The DAMM Truth

I love the Fourth of July. I always have. As an American, I can’t help but love seeing our country’s flag flown everywhere and the patriotic grandeur of it all. I even have a favorite way to celebrate Independence Day too. I head to a usually sleepy beach town, take in a very sad parade and then kick back and watch society crumble around me.

Surely you are rolling your eyes at my choice of words. Well allow me to support my case as gently as possible (for me).

The Fourth of July, provides a booster shot of confidence to an already over-confident people. Think about it, we’re still celebrating a victory we had over the British that happened over 235 years ago. I mean, talk about spiking the ball… 235 years and Great Britain still returns our phone calls. That country is full of polite, good sports. Every year, at the beginning of July, Great Britain can expect to get drunk dialed by the braggarts in the United States and the conversation goes something like this:

Great Britain: Good Day, thank you for calling Great Britain, how can we help you?

US: Good Day? (yells to buddies off the phone: He said, “good day” instead of “hello”, can you believe???) Hell Yes it’s a good day! Can you guess why?

Great Britain: Oh, hello United States, *sigh*, we can only guess that Pontiac has started making the Trans Am again? Is that the case?

US: No, you pompous limey Brit! Tell me what day it is?

Great Britain: … *sigh* It is the Fifth of July.

US: No it’s not you stupid Englishman. It’s the FOURTH of July! What’s the matter? Does your country make calendars as good as it wins wars?

Great Britain: Dear Lord, is it THAT time of year again? Very well, get on with your gloating about your winning a war fought between us over two and a third centuries ago, over a tax so small, it wouldn’t pay for the paper Her Majesty’s law was written on. Incidentally, the reason you are confused about the date being the FIFTH of July is that our countries are in different time zones. In your time, it is still the fourth of July, while in Great Britain, we have progressed passed midnight into the Fifth of July.

US: Shut up Not-So-Great-Britain! You don’t have some stupid time machine that makes your day different from the rest of us. Maybe that’s what got you in so much trouble a couple hundred years ago, you thinking you can just lie your way out of stuff.

Great Britain: I suspect what got GREAT BRITAIN into trouble was that we didn’t send enough books and teachers over to the colonies, to explain how things like government, taxes and TIME ZONES worked. You see, when the Earth moves around the sun, it rotates slowly, and shines on only part of the planet at a time, this creates…

US: “Earth rotates around the sun?” Whatever. That’s crazy talk, and why would we want books when everything’s on TV?

Great Britain: Well it was VERY nice speaking with you again, United States. I’m sure this phone call is VERY expensive and you would like to get back to your fireworks…

US: Too expensive? We’re the richest country on Earth! Hey GB, answer me this, why aren’t you speaking German now?

Great Britain: Ahh yes, are we on to this now? Is it time for you to remind us of, how did you elegantly put it last year, “you saved our bacon from the krauts in World War 2?”

US: You bet your butt we did. And not just WWII, but that other war too.

Great Britain: World War One?

US: Yeah, that one! You’re lucky we weren’t still cheesed off about that Revolutionary war business.

Great Britain: Or the War of 1812 for that matter.

US: You really don’t know nothing do you? The American Civil War was over in 1776. It’s on a bunch of our quarters so nobody will forget.

Great Britain: Well, I hear my tea kettle, I really must be going. I simply cannot wait for this conversation next year. Do you have a service that can ensure you get home? You sound like you have been indulging in the spirits.

US: The spirits? I’m not at church, you pompous moron, I’m at a party! The ”service” I use to get home is my pickup and my wits.

Great Britain: Very well, please be careful and sleep it off before operating your motor vehicle.

US: Shut yer trap, you stuck up…(Click)

I imagine that’s how my British friends see this American holiday. We see patriotism and freedom and the rest of the world sees a bunch of us overweight Americans standing around outside in t-shirts and flip-flops betting on how many hotdogs a person can put away in a certain amount of time. I love hotdogs and contests as much as the average person, in fact when it comes to hotdogs I’m far ahead of the curve. However, the fact that Americans go so overboard on the “confidence” part of Independence day is as off putting as it would be to anyone who encounters such a braggart.

If individuals were to approach a person they had not met with the same blind self-assuredness at a party, those individuals would be avoided like the plague. If I were in high school and tried to ask a girl to a dance with the kind of confidence that America has on the Fourth of July, that girl would be so turned off that she would immediately go to the powder room and write a warning to other girls on the mirror with lipstick: “Watch out for Steve Damm! He has delusions and bad breath!” I didn’t see that until halfway into my fourth year of college.

I love the patriotism in the United States, especially on Independence Day, but could we also use it as a time to reflect on what we could do better as individuals to MAKE our country even better? I’m not talking about winning hotdog contests either, which yes, we have mastered. Maybe if we use Independence Day to evaluate how we work together and live as neighbors would be a good thing. If we took the time to look at how we are ranked in the world of health, education and poverty, maybe the boasting wouldn’t seem so empty.

Currently the United States is “Number 1”, the most bestest ever at thinking we are “Number 1.” At least that’s what a current study of teenage boys says. Now, that same group of teenage boys is 25^th in the world when it comes to math skills, but if you ask them, they’ll say they are the best, proving they don’t understand the values of numbers, which in turn proves that they are indeed 25^th at math. THAT is overconfidence. So I’m proposing, maybe we use Independence Day to make America a better place and work together to raise all the important numbers back to “Number 1.” If for anything, the country needs to come together to save those teenage boys from being proven wrong and embarrassed in front of people they would like to make out with.

I also enjoy travelling to a sleepy beach town on the Oregon Coast specifically for the holiday. Oregon Beach towns are very big on parades. Very big on parades, and the one I prefer is one of the saddest of them all. When I was younger, and the economy was a little better maybe, the parade was very much like you would picture a parade to be. Lots of fun floats and marching bands and community members would make their way down the route, waving and playing music. It has deteriorated somewhat in the last few years.

There is now only one marching band and it is the Scottish drum and pipe kind. Years have been especially unkind to this group. Either Alcoholism or the vanishing art of the style of playing has dwindled the numbers down from row upon row of kilted tooty-bag-squeezers to just seven members walking to the beat of a lone snare, bass and tom-tom. (Come to think of it, maybe being referred to as a kilted tooty-bag-squeezer didn’t exactly entice a younger generation to pick up the pipes. I’m sorry, ancient Scottish art form.)

The floats with waving princesses have been replaced by pickup trucks pulling trailers with boom-boxes blaring barely audible Lee Greenwood songs. I miss the floats, and by miss the floats I mean, I miss where I had to try to figure out the mechanism to transport that much paper Mache. Now we just have pretty cars with banners and signs. In fact in the last couple of years it has been hard to determine when the parade was actually over and traffic started rolling by slowly.

They still throw candy to the children, and the children really get excited about it. They run right out into traffic to get it. My son’s hand was almost crushed this year but a Dodge pickup full of 4-H’ers all for the sweet sweet taste of a broken Watermelon flavored Joll-E Rancher. Luckily my redneck holler kicked in and I was able to address past the candy receptors into the pain and fear receptors of my son’s brain with a sharp bark of his name. My wife looked at me as if I had the dignity of a man who thought a fish fork was for gigging frogs. I looked back with a confidence that communicated I just ensured the two years of piano our son had completed would continue to be possible.

