The Blue Dress

Our journey is over, We are sitting at Gate 44 Dulles Airport waiting for our flight home. I feel compelled to write about

“The Blue Dress.”

Back in Wilmington, the first stop during our intrepid journey, we stopped off at the Christina Mall and visited JCPenney, which is now Anne’s favourite store of all time. JCPenney is a bit like Debenhams but, yes you guessed, 10 times bigger. Anyhoo, Anne found the ‘perfect’ blue dress. Unfortunately, they did not have it in her size. This set the scene for the rest of our 1,810.2 mile journey. Wherever we saw a J.C. Penny Anne would start jumping up and down (yes in the car!) and exclaiming “JCPenney, JCPenney!!!” There are 27 JCPenney’s on the road from Washington to Maine to Meadville. We stopped at every one. No blue dress.

Thankfully, in Meadville, Amy joined the “Hunt for the elusive blue dress.” We plotted the trip from Meadville back to Washington looking for every JCPenney. Amy came up with the rather novel idea of calling ahead to see if the blue dress was in stock. Jolly clever of her I thought. Unfortunately, no blue dresses in the 14 JCPenney’s on the most direct route. Anne eventually got through to Tammy at the Monroeville JCPenney who said she would do a search and call Anne back. Amazing! Tammy called Anne back and said there was one dress left in West Mifflin Pensylvania, a mere 127-mile detour. Ppaff, easy! Anne called Maggie at West Mifflin and asked her to put the dress by. The line was crackly but Anne thought the message had been received and understood. Here’s hoping.

West Mifflin was part of the Pittsburg steel belt. The sat nav took us to a huge deserted car park complete with tumbleweed. We drove around the outside of what appeared to be a massive, but clearly closed, shopping mall. Anne’s hopes were sinking rapidly until we spotted a JCPenney sign in the distance. More jumping around and we headed off to the store.

It turned out that JCPenney was the last store remaining in a 123-acre shopping mall, now a ghost town. JCPenney was packed with 3 customers and 27 staff trying to sell off their remaining stock.

Anne nervously approached the check-out hoping beyond hope that this would be THE blue dress. IT WAS!!!! 

Woohoo, Anne celebrated by buying it and buying an aqua and pink dress to go with it. Phew! I could go home with a clear conscience that I had succeeded as a husband. 

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