KK is on vacation...

Those of you who follow this ongoing blog/story of the Midlife Gals know that KK goes on regular bi-yearly (or is it yearly?) vacations with her high school pals. They all get together at some ranch in the middle of Texas and drink and talk and talk and drink till the cows come home. It's outside Brady in the boonies between Austin and Midland. I think that's about the same distance as driving across the state of Arizona.

Can you believe that? I don't know any of the friends I had in high school. And even if I did I don't think I would want to drive to Timbuktu to hang with them for five days. Or even for five hours. God, that was forty years ago. Most of my then buddies died of overdoses, drank themselves into oblivion or are now managing KOA campgrounds outside of Brownsville.

KK's girlfriends all seem pretty normal although that's a feat when you were raised in Midland in the fifties. Midland was on the cover of Time Magazine for having more millionaires per capita than any other city in the United States. It also had the highest rate of alcoholism. Everybody was getting rich off oil and they had only one thing to say, "PARTAY!!" George and Barbara Bush were in that hard working, hard playing group of young lions who dressed swell, played five-card-stud with hundred dollar bills and had nightly rave cocktail parties at each other's houses just so the women could show off the new diamonds they just bought at Nieman Marcus.

And they had babies. Back then that's what you did. Only they didn't have nannies - they had maids. Most of my friends, and KK and I to a certain extent, were raised by good, southern, middle-aged black women who taught us how to make yeast bisquits, make up our beds, and be polite to the gardeners. The Ancient One, who was then known as The Stunning One, gave us great taste in window treatments and taught us that we could fall in love with a rich man just as easily as a poor one. Life was weird. I also knew how to make a perfect Martini for her by the time I was nine years old.

It's no wonder that most of the Midland kids who are now babyboomers are either in the ground, filthy rich, or living beneath the downtown Colorado bridge. We are an interesting group though, you have to admit.

I hope KK is having fun with her gal-pals in the hill country. I know that when the men arrive on Friday they mow the meadow and dig holes in the ground so they can play golf. I can just see them now, the girls decked out in their jeans and boots, putting eagles while holding Bloody Mary's, telling dirty jokes, and talking about how screwed up their kids are.

Have fun KK, and lift one for the good old brown days of Midland,
SalGal