This particular parade ended and has ended with a fire truck slowly making its way through town and firing its water cannon at the people. Many flee, and just as many jump out into the street to get hit by the high pressure hose. As the people in the street scream with delight (?) as they are hosed down (my son loved it), I can’t help but think back to America’s recent history, when a fire hose was used for a much more sinister purpose in the 60’s. I’m speaking of course of the scene in the film, Planet of the Apes when a gorilla used a fire hose to separate the astronaut Taylor, played by Charlton Heston from the “female” Luna, played by an actress as they were held in a cage. That fire hose represents all that will go wrong with Humans and Apes in the future.

Let’s talk frankly about fireworks shall we? I can’t possibly be the only one in the country that gets a twitch in the logic center of my brain when any moron with two dollars can purchase enough explosives to blow up… anything.

In a country that is so paranoid about terrorism, a country that gave up their freedoms of private phone calls and unopened mail, of home surveillance and the ability to transport breast milk and toe nail clippers on an airplane, we have no problem opening up booth after booth of super cheap gunpowder to ABSOLUTELY ANYONE. Open the fireworks and dump them into a pipe and you have a bomb. Just a year or two ago, a rookie terrorist put some gasoline and fireworks into car and tried to blow up their car at Times Square, so it totally happens. Why didn’t it work? The fireworks malfunctioned, which brings me to the next part of my meandering piece: Fireworks are unpredictable.

All fireworks are simply different sized pieces of dynamite with strategic holes cut in the tubes for propulsion and patterns for the fire to follow. Plug those holes and you have dynamite. Every year I cringe as I watch a parent direct a child to hold a Roman Candle while it shoots white-hot balls of colorful flame into the air. Apart from the obvious hazard of the child wondering if and when the next ball is coming and trying to look down the tube, what would that parent do if the candle’s tube was obstructed and there was no escape for the gunpowder? The answer is watch in horror as the kid’s arm was blown off. It happens. It happens often.

These fireworks, which I will completely come clean and admit to shooting off my share, are created in Chinese factories by less than rested, non-union employees. If every single unit that is produced, isn’t produced exactly right, you just have varying sizes of dynamite waiting to go off. But, you know, the youth group has a trip to the city coming up so why not sell explosives to get there? It might be safer, community wise, to just have that same youth group sell .38 specials out of the trunk of a car. They would make more money and society would be safer too (short term).

This is just the “safe and sane” types of fireworks, the kind that “report” instead of explode. There’s no real difference when it comes to explosions and “reports” other than the fact that one of the words ISN’T “explosions”. Personally, I know the difference and it is vast. An explosion is a sudden release of energy, while a report is a document with data and graphs that I give to my boss two days after it is due. The “safe and sane” fireworks are neither however, they have escaped the scrutiny of whatever safety inspector deemed unsafe. As if one type of fire can burn you or your house down and another is the kind that lights fairy houses or makes bushes speak. This separates fireworks into two classes: legal, and “I’m sorry sir, you’ll have to get that from either an arms dealer or a Native American Reservation.”

Oddly enough, I have very few problems with Native Americans selling big illegal fireworks to non-Native people. Native Americans got (and get) such a raw deal from the United States, I think it is completely justified for them to be able to sell any instrument of destruction they can back to the people that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. Have you seen the types of conversations that go on at these illegal stands?

Redneck: See son? Now THESE here are REAL fireworks. The kind of fireworks I grew up with as a kid. Firecrackers, cherry bombs, rockets and more, I’m going to show you a special 4^th of JU-LY! Hey Tonto, come on over here and sell me some good stuff.

Native American: That’s not my name.

Redneck: Sorry Geronimo, I didn’t know your name.

Native American: Talks To.

Redneck: What? Talks to who?

Native American: That’s my name: Talks To. You can call me Talks To. It’s short for Talks To Stupid People. It’s an old family Indian name.

Redneck: Alright Talks To. Let’s get a big box of stuff. I want some really big firecrackers.

Native American: We have M100s.

Redneck: Are they the biggest you got? What kind of damage will they do?

Native American: Well, they’ll blow a fence post out of the ground or your hand off your body.

Redneck: EXCELLENT, I’ll take 10!

Native American: Great, I hope you have 5 friends?

Redneck: Uh, yeah, I do, why?

Native American: Well… if you promise you’ll tell your friends where you got these, I’ll give you a discount.

Redneck: Done and done Kemosabe! Now do you have any rockets? I want some big rockets.

Native American: We sure do. And if you buy one of the big ones, I’ll throw in one of our small “indoor” rockets.

Redneck: Indoor Rockets?

Native American: Sure, brand new technology this year. We’re giving them away because this batch came without the safety labels. Can’t sell them, so we’re giving them as bonuses with the purchase of the bigger rockets. They don’t work as well outdoors and they make big colors inside, particularly in rooms where you can draw your curtains closed.

Redneck: Alright, then give me two, one for me and one for my brother, he couldn’t come.

Native American: Is your brother’s house big enough? They work better in bigger houses, or apartment buildings.

Redneck: HUGE house. He’s going to love it.

Native American: Just be careful. Don’t mix up the big ones and the little ones. The big ones should be done outside only. The little ones are for inside. Can I interest you in any of our Duty Free alcohol across the street? Go ask for my cousin, Asks No Questions. He will get you all you can handle.

At least I hope that’s how it goes. One of my redneck neighbors burned the house down next door to them. It was empty because the people that lived there couldn’t stand to be around their neighbor as he blew up half his yard.

Putting aside the fact that we open up conveniently located cheap explosives arsenals on every corner of our community, what of the injuries and fires that happen so casually with these incendiary devices? Are we this blind to tradition that we casually ramble through several days of unnecessary danger?

Then of course, American society adds alcohol to the equation of gunpowder plus over-confidence. Alcohol, which is sometimes flammable on its own, has the accelerated effect of making bad decisions exponentially worse. It also makes people just creative enough to make a bad decision worse. This is when you start to see improvised fireworks, or altered fireworks. People cut open and pour out gunpowder or duct tape items up, or submerge them (which again, I have done and thought was incredibly cool). They’ll put them in cans to see what would happen. Sometimes it’s really interesting or cool, and sometimes it’s just shrapnel. I’m extremely thankful that none of my experiments went wrong because I am pretty stupid.

Fireworks and alcohol go together like… Well, like fireworks and alcohol. Unfortunately I cannot think of a dumber combination than those two things to provide you with an amusing simile.

I capped off the night sitting on a once perilous beach, watching a fantastic display of fire and color in the sky. I say once perilous, because the beach used to have an absolutely insane amount of personal fireworks going off. Explosions, fire, 3000 degree sparklers in the hands of 3-year-olds, it was a beach without reason. Now it has been declared illegal to shoot off any and all fireworks on that beach so that cut the pyromania by almost half. Seriously.

The big firework show is put on every year and looks absolutely spectacular. It is paid for by the donations of the tourists and residents of the city all year long. Each year the show gets bigger and bigger. I believe the 45 minute show costs around $100,000. It’s probably more and it is absolutely grand when the coast isn’t fogged in (it was clear as a bell). I couldn’t possibly think of a better way to spend that kind of money in a poverty stricken town, could you?

