motion with my hand, then immediately regretted inducing him to take his eyes off the road.

  “Oh! You mean porpoising!” he laughed. I shot him a withering look.

  “Oh, please. Dolphining, porpoising. Like you can tell me the difference between a dolphin and a porpoise.”

  “Well, actually I can. A dolphin is…” Oh, yeah. I forgot who I was dealing with.

  Soon, though, during our worst disaster yet, my husband would do something for me I would never forget.

  Chapter Nine

  ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUS

  * * *

  Love Me Bender

  2 parts passion fruit liqueur

  2 parts champagne

  1 part raspberry liqueur

  Rest shaker on hip, gyrate, drink. If you can still recall that the love of your life is making you live on a bus, repeat.

  * * *

  We arrived in New Orleans in January 2005, seven months before Hurricane Katrina.

  It seems strange writing about the Big Easy now, with the hindsight that a lot of what we encountered in this most unique of American cities was lost. Having seen a great deal of the U.S. by then, we agreed that New Orleans felt the most foreign and more; strolling through the French Quarter, it was as if we were not only transported to another country, but another time.

  Tim always wanted to experience Mardi Gras. I hate crowds (well, OK, I imagine I hate crowds). So we compromised and arrived for the pre–Mardi Gras celebrations, which start a couple of weeks before and consist of parades by some of the lesser-known krewes. Although we were still lavishly pelted (I should have brought a face mask—the kids on those floats have quite the arms), I couldn’t really get into the whole bead thing. I mean, why would I want to scream and beg funny-looking people to throw me some gaudy plastic doodads that wouldn’t (thank God) go with a single outfit I own?

  Because there were no RV parks near downtown, we stayed at one about a half hour’s Jeep ride to the French Quarter. Driving there every day, we’d see several signs reading “NO Intrnl Airport.” I kept wondering why this fair city would seemingly boast it had a crappy little airport that could only handle domestic flights. It took me several days to figure out “NO” was New Orleans. Concrete as a sidewalk.

  Of course we headed to a park where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, 2,320 miles from where Tim straddled the headwaters in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, nearly five months before. And, of course, I took another picture of him to complete his diptych of disposal. This time, there were plenty of people around, sitting on the grass, watching barges pass by. I was sure there was no way Tim would strike his pose. The pre–bus thing Tim would have been too uptight and self-conscious. After all, he was mortified at Itasca when that family unexpectedly rounded the bend and caught him mid–spurious stream. But, peri–bus thing Tim did not hesitate. And he was amply rewarded for his newfound brazenness as this time, even with all the people: No one noticed.

  In the French Quarter, we peered inside the murky windows of the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum and after much hesitation (“You go in first.” “No, you go in first.” “I went down the slide first.” “How long are you going to hold that against me?” “As long as I can”) tiptoed in.

  The museum was crammed into just a few small rooms, each appropriately dark and musty. Of course these days, every museum has to have interactive displays. In this case, they consisted of a couple of voodoo idols with signs telling who the idol was and what kinds of offerings it required to not vent its wrath. The interactive aspect came in as the signs helpfully imparted that the gods like candy, but if you don’t have any (and not being prepared, we didn’t), money would do just fine. There was even a plate conveniently situated in front of each idol. Although we’d already paid seven dollars for the admission and realized we were likely only contributing to the house collecting its voodoo vig, the place was so creepy, we ponied up the coinage anyway. No point in taking any chances.

  We did learn a bit, however, about the origins of voodoo in NO. When slaves were brought to Louisiana from Africa and Haiti, they were forbidden to practice their own religions. Many were baptized into the Catholic Church. Some Catholic saints then became stand-ins for voodoo deities, worshipped as if they were gods themselves.

  Next, we did a cemetery tour, and were surprised to learn that Marie Laveau’s resting place is the second most visited in the U.S.; only Elvis’s does better.

  Not much is known about this mysterious Queen of Voodoo, and that seems to be exactly the way she wanted it. It is thought she was born in the French Quarter around 1794 to a wealthy white planter and a free Creole woman of color. Shortly after Marie married, her husband disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was presumed dead. She supported herself as a hairdresser, catering to prominent white women, all the while developing her powerful magic, mixing Roman Catholic traditions and saints with African spirits. But her true power was said to derive from the extensive network of spies she groomed among servants in wealthy households. Out of a mixture of fear and respect, they shared with her their masters’ most private information. When her daughter (one of fifteen children) who bore a striking resemblance to Marie also became a voodoo
priestess, the now ageless Queen seemed to travel at will, appearing in more than one place at a time. Even after she died in 1881, many claimed to still see her about town. To this day, visitors draw three X’s (XXX) on the side of her tomb, hoping she’ll grant them a wish.

  Another tomb belonged to Bernard de Marigny, in his time known as the country’s wealthiest teen. The son of a count, he inherited seven million dollars at the age of fifteen when his father died. Although along the way he lost his entire fortune gambling and died impoverished, he also named many of the city’s famed streets: Music, Love, Desire (as in streetcar), and one whose name simply had to be changed, for as the area developed, four churches were ultimately built on Craps Street. (He is also credited with bringing that game to this country.)

  Unfortunately, in New Orleans our waistlines continued the expansion into double-wide status they’d begun in Disney, in spite of the fact that we could not bring ourselves to try some of the more “exotic” fare. Like rabbit. We see them in our backyard. They’re cute. Can’t eat ’em. Deer (which I guess is called venison once it’s on the plate, kind of like “cow” transforms at some point in the process to “steak,” although I seem to have no problem in that department. And why, then, does chicken stay chicken?), same thing. Still, we managed. Boy, did we. (Who’da thought preparing filet mignon in a mushroom wine reduction and adding a banana could be so heavenly? I immediately requested that my personal chef come up with a similar recipe.)