I got up early that morning and drank my usual quota of coffee. I looked over on 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, I 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. There is a cross made of concrete and it was 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 double archway entrance.

Just inside the gate was adorable garden. It had a fountain and there were plants and flowers of all kinds. The house was approximately 4,000sq.ft., and inside there were many antiques everywhere ! 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. McGreugger,' Mister 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. However, Dee Dee found it to be a bit spooky. It had a black iron fence around it.

Mister Mack's sister, who was bed-ridden, lived there also. And they had two maids who 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 lost her shirt in the Antique business, meaning that she was broke! So, they decided that she should move in, and take care of Mister Mack and and his sister.

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 vault in the house. It was covered with a table cloth and was never visible to anybody. And he also had a vault at the bank that he did business with, filled with silver and gold treasures 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. Aunt Rene invited her friend Cameron to move in with her. They both took very good care of Mister Mack's sister and she was bedridden, and she lived for two more years.

Since Mr. Mack was no longer there, 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.

Dee Dee's Aunt Rene usually retired early, so Dee Dee took Joey back 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 it and pull it down into a bed. It was truly amazing.

The furniture in that room was Japanese style; black and shiny with mother of pearl enlay.  In the dining room there was a huge dining table that could seat 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. He couldn't believe his all of this.

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 had 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 indoor garden, which was so beautiful it was breath-taking, 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. There were rock formations and statues, and some things that, to Joey and Dee Dee, were completely unidentifiable.

Dee Dee explained that Aunt Rene had had her Japanese friends come over and built the pond and landscaped the whole garden on the hillside. 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 corner lot where the hillside was 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 possibility 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 of the window 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, wrapped up with tarp so 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. She had met him once but it had been 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 not only had a dream,  But I also had 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 so we could take a photo of ourselves. 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 with the !

This was truly a sight to behold. The last one was of me, sitting, posing, somewhat like a movie star, with my head propped on my hand, And my body was spread out on the hood of the most amazing, awesome car the two of us had ever seen.

Joey yelled, Oh My Gosh !  ' It's a DeLorean ' ! ' I can't believe this ! '

I yelled back, ' I can't believe this either ! '

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 again, wondering if he might like to read my story...


Postscript:  He did.