Back to the DeLorean

Back to the DeLorean

True Story by Dianne Herring

I got up early that morning and drank my usual quota of coffee. I
looked at the table, I saw the short story that my friend had
written and sent to me. I decided to read it again. Later I went back
to bed thinking of the story. I listened to my favorite music on my CD
player with headphones and, despite the coffee, drifted into a shallow,
dream filled, sleep...

Dee Dee had gone to visit her rich Auntie Irene, or Aunt Rene as folks
in the family called her. She was quite a lady and lived in a large
house on a hillside corner lot in one of the most beautiful cities in
America, Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville is surrounded by mountains.
The biggest mountain having a cross made of concrete and put there when
JFK was assassinated. To Dee Dee this was truly the most beautiful
mountain. She was able to sit outside in the garden and view
it in awe, reminiscing about how her Aunt acquired all of this wealth.

The house was in a rich neighborhood. It was made of stucco and had a
Spanish look to it, with a huge wrought-iron gate in the front of the
archway entrance. Just inside the gate was an adorable garden. It had a
fountain and there were plants and flowers of all kinds. The house was
of approximately 4,000sq.ft., and inside there were many antiques. It
reminded Dee Dee of the many Antique Shops she had seen, but all
crammed into one.

Actually her Aunt Rene had owned an Antique Shop a few years back, and
this was when she had met Mr. McGregger, or Mr. Mack as everyone called
him. Someone had told her about him and his huge house in downtown
Huntsville. So she had decided to go and visit him. Mister Mack was
quite a lot older than Aunt Rene was, but they had soon become good
friends. And they had switched and swapped Antiques. Aunt Rene had been
in awe of his three-story house that, to her, appeared to be a mansion.
His sister, who was bed-ridden, lived there also. And they had a lady
that came in and did the cleaning and cooking for both of them. For
years the Methodist Church had been offering to buy Mr. Mack’s house
and tear it down and make into a parking lot, as they felt it was a bit
of an eyesore to the town, but he would not budge. As time went on,
Aunt Rene had, as she called it, lost her shirt in the Antique
business, meaning that she was broke! So, they decided that she should
move in, and take care of things.

But soon Mister Mack became very ill, and the Doctors found that he had
lung cancer. So, Dee Dee's Aunt Rene finally convinced him to move to a
more comfortable house. He finally listened to her and sent her out to
find a more suitable one for the three of them. This became a long and
arduous task because of having to find a house with ceilings tall
enough to be able to house all of his six foot tall furniture. She
finally found the Spanish looking house and he agreed to the move.

Soon after they moved into the new house Mr. Mack became even more ill.
He and Dee Dee’s Aunt Rene had talked, and he had asked her to call his
Doctor and Lawyer over and fix the legal papers that stated that at his
death his whole estate would go to Aunt Rene. The only stipulation was
that she was to take care of his sister, should he pass away first
until her death. Mister Mack’s estate involved much more than the
house. He had stocks and bonds in several big companies. And there was
a volt at the bank that he did business with, filled with silver and
gold things that were very valuable and rare.

Aunt Rene took very good care of Mr. Mack and his sister. And as it
turned out he did pass away before his sister, so Aunt Rene invited her
friend Cameron to move in with her. They both took very good care of
the sister but, since Mr. Mack was no longer there in the house, it
became dress-up, party time for the two of them. Mr. Mack had left
Aunt Rene sitting pretty for the rest of her life.

During her stay at the house in Huntsville, Dee Dee became very excited,
about her friend Joey coming to visit. Joey was a geologist and he
lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and he was in Huntsville on a business trip.
It seemed strange that the two of them had ended up in Huntsville at
the same time. But she could hardly wait to take him on a tour of the
house she had told him so much about for so long.

Dee Dee cooked dinner that night. She made spaghetti with all the
Trimmings because she knew this was a favorite of both her Aunt Rene’s
and Joey’s. The three of them sat down for dinner and Joey was pleased
to meet Aunt Rene, who he had also heard so much about. Her Aunt Rene
usually retired early, so Dee Dee took Joey to see her bedroom before
she went to bed. The bed, dresser and chest of drawers were very tall,
and about six feet high. And in the three-way corner there was a dressing
table with a full-length mirror on all three sides.

