Rokenrol Roadtrip, Part One
By Jackdaw
It's Monday night, almost midnight. Since last Wednesday at 11:00 am, we've been
chasing the Red Elvises, Our Favorite Band, in our little red zippy car,
"Harriet." Why? Because we can.
It was close to 90 degrees when we started out; today, we
drove through snow in upstate New York.
We didn't pack any long-sleeeved shirts, but had the sense to bring a
jacket each..........how does one pack for 60-degree shifts in temperature when
one is driving a two-seater?
Particularly when one doesn't have the Weather Channel's 7-day forecast?
We drove from North Baltimore, Ohio, to Allentown, PA on
Wednesday, and only got sorta lost twice.....not bad for a nine-hour drive with
a bunch of one-way streets at the end.
A smallish audience at the club, and the folks who left early missed a
rare performance of "Blue Moon."
As band aides, our room is always the after-show hospitality room, and
we always try to bring food and drink for the first night of a chase. After the show, we had a roomful of
bandmembers and assorted folks we'd never met before, all munching down.
I had ordered my third thousand of Red Elvises pencils to
give away, because I am the Pencil Fairy, but a shipping snafu landed them in
California on Tuesday, so I had them overnighted to a friend's house in
Massachusetts. I had no pencils for Allentown, and we skipped the NYC show to
visit my old friends in Mass., but I had plenty of pencils to hand out at the
show in Cambridge.............but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The day after Allentown (Thursday), we drove six hours to
my old stomping ground in south central Mass., and then I cooked Hungarian food
for 7 people. On Friday, we chilled a
bit, then forced my old pal Mary to watch "Six-String Samurai" on the
DVD in the laptop we'd brought with us.
That's the movie I rented by chance and first saw Red Elvises in, and
the rest is history. (NB note.......you
can rent this movie uptown; I twisted Mike's arm until he got a copy)
Minor side adventure in Mass.: my old friend Mary has a
mid-60's VW microbus, and we took off for a Wal-Mart 12 miles away at the start
of a rainstorm, and the bus blew a brake line along the way, and we had to call
her brother to come and rescue us.............all because I wanted some red
fringe for embellishments on the "dancing worm" tubular costume
(don't ask). I ended up with red
tassels, and we got rescued (thank you, George), and everything was copacetic. We made it to the show on time.
The worm didn't get a chance to come out at the show in
Cambridge, because the club was too crowded, which is a good thing. I didtrot through the streets of Cambridge in it, but, in that section of town, I hardly rated
a second glance. Parking is impossible
around there, but, thanks to Officer Kevin, both Harriet and the Elvises' Big
Red Van had a safe haven until the show was over.
After the Cambridge show, we were going to follow my
friend Leigh back to the turnpike, with the Red Elvises following us, but
Boston traffic is Boston traffic, and the streets were laid out before
1776. They are narrow, too. We only spent about 20 minutes being lost
without Leigh, following Russians who
had less idea than we what direction to go, but eventually we made it to the
turnpike. Now our only problem was
rooms for the night.
We found the Motel 6 one exit west of Natick, but they
didn't have but two rooms left, so we all headed on west to Sturbridge,
checking in at 4:30 AM to a motel whose checkout time was noon, no
later.................I'm beginning to hate hotel management wizzards. A breakfast of good food and poor service at
Friendly's, and it was on to a tiny town in the Finger Lakes region of New York
State.
Moose is a Red Elvises fan, and a lawyer, and a local
mover and shaker; he arranged for the band to play the first show in a
brand-new banquet facility. The Arkadia
House is a nice room for a small wedding reception, but it ain't no rock
venue. Nevertheless, the Red Elvises
rocked that joint, and the 'ghosts' generated by that initial performance might
influence weddings and bar mitzvahs for years to come.
Moose threw a party the next day; it was supposed to be a
barbeque, but ended up being a pizza party because of the unseasonable
cold. Zhenya played the organ, Igor
fell asleep in a chair in front of the TV, Oleg fell asleep in a chair in front
of the computer, and Dimitri checked his e-mail.They did three loads of laundry, too.What an exciting life.
Even though I'm
operating on "rokenrol time", I can't keep my eyes open. It is now well past 2:00AM; I'm too old for this, but I do it anyway.
Watch for "Roadtrip, part two," coming soon.
Copyright 2002 Linda
Marcas - All Rights Reserved
Crank's Corner
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