Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Small rural towns

Rural yet not as in agriculture and pastures but as in old forlorn desert hamlets with between 200 and 300 inhabitants, some of them seasonal.
The door is open, people drop in. Meet Mike, Alaska Mike or Woodstock Mike. At age 13 he helped his dad Whitey Davis, who assisted Hanley Sound responsible for  the sound system. Mike with fingers painted orange, adjusted the speakers on the towers in the crowd and with the orange the sound mixer could see what he did or signaled with binoculars.
He had a youth without school, working as a roadie, making good money and partying with pa and the big guys. The names of the players, technicians, rental trucks (Reyders), type of motorcycles  driven (BSA's, Triumph's and Honda's, I seem to remember) and organizers who went broke and the names of musicians trip of his tongue.  He speaks of the security provided by the Red & White and so forth...  He is a font of information. His heart is in Woodstock and Alaska, yet in June's sweltering heat, the Mojave desert is his home.
On the snapshot he shows a picture a friend of his in Alaska did about duck hunting and feeling restless in that special period  of the year.
One day it will hang in a nice Western house in Washington State he assures me. His heart  and head is filled with wishes, dreams, memories and plans that fill and feed the soul.

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