It certainly went better than San Francisco’s planned fireworks display for this year. Instead of launching them one after the other for 45 minutes, the million dollar display all went off at once… before dark. If you set $1 million in cash on fire (which they kind of did), it would burn longer than that firework display lasted.

Please do not take this ramble as me being decidedly unpatriotic or cynical. I really love Independence Day and I think with just a few easy tweaks, we could use it to move us in a constructive direction or help us become the country we say we are. I’m proud of what America can be. I’m excited for this next year as an American and look forward to a year of making my country a better place for everyone to live, and that’s the Damm Truth.

This will probably be the most controversial thing I write. At least it will be from the standpoint of where I come from and what I grew up around. I don’t believe that it is an argument or a particular point of view; I believe it is a fact. Perhaps it is a fact that has been covered up so much with culture and marketing that people have forgotten (and I will help clear that up a little too) that what is happening every day is simply NOT what it appears to be. It’s a behavior so ridiculous, yet many of us see it every day and think nothing of it. It is passed off as a lifestyle, yet so few claiming the lifestyle actually live that life. In fact, the word that comes to mind is “silly”.

If you’re wearing a cowboy hat, you’re wearing a costume.

That last sentence just sent shockwaves through my hometown. In fact, many people just stopped reading this. Some were actually wearing cowboy hats as they read the sentence.

But by all means, continue to wear the hats and the boots and the Wrangler jeans. If it’s working for you, it’s working for you. But unless you are making your living riding a horse and driving cattle, you are in a costume. You are dressed to make people believe that you are something you are not.

Believe me, I’m fine with you wearing a costume. Do it. It gives you something to feel good about. Many people like to dress up as different things and pretend they are someone they aren’t. I’ve done it on Halloween and other special occasions. My family loves to do costumes every October 31^st, we put a whole lot of thought into it. It’s how we are creative, and we have a lot of fun. In fact, all the children that dress up do. That’s why costumes are so great.

I enjoyed dressing up like a cowboy when I worked at Safeway during the local Rodeo Days promotions we ran. I even wore toy six shooters that I learned to twirl as part of the act. It was an ACT. I was ACTING like a cowboy, because I didn’t own a horse. I went to school and played baseball, I did not rope lil’ doggies out on the range. When Rodeo Days was over, I packed that stuff away… with my other costumes.

Now, I understand, there are rodeo athletes, and yes, they are athletes that need things like chaps and riding boots and even the hat is functional as a proper sun shade. This is totally acceptable. But when you wear that gear to a social event, you are pretending you are still on a horse, or at least pretending that you have one hitched up outside and ninety nine times out of a hundred, you probably drove your car or your pickup.

“But Steve, it isn’t a costume, this is the cowboy lifestyle.” I’ve heard it all before, but the fact of the matter is, if I wore those clothes to a Halloween party, people would say, “Oh, Steve came dressed as a cowboy. What an unbelievably uninspired costume.” They wouldn’t assume that’s my normal garb, and even if it was, I could still pass myself off as a cowboy at a masquerade ball. 100% of the other guests would answer correctly as to what costume I am wearing.

I grew up in a town where I saw this all the time. Some of my friends owned horses, rode them, showed them and sometimes competed with them. Many of my friends were farmers and wore straw cowboy style hats to keep the sun at bay while spending endless hours on the tractor in the summer sun. That’s wearing the gear as functional pieces of equipment. I wouldn’t consider this to be a costume at all. The minute it is used beyond the horses and the functionality? THAT is when the outfit, becomes a costume.

I still haven’t convinced you? Then I ask you this: What other occupation lends itself to fashionably accessorize for both formal and laborious activities? Does a police officer, after a day of patrolling, come home, change out of their uniform and hat and put on clothes and a hat reminiscent of their work uniform to go out on the town? They might wear a police department t-shirt, but that is different. A T-shirt promoting or supporting your organization is different than pretending to be a police officer when off duty. Being a police officer is an actual occupation. They catch bad guys every day, let them wear their bullet proof vest 24/7, they have earned the right to wear officer related clothing… but they don’t. The person that you just passed at the shopping mall wearing a cowboy hat did not just drive 800 head of cattle from New Mexico to Wyoming and probably never will.

If you were to ask me to go out with you for a night on the town to a nice dinner and then to a nightclub to see a show or go dancing, and I prepared myself by dressing in rubber boots, a heavy duty fireproof/waterproof jacket and a helmet with a bill down my back, you would laugh at me. If I dressed up in a jumpsuit and leather bomber jacket with goggles and a scarf, you just plain WOULDN’T go out with me. Yet if I went to my closet and put on a long sleeved decorative shirt with abalone snaps, horse riding boots and a ten gallon hat, some people would be ready to hit the town without batting an eye.

And OH! HOW THEY ACCESSORIZE! Just so I actually knew what I was talking about, I did about 10 minutes of homework and came up with a list of “cowboy” accessories that people use to complete their costumes. Cowboy Boots can go from $100-$2000. That’s Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo territory at those prices. Fur cowboy hats can range from the $20 straw to the $1000 fur. But I think the biggest fashion accessory on a cowboy has to be the rodeo belt buckle. Silver and gold, sometimes fitted with diamonds and often awarded as trophies, rodeo belt buckles make gaudy costume jewelry look like something an Amish milk maid would wear.

Let’s talk about the truck, the single biggest piece of the so-called “cowboy lifestyle.” On real farms, pickup trucks are often used to transport everything from equipment, crop, tools, animals and actual crap from one place to another. You can tell a working farm truck by the fact that they are typically beaten up. The rear bed area has little to no remaining paint left after years of transporting gravel and other harsh cargo. It’s functional.

The “cowboy” pickup has not a blemish on it. It’s waxed to a gleaming shine with chrome wheels and all the bells and whistles of a Cadillac inside. It hasn’t carried so much as a bag of pillows in the bed. It’s a vehicle purely for status that says, “My cowboy costume is complete.” Although the “cowboy” that drives it looks down his nose at “all them flashy city cars,” might be interested to know that his pickup cost more than a new Lexus.

I have seen with my own eyes, “cowboys” with these giant gas-guzzling pickup trucks using them as their daily commuter vehicle. Said “cowboy” doesn’t do very well with matching tools to jobs and functionality. Yes a pickup will get you from one place to another, but it is not for commuting to a job that does not require a pickup. By this logic, one might eat breakfast cereal with a gardening spade.

“Why am I using this tiny shovel to eat? I’m a gardener. It’s my lifestyle. I feel safer eating with something a little bigger than those small, pokey things. I know it isn’t very efficient but I like it. It’s my style, I’m a gardener at heart, always have been.”

But let me tell you the one thing that drives me nuts: Cowboy hats on a groom or groomsmen at a wedding. Understand this fact, if a wedding has people in cowboy hats, that wedding is a costume party. The groom has chosen to wear a costume to the wedding. And if I hear word that a wedding I am about to attend has cowboy hats on ANY of the wedding party, then that wedding is officially a costume affair and I have no problem showing up as either Cat Woman, a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger, or the front half of a horse, just to prove a point.

