Diana called Jonesborough but did not mention me. I sat and sulked. The next day she called again and I, her gray-headed old mother, howled: "I want to go too; my SunTrust check will be in the next mail!"

Now I know that I am not Dear Abby, I am Carolyn, but I have some travel advice. In the self-drive bit, if you bump anything, patch it up with duck tape and keep moving. Under no circumstances return to the airport and Dan Dooley's car park until you are ready to leave the country. But I am getting ahead of the story.

Jean of Jonesborough hoped to go with us but the tour was sold out. KayMarie of St. Paul/Minneapolis, who comes to Jonesborough for QuiltFest, got her money in on time and joined us in Shannon.

I first met KayMarie as she was roller-blading through downtown Washington DC traffic. Since then she has gotten out of the Army and gone into restoration work in Minneapolis. After she sent in her money, her husband Lorry had a heart attack and had quadruple bypass surgery on March 8. Our family has an old teddy bear that is a stuffed reservoir of love known as Well Bear. The Jonesborough post office stuffed him/her in a priority mail envelope that left for St. Paul. I asked the Jonesborough Presbyterians to pray. With a combination of Well Bear, the doctors and prayer, Lorry got up and cooked KayMarie breakfast the day she flew Delta to Shannon.

Sometimes the worst thing a loved one can do is to hover like one of those air-powered boats that blows hot air everywhere. We all figured that if KayMarie went on with her plans, Lorry would know he was well. A favorite cousin of his came to stay and we met KayMarie at Shannon on March 22.

On March 21, Diana and I left Monmouth NJ and were driven to Kennedy in NY. Aerlingus is the last stop on the Terminal. Check-in was not too difficult. I got Irish money in NY but I suspect that I could have waited. The waiting area was filled with people going home to Ireland. All had their Walt Disney bags and t-shirts and stuffed animals and once again I knew that the whole world has become one large theme park. The sky was gray outside. We had aisle seats. Now the Army teaches that to avoid a terrorist you should take a window seat. If you have bad knees or a weak bladder an aisle seat outranks being hauled up by a terrorist.

Ireland is snuggled under the armpit of Scotland and for years the roads were the sea. Northern Ireland became a place of conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics. The IRA had helped feed the good earth with blood of the slain. Belfast was to the north. We were flying Aerlingus south to the West Coast. Next time I travel I will take a small compass. Somehow my balance bubble (it's that inside thing that is like the bubble in a builder's level) flipped. When I thought I was looking west toward home, I was looking East. If Moslems have to look toward Mecca, Southerners look for the road home. Overseas flights are the only time that I just give up and do not take Fosamax. As you know, it must be taken on an empty stomach and then you have to wait 30 minutes in an upright position before you eat. Airlines always feed you. Now I know that there are people of such strong character who never eat anything on a flight. I take my melatonin to combat jetlag but food I am going to eat.

Flying into Ireland is just like flying into Tri-Cities. Green land over limestone rises up to meet you. The crew collects money for UNICEF. Any coins are good. Tray tables go up. Buckle up. Touch down. Customs was easy. We walked out into the main lobby and KayMarie arrived 15 minutes later. We went to get the car. We had a four-door automatic-gear-shift Subaru. In Ennis, a milk truck had done what all milk trucks do, stopped in the middle of the street. The driver had gone off to make deliveries. Diana bumped the truck so gently that our seat belts did not even tighten. However part of the windshield on the left side crimped. Remember drivers are on the right.

Everyone was kind. The police (garde) took information. We continued toward County Clare located in the Barrons and Susan O'Connor Daly's B&B. Once there we called the car park. They said, come back. Susan quite wisely said, "They can wait. You are not going anywhere."

The economy, thanks to the European Common Market, is booming. Like East Tennessee, everyone is building. The biggest shock of the whole trip was to arrive in Doolin and see the same identical garbage plastic containers that decorate every home in East Tennessee. KayMarie said that back home the squirrels are starving because they can no longer get into the garbage and have taken to chewing at golfballs hoping that they are eggs. I had always thought that John Campbell [City Manager] of Johnson City and Dwight Treadway [Town Manager] of Jonesborough had agreed, good old boys style, with these monsters. I just wish that Paine Webber had sold me stock in hard plastic products.

The second real shocker of Doolin was that Wednesday is sewage pickup day. The soil is not fit for septic tanks and so each home has its holding tank and every Wednesday a truck comes and sucks it up and then waddles down main street leaking its waste like an incontinent ancient.

Raw sewage smells the same anywhere in the world and I hope that the Sierra Club members who are against Washington County TN elected officials running sewer lines down to Reed Nursing Home and to the industrial park wake up and smell the sewage. Typhoid killed my grandmama. Diphtheria killed the boy who rode the school bus with me.

Susan's house is off the main street. If you get lost ask; everybody knows Susan. She was having a new glass round house built that she said would withstand the 110 mile per hour winter winds. She immediately began to praise Greenspan for what he was doing. Her kitchen refrigerator was as small as a two-file drawer cabinet. From this, she fed her guests huge meals. That night she sent us off to Gus O'Connors' Pub to look for Patty.

