Hatteras – Trixie Blaine, vacationing on Hatteras Island this week with her family, excitedly related the surprising changes in her husband since arriving on the coast of North Carolina.
Ms. Blaine explains, “For the last seven months, I have been after Duane to dig up a row of dead shrubs out behind our house in White Pass, Virginia. Every weekend he promises to get the shovel out and take care of them, but I always find him later sitting on the couch, drinking Keystone Light and binge-watching Saved By The Bell. Says digging hurts an old football injury in his back, like he ever got off the bench.”
At this, Ms. Blaine sighs, refills her wine glass from a box of pink zinfandel, and takes an exasperated sip before continuing, “Well, we get here on Sunday, unpack the car, and carry our beach chairs, and collapsible cabana, and bocce set, and jumbo Yeti cooler, and boogie boards, and Bluetooth speaker, and our three dogs, and Frisbees, and cornhole boards, and 27” water-resistant Bluetooth television set (Saved By The Bell again), and the kids down to the beach. So Duane gets it in his head that we need a fire pit. He gets a shovel out of our duffel bag–oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the duffel–and starts digging.”
Surprisingly, Ms. Blaine again pauses to refill her glass with the lurid pink wine, seems to have lost her train of thought for a moment, belches softly, then continues, “Of course, I thought he would take about two shovelfuls and collapse like back home, but no! He just keeps on digging and digging and digging. He must have spent three hours with that shovel. And he only had six Keystone Lights the whole time. I don’t know what to call that other than a miracle.”
Duane Blaine ended up digging a hole that was eight feet across and six feet deep before he finally struggled out of the hole and stared at the hole for another two hours as if it somehow contained the meaning of life. From his wife’s statement, he appeared to be a changed man after the experience.
When asked about his miraculous conversion, he stated only, “Um. I don’t know. Tomorrow, though, I’m going to carry heavy boxes up stairs. And clean the gutters. And it isn’t even my house!”
An unfortunate footnote to the story–That night, a young couple walking along the beach in the dark swerved to avoid the skeleton of the Blaines’ cabana and stumbled into the miracle hole, which Duane had neglected to refill. They sustained a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder, a torn ACL, and suffered multiple sea turtle bites from a turtle who also had become trapped in the hole.