Astronauts do not get married in fancy, decorative space helmets so “cowboys” can leave the costume at home. Seriously, if someone wanted to get married in clown make-up (which I’m sure has happened) people would think that was bonkers (especially if the clowns name WAS Bonkers).

The best part of all of this cowboy costume business is that the people dressing up as the romanticized image of the cowboy, are just dressing up as a made up theatrical character. Buffalo Bill Cody HIGHLY fictionalized the character of a “cowboy” as an adventurer in the west. They are almost always depicted as Caucasian and also desirable and heroic. But in reality, that was because that is what Buffalo Bill wanted people to believe. If Buffalo Bill told his audiences that most cattle drivers were homeless ex-slaves and immigrants from Mexico, he wouldn’t have sold many tickets to the incredibly racist white audiences he meant to fleece. Instead, these Wild West shows mostly created these characters out of thin air or romanticized them so much that they bare little resemblance to the original people that actually did the jobs.

Now an entire economy is built on fake clothing fashion, ideals, artwork, activities, music, film and food. When you think about it, there’s not much difference between the “cowboy” lifestyle and all the junk that’s popular about vampires these days. Both characters didn’t really exist or at least didn’t as we know them today.

Who would have thought that homeless vagabonds from the 19^th Century would be so popular for so long? If you were to tell me that in one hundred years, people would be clamoring for designer bottles in brown bags, pushing chromed up shopping carts, wearing sleeping bags to weddings and begging for change as a sport, I might just believe you. Because that is essentially what today’s “cowboy lifestyle” is doing for the homeless of our recent past.

So if you are one of those people that is most comfortable wearing Western attire, I ask you to think twice before you laugh and point at the guy you see decked out in a tutu and fairy wings on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, because you’re BOTH wearing a costume, his is just better, and that’s the Damm truth.

I don’t sleep well most nights. Lately it’s been allergies preventing me from getting the deep, restful sleep. That’s lately, but there’s always something going on that prevents me from sweet slumber. The worst is when one of our wiener dogs steps directly on my nether regions while burrowing in to the bed. So sleeping is more of a theory for me at the present. But when it happens, I savor it.

The other night was one of those deep sleep nights, and I had one of those dreams that you do not want to end. I plan on sharing it with you. But let’s get a few ground rules straight. No judging. We all like to THINK we know what dreams mean and the symbology trapped within them represents, but the truth is, nobody really knows what any of things represent in the subconscious and reading into it isn’t usually accurate even by the dreamer themselves. My wife told me this and she’s a Ph. D. in stuff like that. So let’s all get off our high horses when I reveal some of this awesome dream.

My wife Wendy and I walked in to what was decorated as a spectacularly official Washington State hall. We were dressed to the nines, my wife in a gorgeous powder blue dress, with her hair done up with pretty bows and sparkly things. The party we were entering appeared to be in our honor as we strode down a red carpet. Our friends and relatives were all there congratulating us and we heard compliments flying at us from every direction. Our friends from CWU smiled at us a told us they knew we would win and my parents stood at the end of the line, proud of the both of us and our forthcoming honor. Although the hall was decorated beautifully and looked old and marbled like a state house, it was also like my old high school gymnasium.

Someone came to the podium at the far end of the hall and announce that the State of Washington’s choice for greatest married couple was none other than my wife and I. A huge screen lit up with a picture of my wife and I, though the picture was projected under a digital score display that looked like the survey board from the Family Feud. The crowd went nuts. The governor was there, though we didn’t get to see her, and several members of old bands of mine began to play as I thanked my wife for being such a great partner and the love of my life. She thanked me and we smiled at each other and began to dance with all of our friends and family surrounding us. An ice sculpture of Wendy was wheeled out and I begged everyone not to let her melt. But everyone said it was a distraction from what we really were getting and told us to turn around. There was a HUGE trophy, taller than Wendy or I behind us with a big engraving on the front with “Greatest Couple of All Time” on it together with our names. I can’t remember what it said after that, but you get the point. For some reason, everyone started singing Auld Lang Syne.

This dream made me feel absolutely spectacular. I was so in love with my wife when my eyes opened just before my alarm was to sound, I couldn’t wait to share it, but I decided to shut the alarm off before it sounded and sneak in for my morning shower as to not disturb my sleeping angel. Little did I know, while I was having the dream of our marriage being the state’s standard to measure all other marriages against, just one pillow away something very different was happening deep in the subconscious of my beloved bride.

I was dressed and ready for work and about to head downstairs to leave for work. By this time my wife was sitting up in bed. She had the dazed look in her squinty eyes of a disappointed zombie just re-animating after being dead for 20 minutes. She shot me a glare, but then shook it off slightly as if she didn’t believe what she was thinking. She threw her body back down into the pillows and began to speak:

Wendy: I had a horrible, HORRIBLE dream last night.

Steve: What happened? If it was me, you know I didn’t really do it right? It was just a dream.

Wendy: It was so real. You decided you wanted to stay married to me but you brought a girlfriend home with you.

Steve: (intrigued) Really? What was she like?

Wendy: She seemed nice, pretty but not gorgeous and wasn’t mean or anything. And you just had her around like she was a big part of your life.

Steve: Was she smart?

Wendy: Yes, I think so.

Steve: Well, see there you go, your dream wasn’t real because I’m totally through with smart chicks.

I had said that to lighten the mood, but all it did was solidify Wendy’s dream as the reality that was between us. As I saw Wendy’s expression across the room, I instinctively ducked. Wendy is not in the habit of throwing things at me, but thousands of years of male human instinct took control (say something monumentally dumb to mate, move to avoid rock/spear/shoe/dish/small appliance thrown at you).

Wendy: Why are you ducking?

Steve: …you know…just kinda…felt like…uh…ducking. What else happened? Let’s get this out so you hear how ridiculous this sounds. That’s the only way to get past this.

Wendy: I just can’t believe you had guts to bring her to our home to have dinner with me.

Steve: I didn’t.

Wendy: You did. She just sat there next to you holding your hand.

Steve: No she didn’t because she isn’t real. Try, Wendy, try to find another woman that would be willing to date me. No other smart, attractive woman would have me in the state I’m in. What else happened?

Wendy: Libby and her family were sitting at the dinner table with us and she was appalled at the fact that you brought a woman home with you to have dinner with everyone. SHE was the one that called you out and demanded that you explain yourself.

Steve: Libby, like, my former high school girlfriend Libby?

Wendy: Yes, THAT Libby. How many Libbys do you know? SHE kept demanding through the dinner to know why you would do this to me. And that made ME wonder why you had a girlfriend sitting with you at the table!

Steve: Technically I had TWO girlfriends at the table! BAM!

I ducked again.

Wendy: This isn’t funny Steve I’m still mad at you.

Steve: Well, it really is. You’re holding me responsible for actions that occurred in YOUR brain. I’m sorry, you’re not holding me responsible, my former high school girlfriend is. And now you’re awake and you believe that what you saw in your subconscious actually happened.

Wendy smiled at me.

Wendy: Yes.

Steve: Yes what?

