Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Going on a Trip

5:00 AM

Elner had a plan: she knew better than to ask Norma if she could go, so she left a note on the front door.

Norma, have gone with Luther and Bobbie Jo to get married. Will call when I get home.

Love, Aunt Elner

At around twelve that afternoon when Norma found the note, she called Macky immediately. “Macky! Aunt Elner’s gone off with Luther to get married. Did you know she was going?”

“She said something about it.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She didn’t want you to worry.”

“Where did they go?”

Macky chuckled. “Dollywood.”

“Dollywood! My God, that’s all the way to Tennessee. She’s gone all the way to Tennessee in a truck! And you let her go?”

At five o’clock that morning Luther and Bobbie Jo had picked her up in his eighteen-wheeler truck and they had hit the road headed for Tennessee. Bobbie Jo had always wanted to be a June bride, and Miss Elner had always wanted to go to Dollywood, so Luther thought it was a fine idea to be married in the little chapel on the grounds, and kill two birds with one stone.

The next day Bobbie Jo, a happy new bride wearing a tank top and shorts, stood holding her wedding certificate and her free corsage the folks at the chapel had given her, watched as Luther and Elner rode on Thunderhead, the largest roller coaster at the theme park. That night at a wedding dinner at the Cracker Barrel, Elner was beaming as she ate her liver and onions. “I’m so happy for the two of you, I just don’t know what to do.”

When the waiter came up and asked if they would be wanting to order dessert, the new bridegroom said, “Does a cat have a tail?” Bobbie Jo thought it was about the wittiest thing she had ever heard.

When Elner got back home a few days later, she called Norma, and as she expected Norma was upset.

“Aunt Elner, why would a woman your age want to get in a truck and go all the way to Tennessee?”

Aunt Elner said, “Norma, that’s just it. At my age how many more chances to get to Dollywood do I have? I just figured I’d better go while the going was good, don’t you think?”