From Shelburn, IN to Possum Kingdom Lake

So we're sitting on  porch at the lake cabin the other morning, sipping coffee and enjoying life in general, when I notice that my coffee cup has "Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN" printed on the side. Being a normally curious sort of guy I remarked, "How did a coffee cup from Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN get here at the lake?" So we created the story of that cups journey. Sort of like a Flat Stanley in reverse.

To be honest, I cannot remember the exact story we concocted - Rob made up most of it - and we thought it was hilarious, but that may have been one of those geographical moments. Nevertheless, I thought I would share a slightly embellished version of the cups journey. It goes something like this:

The cup was originally one of 144 that Roland Mayhew, owner, manager and sole employee  of the Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN ordered as a sales promotional tool. Truth be told, it didn't motivate that many buyers and Roland had half a case left, even after those he scattered around the office and the 8 he took home and the 12 he donated to the 4H garage sale. This particular cup, however, left in the possession of Wilfred Karp, who bought a like-new 2001 Dodge Ram pick-up truck from Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN. Wilfred worked at the Conagra-Peavey grain elevator over the other side of Hymera and needed a good heavy-duty truck.

Wilfred was not a coffee drinker, however, preferring those refreshments that were derived from grain (he was in the business, after all), so he left the cup in the truck and forgot about it. Six months later, Wilfred loaned his truck to his brother-in-law, Cooter Harris (recently dis-employed from the grain elevator after an unfortunate incident with 1000 bushels of U.S. Number 1 Sorghum, Smutty, and the boss's convertible) who was going to move with his wife Gladys and their two boys from nearby Farmersburg to her mothers place outside of Clarksville, TN, where he was hoping to get on at the aluminum chair factory.

When Cooter unloaded the truck and the 6X12 U-Haul, naturally the cup got carried in with all the other stuff and there it sat in Clarksville, TN until 3 months later Lester - younger brother to Gladys and Roland - grabbed up the cup in all the gear he and two friends were putting together for a fishing trip at Lake of the Ozarks over in Missouri. At the State Park cabin #12, the cup performed admirably as a coffee cup, but alas, it got left by the fish cleaning sink when Lester and his friends ran out of money and had to return to Clarksville, TN.

However, less than a week later, Louise Stanger and her husband Fred showed up for their annual week of fishing at Lake of the Ozarks and Louise quickly put the cup to use as a flower vase for the little wildflowers she illegally gathered on the nearby walking path. Louise wasn't all that crazy about fishing,  but Fred had been coming to the Lake of the Ozarks for 13 years and he wasn't going to stop now.

The day they left for home, Louise put a fresh batch of flowers in the cup and put in the holder in the console of their Jeep Wagoneer, thinking that they added a certain homeyness to the vehicle. But by the time they stopped for lunch at a particularly colorful roadside park (painted like the Texas flag) near Flower Mound, TX a day and a half later the flowers were totally wilted (and smelling somewhat - well, dead), so Louise dumped them in the red, white and blue trash barrel, and so smitten was she with the decorating scheme she left the cup on the solitary table when she and Fred departed for home in Hico, TX.

No more than 2 hours later, a family member who shall remain nameless, stopped at the very same rest stop to unlawfully deposit some household trash that he had been carrying around in his van, saw the cup, and never one to leave a bit of flotsam or jetsam behind, picked it up and brought it to the lake.

And that, dear hearts, is how it came to pass that I drank coffee from a cup labeled "Shelburn Auto Sales, Shelburn IN" sitting at the lake cabin in north-central Texas.

Or not.