Wendy: Yes, Libby is holding you responsible.

Steve: I will call her today and apologize for creating a spectacle with my non-existent extra-marital girlfriend at the dinner party she wasn’t at because it took place in your frontal lobe.

Wendy: You were going to start another family with her.

Steve: With Libby?

Wendy: With the woman you brought to dinner. Libby was outraged.

Steve: But YOU were calm?

Wendy: I was just trying to make everyone happy. I wasn’t very happy about it but Libby was handling the situation appropriately.

Steve: Honey, I have to go to work now, but I don’t want you to be mad at me all day for something I didn’t do, so let’s re-cap: I’m not dating anyone else and don’t want to, least of all another smart girl, nobody else would have me, we’ve never had Libby’s family over for dinner, and there’s no way you would allow me to live if you saw me with another woman.

Wendy: It felt real.

Steve: Well, look at it this way, some psychologists believe that YOU are EVERY PERSON in your dream as a separate piece of your personality. I should be outraged at you for bringing you to a dinner party, insulting yourself, the host, and you as your former girlfriend and your guest family… all of which are also you.

Wendy: Uh, no, it wasn’t like that at all. You did this Steve.

Steve: No I didn’t. But I love you and nobody else and I have to go to work. I have neither the time, nor the patience for another woman in my life. Try and have a good day. I appreciate you believing on a subconscious level that I’m attractive in any way to other women. Thank you for believing in magic.

And with that, I bounded down the steps late for work.

Please understand, my wife is a brilliant psychologist. So brilliant that at times I believe she only married me for the abnormal data.

On my 40 minute commute to work, I had plenty of time to reflect on the differences in our dreams. I thought mine was pretty great and woke up wondering how much it would cost to rent a hall and throw a dance for all our friends and family. I wondered if the governor would come and how much it would cost to get a giant trophy with our names engraved on it. But alas, most of those thoughts were punched in the abdomen unexpectedly by the idea of myself with another woman at a dinner party my wife was throwing for my old flame and her family. I certainly prefer my dream, but I was clearly getting more action in my wife’s. Some men would like that sort of thing. Steve Damm is not one of those men, and that’s the Damm truth.

Three of us woke up in the hotel room Saturday morning after a less than restful night. I had managed to find a layer of the bed that I felt would be clean enough to sleep on top of, inside my sleeping bag (I took the bedspread off and laid the bag on top of the extra blanket without touching the sheets or pillows). I would have risked the floor, but the night before I was too tired to search a spot large enough for me to lay down on for the dangers of protruding framing nails. My recollection of where Dave and Toby slept is a little foggy, but I do know that Dave was creeped out more than I was about the bed situation, and he may have spent the night leaned against the knobless door holding a table lamp at the ready for an intruder as he dozed off sporadically through the night, but for all I know he slept in the bed. I doubt it.

(By the way dear reader, I’m typing this story in Microsoft Word and it is telling me that the word “knobless” is incorrect. It’s the only word I could use simply to tell you that the door had no knob, thus it is knobless. I won’t use this word in any other story for the rest of my life, hopefully. But yes Microsoft Word, I know “knobless” is wrong. Just like I know that it is WRONG to have hotel doors without knobs! Seriously, the room had no knobs. Yes it will matter later.)

Toby, who simply couldn’t stand the feeling of sludge that had built up on his body, attempted a shower. Desperation will drive a man to do many things, and Toby just wanted to feel clean again. I don’t know what happened but I understood it went badly. Neither Dave nor I blamed him, though we did ask him to reconsider. It was short, probably unpleasant, and although his hair looked better and he maintained that it was a better idea than not, you could see in his eyes that he felt like he had traded one vile smelly state for a different coating of vile and stinky.

Because I was still fighting an infection, and was having trouble getting actual oxygen past the one inch layer of second hand tobacco still coating the inside of my lungs, I was miserable. Exhausted and sore from the evening’s workout on the drums, I attempted to clean myself with a spare t-shirt (I always have one), a travel soap I took from a hotel classier than the place I was currently inhabiting and the sink (I let the water run until I was sure it had spent the minimum amount of time inside the hotel’s actual pipes).

Dave, Toby and myself, all feeling a little better, were ready for a bit of breakfast and to begin the 12 hour wait to play the second half of our contracted duty. But where was Erik? WHERE IN THE HELL WAS ERIK! Have you seen Erik? Did he come back last night? I didn’t hear him come in. Is that his stuff over there? Where is he?

Erik was dead. We were sure of it. We hardly knew the guy. He had practiced with us a few times and he had replaced our old bass player for only the past few weeks. This was his first gig with us. And we killed him. Did we kill him? I didn’t kill anybody. I’m sick! Not sick, like sick-in-the-head, but not well enough physically to truly be a suspect? Would I be an accessory? I drove him up here in my van, I’m responsible. NO, Toby is responsible. He booked this gig, all roads lead to Toby. I was just following orders! Ohhhh poor Erik. What about his parents? Somebody is going to have to tell his parents. They sure won’t want to hear it from Toby. Dave’s too sensitive. I can do it. I can tell Erik’s parents that Toby let their little boy be kidnapped and eaten by the feral populace of Okanogan. I was a natural helper, I can phrase it so the blow will be softer for his parents. Did Erik have a dog? That dog will never get to play with Erik again. I wonder what the university will do. They say that if your roommate dies while you’re in school, you’ll get straight A’s for the quarter. He’s not our roommate. Surely the university would give us SOME consideration on this. Probably not Toby, he’s going to jail, but I surely could use some grade relief…

Dave interrupted my thought process by saying that Erik would probably show up sometime this morning and we shouldn’t worry about waiting to get breakfast with him because HE had no problem deserting us the night before. They were a little peeved that Erik didn’t suffer the night with us AS A BAND. I just wanted him to be alive and not part of some musician-skin patchwork made of wayward bass players that wandered too far from the Caribou Inn’s stage.

At breakfast (biscuits and gravy, fantastic), we tried to put together what the three of us saw the night before. (By the way, of the three drunks at the bar the night before, two of them were still there, in the same seats. If the third drunk was still there, I would have sworn they were sitting in a time loop.) Between the three of us, we were able to piece together a scenario even scarier than what I, alone, witnessed. And the bouncers said last night was the slow night. Wonderful.

We had hours to kill in Okanogan that day. It was sunny, but the temperature leveled out at about 15 degrees. There was a layer of fresh frost on top of about eight inches of fine powdery snow. We figured we would hop in the van and go see the “sights.” We were ready to go anywhere but the Caribou. The prospect of an entire day sitting in that room would have broken my soul.

It was about that time that our bass player appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He was wearing his same outfit from the day before and yet was looking well rested. I believe Dave was the first to address him.

Dave: Hey man? Where the heck did you get off to last night.

Erik: I think… there was a party.

Me: Are you okay? You THINK? You don’t remember? Were you drugged? Erik, did they give you Rohypnol?

Toby: How did you get here? Did someone drop you off?

Dave: Did Buddy Holly drop you off Erik? Were you at a party with The Big Bopper? James Dean? What other dead 50’s icons did you meet last night?

Erik: Are you guys going for a drive?

