Let's get some plates.

So Pat says that she wants to go shopping for plates for her birthday. That calls for a short road trip to Newell WV (that's West Virginia and it's 2 hours away). It's the home of The Homer Laughlin China Co. maker of Fiestaware. Now this place is the Mecca for people who like plates. I'm telling you, there must have been a zillion plates at this place. That and guys standing around with 3 day old beards, baseball caps and cigarrettes hanging from the lips. Allright, I'm only kidding about the cigarettes, because there are no smoking signs all over. At first, I thought that maybe these guys worked at the place. Nah, I was wrong. These guys were just husbands without a sense of humor or adventure. Boy, I dug right in with Pat. We went to the seconds room first. There were piles and piles of plates and stuff. There were big plates, not so big plates, medium plates, and small plates. There were round plates, oval plates, triangle plates, and square plates. There were really big bowls, big bowls, you get the gist of it. And there were a ton of people all thinking the same thing: the plate I want is at the bottom of the pile.
You can hardly tell the difference from first grade and seconds. The people there are very friendly and they have places where you can stash your stuff and go back for more.

Pat did mention that we had to cross the world's scariest bridge to get to WV. Now, all bridges scare me. Some more than others, so I'm thinking, how scary can this bridge be. Well my first hint was that you have to use side streets (or what passes for side streets around here) to get to the bridge. For crying out load, this bridge crosses the Ohio River and I gotta use Otis to get to it. My second clue was the wood hut that is the toll booth. Well, I paid my toll, looked at the bridge wondering if I could ride the Aztec to the bottom, just in case, and drove , eyes focused in front of me, to the WV side. The only thing Pat said was, I told you it's the scariest bridge you've seen. Judge for yourself from the pictures.