Newspapers Can Be a Source For Art

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.

"Yes, Dillard's would be lovely, sweetheart. Let's get going."

Apparently, they were out shopping in Ocala and ended up driving all the way to Panama City, said Karen Himebaugh, a Panama City front-desk clerk who befriended the couple.

Mack pulled the Buick into the Dillard's parking lot and stopped. During the 10 minute drive to the store Helen had been silent, nervously planning what she would say at this moment.

"You know what," she turned to face him with a sudden nervous energy though she had choreographed the move in her mind to be one of calm decisiveness. "I'm not really in the mood to shop at Dillard's. Why don't we go check out some other stores?"

"Other stores? But we always go to Dillard's."

"Well, it's time for a change then, don't you think? Here, you can be the pilot and I'll be the navigator. It will be great fun. A little adventure just the two of us. I can't even remember the last time we had one." Mack mumbled something unintelligible that she took for assent. Reaching into the glove compartment, she pulled out a well-worn map of Florida and began searching for the fastest route to Ormond Beach.

Mack Dykes Jr., the couple's son said he was relieved his parents were safe.

"I thought my mom had died. She's been very sick," he said. He had reported his parents missing after last seeing them about 5 a.m. Monday.

The elder Dykes, a retired Navy corpsman, suffers from Alzheimer's disease and would not have been able to find his way home without his wife, the son said.

"Where are we?" After an hour of driving, Mack was anxious to get to the store.

"We're just an hour away from the beach, honey." Helen threw the information out there as casually as she would gaze into the sky and tell her husband it looked like rain.

"The beach?" For a moment she was afraid he would forget to look back at the road, he was staring at her with such bewilderment.

"We are going to the beach; don't you remember?" She was so ashamed at herself that she was unable to speak above a whisper. For the past year, everyone had been telling her husband that his mind was going. Alzheimer's disease was the quick diagnosis.

The couple's daughter, Carol Theodore, a registered nurse who works for Hospice in Ocala, said she is still not sure what happened. Theodore said her mother has been saying "wild things" about the trip.

"Come, come Mack. Does this look familiar to you?" He just looked up into her eyes. She couldn't bear to read their expression so she rushed on with her speech. "Think back 65 years ago. Sixty-five years tomorrow."

Another pause, but he still didn't speak so she continued. "It was on that day that you dragged me under this lonely pier with you and asked me to marry you." She paused only to catch her breath this time before moving on.

"Do you remember what I said? I told you that I needed proof. Proof that you loved me. Proof that you weren't just marrying me to have someone to write to when you were off at war. Do you remember what I said? I told you not to shave. You were so clean cut, so proper; it was the perfect test. And then with a laugh you announced that we should be married tomorrow. I don't know what came over me, but I agreed to it. That's what I brought you here to tell you. After 65 years, I just wanted you to know that it was worth it. All of it."