Me: Erik, what happened to you last night? Where did you go?

Erik: Did you guys already have breakfast or are we eating on the road?

Dave and Toby and I looked at each other. It was clear Erik either didn’t want to talk about what happened to him, or he did not know what happened to him. Of course we were all dying to find out, but all the ribbing and surprise questions we threw at him didn’t shake his resolve to either fess up, or unblock what lay deep in his subconscious. What was clear was that something profound took place at that after hours party and it was not going to be revealed by Erik through anything short of hypnosis.

Across the street from the Caribou Inn was the saddest pet store in the world. Saddest as in, every animal in there had to be as depressed as any animal could be. One look at the exterior (judging a book by its cover), and you would imagine that any animal inside, if given an opposable thumb, would use it first to grasp a tool to break out, and then to extend on the side of the road to hitchhike to a better life. It was incredibly out of place from a marketing point of view. The pet store had as much business being in that town as a Japanese oxygen bar. It was as if a small child designed the town: hotel, post office, general store, pet shop. I didn’t want to walk over there and see what kind of animals were in there. In my mind, I imagined walking down the single isle of the business, lined with cages filled with marmots, misshapen kittens, a three legged dog, maybe a couple crows jammed into a hat box. I pictured a trout in a quart canning jar. I worried that the place would have a 5 gallon bucket filled with writhing garter snakes. It was the kind of place that would sell you “Darwin Fish,” under the guise of guppies that evolved into frogs in a matter of weeks. It seemed like that kind of place.

Dave asked if I wanted to go in and check it out. I told him my misgivings and he took a different approach. He believed that these were the pet stores that had all the illegal stuff that nobody else would dare to sell. He just said, “Fine, you stay here, I’m going to buy a monkey for three dollars.”

After several minutes Dave came back to the Hotel. He said that I had been correct in my assumptions, and the smell was unholy.

We had heard that there was a Wal-Mart in the town of Omak, six miles away. I don’t think I had ever been to one before. So after the band made my sick body scrape the ice off all the windows while they sat inside the warm van, we were off on a Wal-Mart adventure.

As we drove through Okanogan, we got a chance to get a look at the town and where our audience was coming from. Doing a quick calculation of number of homes in the area surveyed and extrapolating out what the population inside this “50 Mile Radius” the bouncers talked about would look like, we were able to come up with some rough census numbers. Then we compared that to the data we collected about our audience at the bar. We were able to determine that over 95% of the townspeople were alcoholics (with a +/- 5% margin of error), and the last night’s performance, statistically, had to be an all-ages show.

The four of us came to a stop at a “T” intersection on the way to, Wal-Mart. (I’m ashamed of that last sentence.) On our side of the street, it was Okanogan in the mid 1990’s. On the opposite side of the street, it was Sicily, just after World War One. I say this, because there was a small elderly woman in an old, but pretty black dress standing ominously next to a sheep on a leash and three chickens in separate cages stacked on top of one another. The band must have all been staring impolitely at this peculiar sight, because she looked up at us, spoke something inaudible in our direction and turned 180 degrees away from us. We were pretty sure she cursed everyone in the van, and we just laughed because there was nothing she could do to us that was worse than having to spend another night in our hotel room.

We made it to Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart is just Wal-Mart. What goes on at Wal-Mart is a waste of our time, and I will not trouble you with the details. Erik bought a Nerf gun, and we got out.

Please remember that the four of us were from rural areas (I think Erik was rural, he certainly has a level head and is decidedly not cosmopolitan) and use to seeing humble surroundings. What WAS out of the ordinary, was the approach to life. The experience was like driving through a foreign country that was either on its way to or from third world status. And the whole town seemed trapped in time. We stopped at a small general store and found toys that were actually collectable from the 1960’s yet sold on the rack as new. There were so many moments like this, I wondered if I was dreaming or perhaps in a coma after taking a randomly thrown beer bottle to the head the night before. I wanted it to end. I cried a little.

We rested up back at the “suite” by napping and shooting an empty Pepsi bottle out of the air with Erik’s new Nerf gun. This was the high point of our trip. Really.

When the Saturday night crowd started rolling in, it looked like the chow line in a Circus mess hall. The kind of Circus that was being investigated for animal cruelty in all 8 southern states it toured in. Many folks from the night before staggered back for more Caribou Inn action. They were easy to spot, as most were wearing the same outfits and sour expressions as they had on 22 hours ago, when they were tackled out the door by security. Still others were new faces with a freshness that said, “Today is the day I begin hating life, everyone else shall feel my pain starting now.” These were the folks that were wearing what I call “fight bait.” Or clothes so stupid looking, or with insulting messages ironed on or spelled in hot pink puff paint, that they draw a comment offensive enough to start a physical conflict. Clothes that say, “Hey world, look at how ridiculously I’m dressed. If I catch you so much as looking at this spectacle I’m putting on, we’re going to fight… possibly to the death.” There were a lot of guys in half-shirts (January). And since my mouth is probably the smartest thing my body has to offer (which would ironically be used to say some very dumb things), I needed to get behind my drums and stay as far away from the people as possible.

I remember it being hard to get to the stage because of how many people were jammed into the room. Please do not read into this as me believing we were so outstanding the night before that word travelled all over the region for everyone to get to the Caribou Inn to see this amazing rock band. None of us had any illusions that the people were there to see us succeed. They were there to make us fail… or eat us. I know this is the second time I made the “joke” about being eaten, but remember, you weren’t there and if you asked any of the band members that night, they would tell you the same unreasonable fear flashed through their minds.

Just as security had explained to us the previous evening, Saturday night was a whole different ballgame. There were even more people, which we didn’t think was possible, let alone within fire code regulations. They WERE more alert and awake than the Friday audience and therefore ready to party much sooner. They told us this by pounding in unison on their tables before we began. Although you’ve seen this happen on film many times, I can tell you that it is quite unnerving. If I was a drinking man, I would have required a shot of liquid courage before going on, however, I counted my blessings of being as sober as always for the sheer fact as I wanted all my senses sharp and my wits about me.

Midway through the second set, the members of the band noticed a couple of women staring at Toby in an unhealthy type of way… unhealthy for Toby. They weren’t together but they were standing close to Toby and staring up at him longingly. He turned to all of us and was visibly concerned as one of the women, a brunette who had to have 12 years on Toby and wasn’t his “type” (Toby’s type being a woman with all her front teeth and an awareness that they are single and not at the Caribou Inn with another man). That’s right, as this woman shouted her confession of love to Toby over the band’s sound system and music, her boyfriend/husband/sugar daddy was ready to break Toby’s pretty face for making her love some attractive boy guitar picker.

It all came to a head when Toby bent down to show the brunette his engagement ring that indicated he was taken and she would have to either stay with the man that drove her to the bar, or try to convince one of the other band members to “vote yes on her bond initiative”, if you get my meaning. This did not go over well with the brunette. She went from wannabe groupie to fully winged harpy in a flash of venom and spite. She screamed at Toby, nothing in particular, just a horror movie scream. And when Toby returned to the mic to sing the song we were in the middle of, the woman attempted to make the two foot high jump up onto the stage. She upset Toby’s mic stand and sent the hard metal microphone capsule into Toby’s lips and teeth, which is unpleasant at best, causing Toby to quickly step back and turn his back for a moment to check for tooth chips and blood on his lips. Meanwhile at the front of the stage, the woman, took control of Toby’s lead vocal microphone and began to spread her scorn filled message to the crown of the Caribou Inn over the band’s sound system.

