Okay, so we jump ahead. The Chronicle will fill in the missing 5 weeks of our travels at a (soon) later date, but just felt the need to share this story from small town Heiskell, TN. Those of you privy to the Red Bay Email String will especially appreciate this short saga.
F&O are holed up for a week in an RV park about 20 minutes outside Knoxville, TN. This is a small, rural ‘town’. There is one Deli & Market in the center of ‘town’, a couple of churches, and the ‘town’ post office. The town is Heiskell, the area they are in is Raccoon Valley. You can’t get better than that name for an accurate visual. After having made the big move to the smaller rig (deets later), they felt the need to nest a bit, and get some supplies shipped in from Amazon. Logistics when homeless can be a quandary at times, so they stay put occasionally to catch up to their necessities.
Five items in the cart, all due to be delivered one day after they arrive. Silly campground rules, we had to have our packages delivered to General Delivery at the Heiskell PO. If you know, you know: this is a part of RV life.
Ba-ba-bing. Amazon says the packages have arrived by UPS. Two boxes, one delivered the day before, one this day. Ollie goes to the Heiskell Post Office to collect them. There is one box. The one with the dish drainer is AWOL. UPS says they left it on the doorstep at 3:29 pm the day before. Ollie re-checks with the postmaster. She insists they don’t have it. They were there, they never saw UPS. WTF? How does a dish drainer just go missing? Detectives Flynn and Ollie are on the case.
- Double-check the address the dish drainer box was sent to on Amazon. Yes, General Delivery, Heiskell.
- Dig deeper on the UPS site, which only gives the postal-city, not the full address, but they have a photo of where they left it. 21st century!
There is the box! On the porch of – no, not the post office – but instead of some run-down old house that looks like it is in the middle of nowhere rural TN.
- File a claim with UPS on-line for a missing dish-drainer: mis-delivered to an unknown address random house in WhoKnowsWhere, TN. Hope whoever has the dish drainer enjoys it. I mean, who wouldn’t? It’s a collapsible RV dish drainer, just the specialty item that everyone has on their Christmas list.
- Text the postmaster the picture of the house with the package because she has given us her personal cellphone number to let her know it was not on her watch (nor her carriers’) that the dish-drainer had been abducted. Gotta love a small town! Where else would this happen?
- Five minutes later she replies. One of her carriers recognizes the house and provides the address! As in, oh yeah, that is XXXX Brushy Valley < real street name. Small towns take dish drainers very seriously.
This address was a 20-minute drive through the backwoods of rural TN. The house is on a dirt driveway, 2nd one in of 3 homes, all with broken down cars, broken down boats, broken down dogs, and general junk. Residents must display a Confederate flag or be fined. To get out of the driveway, you must back down 100 yards and do a 3-point turn. This is not looking good, but F&O shall be undeterred in retrieving the dish drainer. They shall risk life and limb for it!
Ollie goes to the door; Flynn waits in the truck with the phone queued up to 9-1-1 and defense weapons at the ready. There are no packages on the porch. The hound-dog is inside, barking. After an eternity (meaning 3 minutes), finally the door is answered by an older man with a very long scraggly beard and hair to match, wearing dirty jeans and a dirty t shirt. This is not a judgement, just a description. F&O often wear the same, as them are ‘working’ clothes.
Does he have the dish drainer? Yes! He is not asking a ransom for the dish drainer. The dish drainer has not been abused, it is in its original packaging. He returns the dish drainer unharmed.
(Huge sigh of relief)
Results: Amazon for some random reason put a wrong address label on the box, with this guy’s address. Obviously a clerical error, as the name was similar – but not identical. This was not the PO’s fault, it was not UPS’s fault. It was Amazon’s doing the whole way. They sent F&O’s dish drainer to a stranger!!
Follow up: Trying to cancel the claim with UPS was a feat in itself. There is no way to contact them on their claim website to ‘undo’ the claim. Flynn had to DM them on TwitterX, navigate a few hundred ChatGPTAIBots, to finally get a human at UPS to acknowledge they were in the clear. Goofy.
More follow up: Contacted Amazon to invoice them for F&O’s time and for the $25 worth of Crumbl Cookies they brought to the post master and carriers as a thank you gift the following day. Amazon gently declined Flynn’s request for a $50 credit (fuel and time) but did concede to a $10 credit with their apologies.
Only in a small town would this whole adventure ever been possible.
Fin
Flynn