Two Blondes Go To Boston

When the God Who Loves Us realized we were headed to Boston without extra supervision, he dispatched a Holy Host of angels to our doorsteps in North Carolina with specific instructions: “Go ahead and plan for overtime.”

And thus began a series of road trips that still today shows no signs of letting up. Since then, several of the angels have returned to His Throne, asking to be reassigned.

They have done their job, though - and along the way we have accumulated a nice-sized batch of stories. If you have been following along on this page, you have heard quite a few of them, but this is where it all began.

The occasion for our first blacktop marathon was a journey to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts. They had gifted my daughter, Dr. Ashley Oliphant, with a study grant as part of the research for her second book, “Hemingway and Bimini: The Birth of Sport Fishing at The End Of The World.” A substantial collection of Hemingway’s papers, including personal correspondence and photos, resides within the walls of that library, accessible to researchers under certain strict circumstances.

In order to get there, Ashley needed a co-pilot. Enter, me - the second of what would become the Two Blondes. (Neither of us is the real thing, by the way, but thank God for BB’s Salon.) We are not frequent fliers. In fact, if we can help it, we don’t fly at all. Future episodes of this saga will involve a flight or two, but for the most part, we are road warriors. And that is why Ashley needed help.

The girl is navigationally challenged. She may have earned a PhD with one hand tied behind her back, but without Siri whispering in her ear, she can’t find her way across Lincoln County, NC - much less half of the continental United States.

“No, we cannot leave here and drive to Boston by suppertime.” I was trying to convince Ashley that we needed an extra overnight somewhere. She already had us booked into a gorgeous Hilton on the outskirts of town for our stay in Boston, but her masterful plan was to leave here just after sunrise and drive till we arrived, which, by her measurement, ought to be sometime around sundown. And during that discussion is when the subject of proper attire came up. We both decided that the month of April is pretty much the same the world over - no jacket required. After I managed to convince her that Pennsylvania was where we needed to stop for the night, off we went.

BOSTON

“Is that a snowflake?”. I don’t remember which one of us noticed it first, but it most certainly did turn out to be a snowflake, falling from the sky just as I was dropping Ashley off at the front entrance to the Kennedy Library on her first day of research.

My own day of relaxation and Boston-discovering was planned for elsewhere. I would come back at close of business and pick her up.

That was the plan, alright. But then the famed Scottish poet, Robert Burns, showed up. As he had famously written in his poem “To a Mouse” in 1785, the “best laid schemes of mice and men” (or in this case, Ashley and Beth) did indeed “gang aft a-gley.”

Barely had I pulled back out into Boston traffic when everything seemed to go white. Thinking maybe I would just head back to the hotel until the silly flurries passed (and also since there had been no need to pack a jacket for Boston in April), I wisely switched to Plan B for the day. At the time, I did not realize that “B” stood for blizzard.

Eight hours later, Ashley and I were scrambling via text to secure the last Uber driver in the city who had not turned off his phone and gone home to hunker down during what turned out to be a humdinger of a snowfall, even by Boston standards. We found him, and she finally arrived safely back at the Hilton. By then, she and the Uber guy the snowplow boys were the last ones standing.

Cheerful local television commentators the next morning assured their fellow Bostonians that the roads were clear and back in action, so out the door we went - dressed, of course, for North Carolina in April, which is all we had. Banking on the car’s heater to keep us alive until I could get her to the library for day two of her research, we stepped out the front door to what looked like a massive sea of giant white marshmallows, aka the mounded outlines of the vehicles that had spent the night in the parking lot of the Hilton - happily nestled all snug underneath their frozen white beds.

Undaunted (because Boston TV said the roads were clear), we began trying to figure out which marshmallow was ours and somehow dig it out from underneath three feet of snow. (Okay it wasn’t three feet.) Ten minutes in, a man with a snow shovel came across the lot, grinning. He had a Southern accent.

“Y’all aren’t from around here, are you?”

“Does it show?” we laughed.

“Oh yeah, it shows. Y’all are going to need this shovel or you will be here till lunchtime. Here, let me help.”

He said he was originally from Greensboro, NC, and the accent did bear that out, but looking back on it all, we’re pretty sure he was actually one of those angels, working overtime - might even have been one of those who later asked to be reassigned - we can’t be sure.

The next couple of days passed quickly, and the roads did clear though the snow did not. It was still hanging around when we turned the car south and headed for home, completely convinced that there needs to be a law against blizzards in April.

As a postscript, Ashley snagged what she came for in Boston, wrote the book, and got it published. It remains a big hit to this day. There have been three more books since Hemingway and Bimini (one of which I co-wrote with her), and enough road trip adventures for several more Two Blondes episodes. And if you don’t believe us, just ask those angels. They are currently at work on a book of their own.

Beth Yarbrough is a seasoned and successful veteran of the gift and home decor industry, having enjoyed more than three decades of success as a designer and nationally recognized licensed artist. In 2014 she launched Southern Voice , celebrating life in the South through the lens of her camera. Her daily online postings reach hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic readers on a regular basis.

In 2021, she released Jean Laffite Revealed: Unraveling One of America’s Longest Running Mysteries, co-authored with her daughter, Dr. Ashley Oliphant. The book tells the true story of the fate of the infamous Gulf pirate, Jean Laffite - who did not die in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1820’s as many historians long believed, but instead lived in secrecy for 50 more years before dying at the age of 95.

Dr. Ashley Oliphant is a recently retired English professor with more than twenty years of teaching experience in college classrooms and five published books to her credit. In addition to the Laffite and Hemingway books, she has written Shark Tooth Hunting on the Carolina Coast, and two comedic works of fiction - In Search of Jimmy Buffett: A Key West Revival, and Higher Education: Chronicles of a Dumpster Fire. Her latest book, an expert’s guide to shelling, is nearing completion. All of her books are available for purchase on Amazon.