Paraphrasing, the message was that Toby, the man she was pointing at, enjoys mating with sheep.

She repeated this message, again and again, with a desperate look on her face. The woman’s conviction, that Toby was a notorious molester of lanolin baring livestock was absolute. The audience needed to know this about Toby so something could be done about it. The purpose, of course, was to paint Toby as an undesirable person, and sheep coupling was the straightest line this woman could draw to that goal; because if she couldn’t have him, then nobody could.

By the time Toby had turned around and attempted to take the microphone away from the harpy, Mullet and No Mullet were cutting a swath through the crowd, making their way to the bandstand. Mullet made it to the stage first and wrapped his arms around the woman’s body from behind, the woman’s back was facing the audience as she screamed her disgustingly comical message directly at Toby. She was quickly and easily removed from the stage, along with the microphone, microphone stand and microphone cable. The microphone cable ran down to the front of the stage where it was duct taped to the floor, along with the other microphone, instrument and speaker cables. As Mullet got farther away with the offending woman, most of our cables were being pulled up and off the stage. All of our microphone stands were jerked away from us by the cables they were attached to. At one point, Mullet’s progress was impeded and he must have believed she was struggling against him and he gave a mighty heave, pulling just enough of our cables out of sockets to prevent the show from continuing. No Mullet, who was holding the woman’s insignificant other at bay, saw what had happened just beyond the nick of time and signaled to Mullet to STOP! Mullet dropped the woman and returned the microphone and stand to the stage. He was genuinely sorry when he gave the microphone set back to Toby. Toby was genuinely thankful to Mullet for coming to his rescue. We took a short break to get the sound back in order, played a few songs and took the long break we were due.

Toby and Erik stayed behind to double check the sound system. Dave and I retreated to the only other place where there were no people, our “suite”. We grabbed a couple bottles of water and flipped on the cartoon network in the room to try and make a mental escape for ten minutes or so. We had barely sat down, when someone pushed our knob-free door open and stood blocking the door.

Dave and I looked at each other with disappointed exasperation. Could we not take a few minutes away from the mustard gas filled, violent freak-fest environment to breathe air that was only 78% polluted? Now this stranger literally darkened our doorway with a drink and lit cigarette in hand, swaying slightly as his eyes focused on Dave and me out of synchronization. He wore a bolo tie around the neck hole of his un-pressed button up (for those of you unfamiliar with the bolo style tie, it is a decorative neck fastening that instead of incorporating a lovely traditional arrow of silk fabric tied neatly around and under the collar of a dress shirt, utilizes what amounts to a shoestring and a shiny rock to attempt the same purpose. You can get a VERY nice one for about $15. This man’s was mid-grade). Now, using the bolo tie as your reference point, dress the man as you would probably imagine. Add a few cigarette burns and a nefarious mustache.

Neither of us made any sudden movements, as is advised when faced with a dangerous wild animal. Dave and I sat still as we exchanged silent eye contact with the stranger (danger) and Dave spoke first.

(This conversation was condensed for the purpose of time and sanity.)

Dave: Caaaaaaan we help you?

Man: I just, wantyoubothtoknow, (blinks) nothing has been signed yet.

Dave and I looked at each other quickly and puzzled. I tried to remember what was within grabbing distance from me to defend us in case Mr. Rummy McCrazipants decided to make a sudden move. The lamp was too far away, the Nerf gun would be ineffective, the sleeping bag was too soft and I wasn’t going to touch the chicken skeleton under the bed. But after a couple gentle sways of his drunken form, I figured even with just Dave and I in the room, the SIX of us HE was seeing probably made him feel outnumbered. The silence lingered for a moment before I began probing for more.

Steve: Well, that is a relief, wouldn’t you say, Dave?

Dave: Yes, my lawyer isn’t available at this time.

Steve: So… who are you sir? (I said as unthreateningly as possible.)

Man: I have a door. You can choose to walk through it together…or separately, but now is the time.

Dave: Does this door that you speak of have a lock, because I can’t think of a time when I would want anything more than a door that locks.

Man: I have a dooruv opportunity for you both to walk through.

Steve: OH! One of those kind of doors!

Man: Yesss, one of those kind. Nothing has been signed yet.

Dave: Okay, and what would we be signing?

Man: I have a door to stardom. You n’your band are goin’ to be verrrrryrich. But… aReyou ready to walk THROUGH that door?

If only we had one ounce of drinkable alcohol, we could have offered it to the “gentleman,” he probably would have passed out or died. However, he was violating laws of thermal dynamics, just being as drunk as he was holding a lit cigarette and not bursting into flames. The only logical explanation could be that this man was in fact, the Devil.

Dave: Are you with a record label? (Dave asked, knowing full well that this man was NOT Atlantic’s hottest A&R representative).

Man: You know… … … YoU know, you boys have alodda talent. I’ve been watchin’ your show, and you need to …tighten it upabit, but, you know, yer a good band. I might bein a position to make youguys alllllllodda money. I have…

Dave: You have a door?

Man: (Winks and points at Dave with a finger pistol and made a clicking noise with his tongue) You got it. Now are you going to walk through it together…or by yourselves.

Steve: So are record companies interested in cover bands now? I thought they were only interested in original artists.

Man: I do music. I used to do music. Business with music. I had housesncars and mansions and boats. But I don’t want to get into that right now. Lesson One: Always tape your stuff down. Did you see that lady trip off the stageonyer cords and wires?

Dave: She didn’t trip, she pulled the cables up when she was dragged off the stage.

Man: My point is that none of that would have happened if yourgear wuztaped to the ground, and not with scotch tape.

Steve: We used heavy duct tape to secure the cables on the stage. We always secure our gear.

Man: That’s right. You gotta start doin’ that or you’re going to have accidents like tonight happen all the time. You got alloda talent… don’t wanna see it wasted when an accident ruins yer life do ya?

Dave: …

Steve: …

Man: I had better get back downstairs, the band is starting to play again. Have youguys heard the band? They’re pretty good… I’m going to make them famous. I’ve got a door fer them, to open and walk through… nothing is signed yet though.

The man then staggered back down stairs, leaving half of the band he was currently listening to in a horrendous hotel room behind him.

Dave: We could leave, right now and go home. Toby and Erik could ride back with Mardi and Walter.

Steve: We’ll just say I got sicker and you had to drive me to the hospital in Ellensburg. I’m totally with you.

Dave: We would probably lose our instruments…

Steve: I’m actually fine with that. After yesterday and tonight, I don’t think I’ll need my drums anymore.

Dave: Get your stuff.

After realizing I had taken all of my valuables down to the stage for safe keeping from the hotel room doors didn’t have knobs or locks… (just ramming that point home), there was no way we could have made our escape without going down to the stage to get my keys and wallet, hidden safely under a sweaty towel in my gear bag. Even if we did have the guts to just up and leave Okanogan two hours before our obligation was completed, we couldn’t do it. Ironically, the crappiness of Okanogan actually prevented us from leaving Okanogan.