Joey was amazed, to say the least, as Dee Dee showed him around the
house. There were antiques everywhere. In the living room there was a
huge fireplace, beautiful shiny hardwood floors and a Lincoln Bed. Joey
had never seen one of these. It stood tall, almost up to the ceiling
and it had a big mirror on the front. And, there was a place to step up
on and grab the top of the thing and pull it down into a bed. It was an
amazing sight. The furniture in that room was Japanese style; black and
shiny with mother of pearl inlay. In the dining room there was a huge
dining table that could sit ten people easily. There was an awesome
mural on the long wall, and the tall china cabinet was filled with
sparkling china and crystal. Joey’s jaw dropped lower and lower as they
went in room after room. He had never before seen so many different
kinds of furniture and such.

The Den was a very interesting room, in that there was a huge glass
cabinet filled with beautiful dolls. Each one was a collector’s item.
Aunt Rene had been collecting them for years. Dee Dee told Joey how she
used to stand there with her Auntie marveling at the way she took each
one out of the box and stroked its hair, still in awe of her own dolls.
Aunt Rene had often talked about how poor her family was, and the fact
that she had never seen real dolls until she had left home as a
teenager and moved away to the city. It was at this point that Dee Dee
decided she was going to have the most awesome collection of dolls
her family members had ever seen.

Also in the den were four sliding glass doors, which led out onto a
beautiful rock patio, which had the most unique patio furniture Joey
had ever seen. And beyond the gate there was an incredible garden,
which was a site to behold, even in the dark. A teahouse, with a little
porch on it, stood in the middle of flowers of every kind and there was
a pathway that led through to where there was a rock pond filled with
huge goldfish. And there were rock formations and statues, and some
things that, to Joey, were completely unidentifiable. Dee Dee explained
that Aunt Rene had had her Japanese friends come over and landscape.
Though actually, she had been the boss and she had let them know that,
as well as letting them know what and where to put every single thing.
And the garden was all around on the hillside for everyone to see.

Dee Dee had told Joey all along that there was yet another surprise in
store for him. At this point he could not even imagine what it could
be. In all actuality, Dee Dee was in for a surprise herself. Her Aunt
Rene had told her about it, but she had not seen it yet. They both went
to look out into the four-car garage. There was only one car there. The
rest was stacked to the ceiling with antiques, and perhaps what some
folks would call junk, but not to Aunt Rene. Every piece was special,
in some way, to her. Also there was a car, so wrapped up that you could
barely see that it was a car. It had many ropes that went around and
around and were tied in all sorts of knots. Aunt Rene had told her
about the car. She had said that it belonged to her daughter’s
boyfriend, who was from Russia. Dee Dee thought Russia! Just the sound
of that word made her cringe. She had met him once however, a long time
ago. He was tall, dark and handsome, and the talk was that he was, to
say the least, very wealthy.

Dee Dee and Joey decided to go in the indoor garden, which had a huge
iron gate with a lock on it, so they, of course, felt very safe. As
they continued to drink the wine that they had started at dinnertime,
they watched the fountain spraying down on the plants and flowers. The
water sparkled like diamonds as it came down from the strange, beast
like, ceramic figure, which hung from the rock wall.

Dee Dee and Joey were the best of friends and he was like a brother to
her, perhaps like the brother she had never had. But to him, she was
like a mother figure, even though she was much younger than his mother.
As they were drinking their wine, they laughed a lot, as they usually
did when they got together. They both had a way of getting each other
into a frenzy of crazy laughter. They giggled and laughed to the point
of sometimes loosing their breath. It was sort of like a contest to see
which one could get the other laughing the most, not about anything
that would make any sense to anyone else, but both just being silly,
and having a great time...

All of a sudden I woke and jumped up out of bed, and before I knew it, I
was searching for my little red address book that was stuffed full of
addresses and photos that I had kept for many years. I was hoping to
find the pictures, the ones that were now just in my head.

Yes! There they were, all three of them that my friend Joey and I had
taken that night. Wait! I thought, as I stumbled around the room,
realizing that I had had not just a dream but a also a flashback from
my past. Oh, Wow! I thought, as I looked at the first picture. It was
one that Joey and I had taken of ourselves, holding his camera up and
as far out as we could. It was one of the ones that develop right
before your eyes. Then there was another one of Joey sitting inside the
shiny, silver car! This was truly a sight to behold. The last one was
of me, sitting, posing somewhat like a movie star, with my head propped
up on my hand, and my body spread out on the hood of the most amazing,
awesome car the two of us had ever seen. I had felt like a movie star
that night; after all not many people have seen a DeLorean, except on
the movie, Back to the Future!

I thought about my friend’s story again. And thought perhaps his story
had jogged my memory, giving me the flashback/dream. I read his story
once again, wondering if he might like to read my story...

Postscript: He did.