Diana had given up drinking for Lent and KayMarie is a white wine drinker. I really think a tourist should stay everywhere for two days: the first is to figure out the system and then the next day you can help the newcomers. We visited the Heritage Center and found that Mrs. Clinton had been there before us. We visited the Cliffs of Moher. It was here that I threw into the sea a lump of coal from Egin Mountain in Clairfield, Kentucky. Marie Cirillo has worked for years in Tennessee to develop sustainable communities. It felt right and meet so to do, to take the coal from Clairfield to County Clare.

The day before, on the 23rd, we returned to Shannon and Dan Dooley's car park. They refused to consider my Platinum Visa and slapped a $3,000 "you lose if you so much as scratch our down-graded shift Fiat" on Diana's card. This really takes the joy out of driving and Diana has no intention of ever going to South Ireland again. Rental car charges have plagued a lot of people. Sue and Gerald of Jonesborough just gave up and paid charges on a credit card to clear their credit. Charges that they did not owe. I will tell you now that Dan Dooley's car rental did remove the $3,000 before we left Ireland on the 28th of March. We had not scratched their Fiat. It might have been smart of us to call her credit card company on the spot to find if it had been removed.

There is a wonderful mill at Croom where we ate lunch on our way to Kinsale in County Cork. We were booked into the Hilltop B&B. Kinsale is an old town with a harbor and all roads seem to go up or down. After one try, Diana came back to the Hilltop and parked the car swearing that we were not going to move it until we left town.

I went off and bought a golden walking cane at J. Cronin & Co. that will snap down to next to nothing. People open doors for me. Cars let me cross the street. I get almost as much attention as the English Ladies of Rylstone did with their hats and pearls but unlike them I have not been able to figure out how my golden cane will make me money.

We spent a lazy day at Kinsale. Diana went and explored every up and down hill and every old Celtic cross. KayMarie and I had the vapors and wondered if we were going to be sick. But on the 27th we were on the road again headed toward Adair. This is another wonderful town. They have a Heritage Center with easy parking close to almost everything. We had come to Adair because Diana had said, "Mama, I did not read all those Gothic romances as a child without wanting to spend one night in a Castle."

Adair uses highway dividers that are heavy plastic and they interlock like legos. Certainly easier for the Highway Department to move from place to place. I did not know until Adair that ICI Dulux paints are of Ireland. My bill this month to those nice persons at the Glidden Company Store in Johnson City TN was $331.57. I hope when you all visit Jonesborough and see 133 E. Main, Saddle Shop, Herb Shop, and Pottery Shop that you remember that the days of mixing blood and milk are only for museums.

Adair Manor was developed, built by a gentleman who had gout. As riding to the hounds made him uncomfortable, his wife encouraged him to build the manor. He built and he built and he built. I don't have the total footage but it strikes me that Biltmore in Asheville NC would fit inside of it. We had tea in the evening, only mine was gin, and then we had our dessert served in front of the fire in the Library. All the waiters were from Spain or overseas. The Irish were outside on the golf courses. It is a heated towel rack, chocolates on the pillow, beds turned down type of place.

KayMarie drove back to Dan Dooley's. We turned in the car and cleared Diana's credit card. At Shannon we told KayMarie goodbye and she boarded Delta. We cleared Customs and left at 2:20. Aerlingus Shannon to NYC I had five seats to myself.

What we did not know until later was that Kay's plane returned to the airport and it was 25 hours before she got to Atlanta. Because of the time change we got to NY at 3:40. The luggage came through. Diana's favorite limousine picked us up. We were home at Monmouth by six. We ordered a pizza for dinner.

On April 1, we went to Prudential Hall, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, to hear Mary Black with special guest Altan. If you are ever in Newark try to visit this center. It is so grand. I would dream that our performing arts center to be could be a miniature of such outstanding design. Ireland in March was so beautiful, flowers of all kinds everywhere. I took a lined raincoat. It was far too heavy to ever use. I had one wool sweater which was enough. Anyway with all those sheep you can buy a wool sweater.

I flew to Atlanta on April 2. The plane waited for an hour and a half on the runway in Newark because of the storms over Atlanta. In Atlanta, we waited for five hours. The board said only Tri-Cities delayed. By seven when we got on the plane, the pilot was blaming the waiting on the French. It seems the French had not delivered a plane that had been ordered.

We were ready to charter a bus and drive home. However the Captain put it in overdrive and Tri-Cities, looking green like Ireland, arrived before the stewardess could even serve water. Daughter Cassandra and her husband Gary had been waiting and reading for three hours. The luggage came through; we drove to the Cracker Barrel. There is nothing like detoxing from travel by eating cornbread and greens in East Tennessee.

But I sit at my computer and bring up the pictures of Susan O'Connor Daly's home and I can hear Patty singing. "For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brother. Their laughter and their loveliness could clear a cloudy day." John Denver.