“A Garmin in the Hand”

I heard a story recently about a man who passed away in Vidor, Texas and who, after the memorial service at the funeral home, was to be buried in Franklin, Texas some 205 miles away.  The committal service was to be conducted by a pastor serving a church in Franklin. The funeral director scrawled some directions on the back of a funeral bulletin and handed them to the hearse driver. He set off followed by the family in several cars.  The procession proceeded north on 69 and then went west on 190, then at Huntsville, went north on 45. But the hearse driver missed the turnoff at Buffalo to go southeast on 79 toward Franklin. He was heading toward Corsicana. The deceased man’s daughter was in the second car, and knew something wasn’t right, but it was an older car with no built in GPS and she didn’t have an I phone with GPS either. She had  a Garmin but couldn’t find it. As she was searching frantically through the glove compartment and her purse for the Garmin, the pastor who was waiting at the graveside, was trying to reach the hearse driver to find out what the hold up was.  He finally got the funeral director who gave him the hearse driver’s number. “Where are you?” he asked. “We’re running out of daylight here!” He redirected the driver and the procession fell in line as they headed, now in the direction, toward Franklin and the gravesite. Around dusk, the line of cars pulled into the cemetery. The pastor and a cemetery worker directed them to pull around the grave, and keep their headlights on so they could see to lower the body.  The family began climbing, stiff limbed, out of their cars, pulling on jackets and sweaters to ward off the chilly evening air. The man’s daughter went around to the trunk to get her sweater.  As soon as she popped the trunk, she heard a frantic woman’s voice saying, over and over again, “U turn as soon as possible! U turn as soon as possible.” The Garmin had been warning them since they missed the turnout to Franklin. 

The moral of the story is “A Garmin in the hand is worth two in the trunk!”