Rhonda and I married on New Year’s Eve. My parents were married on July 4 and my sister on Columbus Day, so I felt like part of the crowd at last!

I wanted a honeymoon out west. I found an ad for a Dude Ranch (name withheld) in a small town (name withheld also) in upstate New York.

No matter what my wife suggested, I kept bringing up the Dude Ranch, mainly as a joke. To my surprise, my wife agreed.

On the way, we spent the night in a luxurious old country inn. Our immaculately detailed room had a huge fireplace.

Trying to act the big shot who knew everything, I nearly burned the room down and roasted a guest towel.

Then, I was so fatigued I lay on bed and hallucinated my work supervisor was staring at me.

When we got to our destination, we discovered there was not one word of truth as described in our brochures.

There may have been horses on the grounds, but I didn’t see any.

Our brochures said there were always nightly choices for entertainment, and many other amenities. It also said many people come back for the food alone.

The Dude Ranch turned out to be a stand-in for “The Shining”, a huge, vacant hotel.

We paid special rates for a cabin named “Albuquerque.”  Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was merely a tiny unadorned house across from the hotel -like setting.

There were two other couples for our entire stay.

We had a “tour guide”, Archie, and another individual, Irv, whose function I never quite figured out. They lived on the grounds in tiny, messy trailers. They were always pretty well lubricated against the weather.

We discovered the entertainment choices were a small bar with a juke box and a room with a couple of pinball tables.

I drove my wife crazy playing “The Curly Shuffle” on the jukebox.

Supper was always the same: A family style dinner of hot dogs, macaroni salad, and something like peas.

Archie would always say, “The food here is all organic.”

One night Archie seemed particularly under the influence and played a game, “Name That Tune.” I won easily.

We had to pressure him for the promised prize until he gave in and gave us two bottles of cheap wine which we didn’t drink and later tossed away.

Another night we decided we had to escape and bolted out and drove round this middle of nowhere town till we finally found an oasis: McDonald’s.

We never smiled and laughed so much in our lives, just realizing the absurdity of it all!

Also, I profited from our night at our country inn. Albequeque had the biggest, widest bed you can imagine and a fireplace stocked with logs.

I soon became an expert and we spent the honeymoon getting to know one another and burning up stack after stack of logs.