The Tripod

Issue date: 11/25/03 Section: Arts

Media Credit: www.reubennjaaphotography.com An elderly couple in love.

Inspiration for art can come from many different sources, even the very newspaper you're holding in your hands. A popular exercise in creative writing circles is to take a story from a newspaper and create your own back story for it. For my parents' 25th wedding anniversary, I came across the article Confused Couple, 85, Take 300-Mile Road Trip: A Visit to Dillard's in Ocala Somehow Led Them to Panama City. A Daughter Will Ground Them by Jim Buynak in The Orlando Sentinel [May 30, 2002] and thought a story about it would be the perfect anniversary gift (I was short on cash that year and was very amused by the idea of a daughter grounding her parents).

What follows is an abbreviated version of the story I gave them. The sections in italics are direct quotes from the article. Perhaps you'll find your own inspiration for a short story in the pages of this Tripod.

Two days after their family reported them missing, an elderly couple turned up alive and well Wednesday in Panama City, 300 miles away in the Florida Panhandle. Just how Mack and Helen Dykes, both 85, ended up there is still unclear.

"Mack, wake up." Helen reached across the bed and patted Mack's naked arm with her hand. "Wake up, wake up."

"What? What?" He jerked awake and snapped straight up in bed with the same coiled, nervous energy that he was famous for in his Navy days.

"Relax," Helen moved her hand onto his shoulder and tried unsuccessfully to guide his rigid back to the headboard of the bed. A coughing fit seized her and it took her a few minutes of wheezing to regain control of her voice. "I was just thinking about tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" She hadn't expected him to remember, but the question hurt all the same. She studied his face, trying to find in it the man she had married almost 65 years ago, the man who would have known the importance of tomorrow.

"Mack, honey. We need to go on a trip."

"A trip? Where? You want more dresses? Want me to take you to Dillard's?" He turned his head and blinked at her in that groggy, confused way he always had in the early mornings. Before this moment, Helen had not planned on lying to her husband about where they were going, but looking at him now in his early morning confusion, she knew that the time it would take to explain the trip would be longer than she could afford to wait.

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools