2003-06-21 - 2:28 p.m.
April 20th
I woke up in the back of the pickup truck and felt fairly refreshed. After walking out to the lane it took a while to get my bearings. Everything was different in the daylight. At least it wasn’t raining. I found my way out to the front gate of the campground and tried to see if I could find a lift to town and the hotel. A kind fellow said if worst came to worse he’d give me a lift after the gospel show. That would be over an hour so I said thank you kindly and I’ll be back in an hour if I couldn’t find something before. On the way back to the camp I run into Gail walking with Scott Summers, Blue Merles soundman. We made our way over to their camp. Billy and Spring (see the Jacksonville entry) were there. After explaining my dilemma to them Billy said he’d give me a lift to town. It turned out Scott needed a ride back to the hotel as well so after I went back and said my goodbyes to Tammy and friends, off we went.
When I got back to the hotel I had to somehow figure out what rooms we were in as they had been switched. I finally got the info from the kind bell captain. My plan was to go up to my room, get in my swimsuit and go soak in the hot tub for a while. And so I did.
I had breakfast and the boys started to come awake one by one. Eventually we all wound up down at the bar in the lobby shooting the breeze with Vassar. He’s a great guy and obviously one of my heroes. Soon it was off to Houston. With our final farewell to Vassar, we left Austin behind.
By the time we get to Houston it’s raining. We’re to play at “the Last Concert Cafe”. It’s an outdoor venue attached to a Mexican restaurant. I have a feeling the rain will keep people away. My old friend Charlie Sullivan shows up before we start. I haven’t seen Charlie in 28 years! We used to work together at a nursing home out on Long Island. We started reminiscing about the old days. We were both orderlies. One morning he called me over to his floor to help him with something. A patient of his had passed away during the night. Normally it would be the responsibility of the orderly on that shift to wrap the body and take it down to the morgue. The attending physician wanted to do a post mortem exam before that and he couldn’t make it in until 10 am the following morning. Normally this would not be a problem, except the night shift didn’t roll his bed down! He went rigemortis and when we rolled the bed down his legs wouldn’t go down! I forgot to mention that the poor fellow was a double amputee and weighed 300 lbs.! After a few tries with me holding his legs and Charlie pushing down on his shoulders we got him straight, so to speak. In order to get the shroud under him we had to roll it up and turn him on his side and then roll him back on his other side and pull the shroud through. Sometimes when a person dies there’s still air left in his lungs. When we rolled him over the first time all the air came out of his lungs in a loud, huuh! It’s kind of a funny story now, in a macabre way, but it scared the living shit out of us!
The rain lets up and we play to about 50 happy 4/20 celebrants. The promoter’s a jolly fellow and we have a good old time.
