FESTIVAL was the second book of the series Inside Vernacular Writing: The Mechanics of the Craft, which began September 1, 2001.
FESTIVAL. September 28 - October 26. 60,000 words. I go to Harvest Festival 2001 and hear Col. Bruce Hampton and the Code Talkers. Brenda and I drive to a state Forest Service park on the Florida side of the Chattahoochee River for a Potter Brown Memorial Pick-In (Potterfest). I drive to Little Turniptown Overnight Music Jam, in Ellijay, to see Col. Bruce Hampton and the Code Talkers, but they are not there. Nobody was there but a bunch of rough-camping hippies and the band Reggae Cowboys. Brenda and I drive to LaGrange, Georgia, to Hoofer's Gospel Barn, to hear a bluegrass festival hosted by the James King Band. I dream of playing the swinette on stage, at Americana music festivals, selling my books at the record table afterwards. A swinette, you stretch two horsehairs across a hog's ass and pick it with your teeth. Brew mounts the steps, walks across the stage with great dignity, takes a stuffed Miss Piggy doll out from under his robes, lifts her skirt, presses her butt to his face, and squeals like a stuck pig. Great cry and little wool, as the Devil said when he sheared the hogs.
Apropos of Miss Piggy, Sesame Street is playing in the living room.
We're baby-sitting this weekend with Ella Blue, the first grandchild. She bathes
in a galvanized washtub.
She wasn't born then. Old Folks and Brenda were
living in Atlanta. Owen and Jean were living in Athens. Owen played fiddle in the
James King band.
Balder was a student at Georgia Tech. He played trumpet
in the second-line band Back Azimuth.
As Brenda and I were driving to Seagrove Beach yesterday, to meet Jean, and
Ella-Jean is attending a weekend conference at Seaside-Brenda remarked, "We
took the boys everywhere with us, when they were growing up, and they hung out with
grown-ups, musicians, and their kids," and I said, "Yes, and there were
always musical instruments and hi-fi sets around the house, they always had money
for a set of strings, or a record."
We talked about what good cooks
they were. They were out of that several kinds of mustard, "porc-with-a-c"
milieu.
They grew up helping Old Folks or Brenda, Potter or Suzette cook.
Many Thanksgivings and Christmases of making Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Bienville,
and Oysters Non Para Gringo on the deck at the house on Martin Lake. With what Potter
called a japaleño pepper. Pronounced jappa-lino.
They also made fun of the
salmonellie bug, from people getting poisoned and dying from eating raw oysters.
* * *
Here's Owen playing fiddle with the James King Band.
If the salmonellie bug gets my book, Bukowski Never Did This, I still
raised two fine sons, Owen and Balder, and Brenda and I are still together, helping
each other out.
As the Grim Reaper said in The Meaning of Life, "It
was the salmon mousse."
Shit happens.
What are you going to
do? Not eat salmon mousse?
And I got a pamphlet out of it. Underground
Writer Makes Good.
And a passport, that expires in 2015.
It's
the best of all possible worlds, and I am Fortune's favorite child.