2004-06-20 - 6:49 p.m.
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It snuck up on me. I was living my own life; you know: mowing the lawn, cooking the dinner, lovin’ the missus, watching the telly and WHAM!....time to go…life on hold and all that. Well it didn’t quite happen so suddenly. I was watching the calendar out of the corner of my eye but it still caught me by surprise. Now here I am hurtling down the highway again in a steel box on rubber wheels on my way to play at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Ahh, what the hell are ya complaining about Carbone? Well, nothing really. It’s just part of the story I guess.
We are driving through to Davenport, Iowa. Holy shit what a long drive! 900 + miles! We watched the Detroit Pistons demolish the L.A. Lakers to win the NBA championship on the TV in the van. The Pistons were my pick at the beginning of the season even though I’m a Knick fan. I used to go up to my friend Jimmy McDonalds house and build models and listen to the Knicks on the radio when I was a kid. Those were simpler times when, as a ten year old, it was cool and exotic just to walk up the hill in the darkness after dinner. And of course it was a decade before cable. The Knicks simply weren’t on TV back then.
3 a.m. and we make the hotel in Davenport.
We’re up at 9 to head out across the rolling farmland of Iowa. It was a Cracker Barrel morning. These places are nothing if not consistent. Somehow the menu, food, décor and slow service are the same throughout the country. T’was Oscar Wilde who said, “Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative”. You said it brother. We keep threatening to take a picture of John Skehan in the rocking chairs out front marked “White Folk Rocker”. Someday we will.
Iowa goes on forever but is just a warm up for Nebraska. We hit a familiar restaurant for dinner in Kearny, Nebraska called the Whiskey Creek Saloon. Good margaritas and brisket. Off we go as the endless night approaches. There is a massive thunderstorm to our south. I imagine being at Verdun looking out across no-mans land; the lightning strikes, artillery fire. As darkness falls and the east gives way to the west, we become increasingly aware of a very bad smell. Along this last stretch of I-80 in Nebraska there is a huge corporate cattle farm. Many thousands of head all crowded into a very small area. In the darkness, we can’t see it, but I can tell when we’re right along side of it. The smell ceases to be just a smell. It takes on a texture: a temperature. There’s a thickness to it. It feels like you can roll it up into a ball in your hands. It’s absolutely awful. It’s enough to make ya wanna be a vegan….Nah. Next stop, Golden, Colorado and in the morning Telluride!
