Day Eight: March 5, 2010 Traveling through Kansas, Missouri and Iowa, to Minnesota
Frank let me drive this morning! There I was, like a female trucker, and there he was, making Face Book postings in the passenger seat. He pointed out, ”Wow! It’s 55 degrees outside!” I responded, “How do you know that? I don’t see a temperature gage in this car.” Oh, there’s one on the dash,” he said flatly, and there’s also a speedometer there, too. Ha-ha!” (He always laughs with himself.) Buying into it, I asked what the other round dial with numbers was for. He added, “That counts how many times you get pulled over for speeding!”
That’s what it’s like in the car around here: silence, then an unexplained explosion of laughter. With my eyes on the road, I glanced over and asked, “What is it this time?” “Oh, just some Face Book postings,” he sniffed. Just a few moments before, I was singing, “Kansas City, Kansas City Here We Come.” Well, we were about to roll through it. He had posted on his wall for all to read: ”I’m goin’ to Kansas City. They’ve got some crazy little women there, but I’ve already GOT me one!” (Again he laughs at his own jokes.) Return comment from his buddy, Corby: “Red haired women; nature’s way of saying, ‘Danger!’”
More silence. BRAHhhhh!!! Frank gets a response to another of his wall postings. It was Allie this time. He had put earlier: “I was just handed the scariest religious pamphlet ever. I’m doomed, but having a blast.” Allie commented on his wall: ”I think your soul patch will probably save you from an eternity in Hell. You haven’t shaved it off, have you?”
OK, now you get the idea about this new-fangled form of communication. Frank puts it: “Idle hands are the devil’s Face Book.” Take the two of us, enclose in a small space for many hours at a stretch, and you see why we just travel as a duo.
Oh, by the way, Frank’s is driving now. You can breathe easy. Just before we switched, I looked at the dashboard and realized there was a gas gage, too! It was below empty, and we had 14 more miles of brown fields to pass before the nearest gas station. Phew! The sun is beating down on us now, as we head northwest on I-29. Missouri has dashes of snow here and there. Wow! A big green sign: Oregon 1 Mile. Maybe they’re will be a spot of green amidst all this sepia tone. The sign was real, the green a mirage. Darn. With this 50-degree weather, I’ll bet green is about to emerge soon.
We stopped this morning at Frank and Suzy’s house to pick up a box of CDs we had shipped there. Dillon was feeling better, and was able to go to school. Frank had to go to work, so we didn’t see anybody. Two ships passing in the night, I guess. When we arrived at the house, there was our box of CDs, and Frank had made us a gourmet breakfast of frittata, fried potatoes, and the works. We felt their presence in some way, just being in their house. We gazed at the pictures on the wall. Dillon is a handsome kid. Frank and Suzy look young, happy, and fulfilled. There were kids sneakers in the laundry room, and kid-friendly fruit juices in the fridge. We tidied up, and left with a warm, loving feeling.
So, last night I promised you some “dirt” on the concert we had just finished. Let me shake out my rag. The venue was in a Middle School auditorium; a classic 1920’s style, with curved balconies and lots and lots of red velvet seats. The piano waiting for me was an old 9-foot Baldwin that longed for affection. My way of “bonding,” (after doing the traditional chromatic scale to see if all the keys work) is to run my miracle cloth across the top, as if giving it a nice loving stroke. It was pretty dusty. Back stages are notorious for that. I pushed up the big, heavy lid to find more dust. Stacy, our wonderful sound and lighting person, turned on the spots. Gasp! We needed to put this thing through a car wash! I couldn’t think about it then. We had microphones and monitors to configure, curtains and lighting to figure out, sound checks, and oh, yes, rehearsal. Playing this Baldwin was like getting on a wild horse. It’s sound was bright and obvious, and there was an energy that had to be tamed. Gretchen, John and Stacy, the nice folks who were in charge of our every need, apologized and said they’re trying to get the money for a new instrument. “No, no!” I said, “This piano has soul!”
The Baldwin looked a bit like it had been in one of those fights out by the flagpole, so I got out my handy dandy thick black marker and went to work. The crew watched me touch up over a hundred spots, plus the bench. They mused that the town might just think they got that new piano after all. My hands filthy and streaked with black, I turned and said, ”This is the glamorous part of being on tour.” We started with sound checks, rehearsing, etc. I thought I was going crazy. Every time we started into a piece, I’d look inside the piano at the strings, glistening in the spotlight, and have to stop, because I saw a patch of dust that I had missed. I told Stacy it was the old Girl Scout Rule: Leave a campsite better than you found it.
All was well, and it was time to open the doors of the auditorium to the early birds. They are a special flock, liking to extend their evenings enjoyment an extra 45 minutes, in anticipation. That meant it was time for me to exit to the dressing room. Their first impression of the “star attraction” should not be of a woman, in a black sweater with no make up on, doing one last sweep of the rag over the piano.
Once again Frank zipped me into my first gown. I was still breathing. Leisurely applying my stage makeup, he left as I looked around, savoring the classic dressing room mirrors with all the glowing round bulbs surrounding each one. “The Staar!” Ha-ha. I somehow needed to get this black marker off my hands. Hair: Check. Makeup: Check. Shoes: Check. Bracelet: Check. Earrings: Check. It was time. Oops, I saw one last smudge on my baby finger. I quickly scrubbed over the sink and reached for the towel dispenser. HOLY COW! What was going on under my arms?! Thick rolls of black, matted lint from my sweater greeted me like two lost sheep. Baaaah! I picked and rubbed with a paper towel frantically, but this stuff was stubborn, turning my tender skin from black into red. What would the audience have thought, as I innocently reached for the sky? Maybe something like, “Oh, she’s one of those ‘natural type’ women from Oregon, you know.”
The show went off without a hitch, and Stacy was quick on the uptake by adding a red light behind me during a moderately racy story. The audience members were mostly old-timers, but they laughed hard, applauded loudly, stood up at the end and yelled, “Encore!” We worked that in, (we were told most performers don’t get that far with this crowd) and everyone made it home in time for bed. CD sales were brisk and there was lots of talk from the ladies about my shoes and sparkly jewelry. Good thing that I had reached up for that towel, or that wouldn’t have been the only talk!
John, one of the concert association people who greeted us, filled us in on the history of this beautiful theatre. After telling him about similar theatres we enjoyed in Kansas, he said that most of that great architecture was from the prosperous 1920’s. The school itself was built then, and it was a classic. It has also been kept up nicely. Like so many old towns across the USA, Coffeeville has a beautiful old street in its downtown district, but with some empty storefronts. There were a few restaurants and a few businesses, but it was easy to see what a grand place it once was. Frank and I were both impressed with the many beautiful churches of just about every denomination. Coffeyville has a WalMart on one side and is replacing it with a Super WalMart on the other. And that’s the way it is.
It’s 8:00pm now, and we’ve been driving since 8:00 this morning. We have 35 miles to go. It’s very, very dark out here on these lonely two-lane bumpy roads. Our hotel in Montevideo is supposed to be pretty plush. We’ve seen snow on the ground for the last 250 miles as we travel north. It’s 29 degrees and breezy outside now.
The sunset was spectacular across the plains, as the lighting came from behind us to the left, making orange glowing snow with blue jagged shadows. Tree branches lit up the sides of the road as forests faded into a soft, muted purple in the distance. White barns gleamed with stark geometric shapes in this day’s final hours. It’s different up here.
Signing off… Frank needs me to navigate. Thanks for staying with us.
Write to me at: sallyeharmon@yahoo.com
You guys are good company to us!
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