May 16, 2009

I am tired. This is the last night of a three day run. It was a six hour drive to St. Cloud. A restaurant and bar. Folks celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, Thursday. There is no place downtown to park over night. A city enforced trap, forcing you to move your vehicle after you have spent all night drinking. The promoter, Don, drives our van to a friend’s house and we sleep camping in the back yard.

In the morning another diner. A waitress, young, dressed in a greasy tight t-shirt and sporting a Farah Fawcett hairdo. Thirty years and old. She gropes the proprietor and chef every time they pass each other in the narrow aisle between counter and grill. He responds by rubbing her young back. He is round, 20 years her senior, wearing a chef’s hat falling to one side of his grey head. He the “Curly”, she the “Flo.” We watch the drama of the diner, the soap opera of love at the local café. Then we head out.

A drive to Minneapolis, a beautiful hotel room, a long nap. We are playing at eleven o’clock that night following Spider John Koener. John plays his 12 string and sings his folk songs. Beautiful music. He runs the bass lines “Lead Belly” style and the twelve strings ring out like a harp. In a voice and language of the mountains he sings the stories of an old life, an old way with the authenticity of an old man.