Realizing, there was NO WAY we were getting out of here without playing the rest of the show, Dave and I headed back to the stage to see just what would happen next. We were/were not disappointed.

There’s a saying many bands use when playing at a beer joint: The more you drink, the better we sound. Okanogan once again, was there to prove us wrong. With as much as they were drinking, we should have sounded like The Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Beatles through a Bose sound system, mixed by Rick Rubin. But instead, the better we sounded, the drunker they got, and the drunker they got, the angrier they became. The action was therefore taken up a notch.

Think of all the bar room brawl clichés you’ve ever seen. We saw many of them that night. We the standard fighting between two guys where the guys have their hands around each other’s necks. We saw the old broken bottle as a weapon thing. We saw the woman dragged off a man, slapping and kicking him. Saw a table turned over at the beginning of a fight. A chair was picked up and thrown at someone. All of these were separate instances. It was a cornucopia of bad decisions played out on the dance floor. However, all of these skirmishes were just undercard fights for the Main Event.

After the third forced encore (we tried to end the show a little early), it was finally time to end the show. As rough of a crowd as they were, toward the end they were really cheering us on and having a good time. But too little, too late Okanogan! Which, in hindsight, is exactly what should have been our sign-off on the sound system, instead of, “Can Erik have his hat back?”

I was worn out. I just wanted to pack my drums up and go. And why not? The van was parked right out in front of the place; best parking spot at the Caribou Inn. But I felt like I only had enough energy to make it out of the ballroom that was full of smoke and hatred, to the lobby, where some cleaner air would be circulating. I sat down in the lone easy chair in the far back corner of the lobby and watched the crowd filter out as I took puff after puff on my asthma inhaler. I must have looked as most of them did, sweaty, tired and completely devoid of hope.

No Mullet dragged a man, unable to stand to the middle of the Lobby floor and made him, “Shut your mouth and stand still!” The man mumbled a little but straightened right up when the tiny owner of the place came out and told the intoxicated man in no uncertain terms that he was never to come back again to the Caribou Inn.

The man hit his knees immediately (and still was only at eye level to the top of her blonde afro), and began to beg and plead to be able to come back. He promised he would stay away for a week and never cause any trouble again. Tears streamed down the man’s face as the owner again told him “no”. He wailed and had to be drug out of the building by both No Mullet and Mullet. They had barely returned when the lobby started to churn with trouble.

In professional wrestling, there is a style of contest known as a “Lumberjack Match.” It’s when 10 or more wrestlers start in the ring for an every-man-for-himself battle royal. The object of a lumberjack match is to throw your opponents out of the ring and to not be thrown out yourself. Very exciting, very violent, and very much what was about to happen at the Caribou Inn.

A group of six to eight small men came out of the bar brawling with each other. I say there were six to eight because they were extremely difficult to count. They were all about five feet tall, 135 pounds and looked nearly identical in every way and they moved around too much for me to get a solid number.

But when I say brawling, it was only because that was what they appeared to be doing. No damage was really being done because they were all moving like the fight was taking place in Jell-O…nicotine colored and flavored Jell-O. They were moving so slowly, you would have thought they were blocking a fight scene at one-quarter speed to rehears how the real fight was going to go down next week. Punches landed on faces with the force of a refrigerator door closing under its own speed, they wrestled to the ground like they were trying to fit too many items in a suitcase. The fight was not dangerous, yet when the blows landed, they people being hit acted as if they were thrown at full speed.

They would break apart and stand in a large circle and then pick an opponent across from them, yell something in mumble-drunken speak, and then charge slowly into the circle and accidently fight someone else. It resembled at times, one of the better square dances I’ve been too.

This big “fight” was so slow and poorly executed, that I, even in my exhausted asthmatic state, could have stood in the center and dropped every single one of them looking like Bruce Lee doing it, if you filmed it at regular speed and them watched it on fast forward.

Mullet and No Mullet each picked up several of the combatants after they had all ended up in a dog-pile on the floor and carried them out the door in almost one trip. I watched from the chair as Mullet took one slap to the face too many from one of the little men as he stepped off the curb in front of the Caribou Inn. Mullet pulled the man off of his shoulder and spun him around by the collar, slamming him into the side of my parent’s van.

I bolted out of my chair and flew across the lobby past the staggering throng of booze zombies. As Mullet doubled down on the little man six inches off the ground against the van my parents trusted me to bring back in one piece, I threw the Caribou’s lobby door open with the sign taped to it asking me to “Please use the other door ß.” I had lost my cool and roared with the last remaining pieces of by horse voice, “GET HIM OFF MY VAN!”

Mullet looked at me puzzled. He was clearly about to push the little aggressive jerk through the panel window of the family truckster, but caught the rage on my face, looked at the van and pulled the ejected patron off of the Van. Mullet gave me a look of, “oops, I’m sorry about that dude, won’t happen again,” and with that, threw the man across the street and into a snow bank. The offending bar customer actually flew from the parking stalls to the other curb. Mullet walked up to me and clamped one of his big mitts on my shoulder and told me he was sorry about roughing up my van. When a man like Mullet apologizes to you, you accept that apology… and maybe apologize to him for something in return.

The owner asked Dave, what I was yelling about as they watched out the window. Dave explained to her that the bouncer had a guy up against my parent’s van and that I wanted to ensure that van made it back intact. She looked at Dave as if it was all my fault, “Why the hell did he park the van out front? That’s the worst parking space in town.” To which the correct response would have been, ”Yeah, and it’s in front of YOUR bar lady.” But seeing as how we hadn’t been paid yet, Dave just wisely shrugged his answer back to her.

At that point I just went up to the wretched hotel suite to fall asleep as quickly as possible. The reason wasn’t so much that I was exhausted (which I was), but to time-travel to Sunday morning when we could load up and race out of town as quickly as possible, which we did.

The ride home was uneventful. We had played the gig, been paid, and miraculously not incurred any extra holes in our bodies, gunshot, knife or otherwise. Only the mystery of Erik’s Friday night remained, but questions about that night died out as we broke several speeding laws getting away from where we had been. Only time would tell if any of us would fall victim to dysentery as would NOT have been a surprise. We all rode home quietly, as I took inventory of what clothes of mine had actually touched surfaces in the hotel room that still haunts my dreams, and therefore must be burned.

Okanogan, the place that showed me the baseline of what I will accept in rented overnight accommodations. Okanogan is the town where time stands still, and the fights are even slower. The place we would never return to even if offered quadruple our asking price. If you have taken anything away from these three entries, let it be this: Never go to Okanogan.

If I have to pass through Okanogan to get to Heaven, I’ll take my chances in Hell…

…and that’s the Damm truth.

Part 2 of the worst gig I ever played.

There were four of us that had made the trip to Okanogan in the van my parents had foolishly lent me. Six if you counted Toby’s mother Mardi, who sang with us regularly and made the trip up separately with her husband, Walter. We were about to play two nights at the most happening joint in a fifty mile radius (allegedly). Unfortunately, all the money that came into said happening joint did not appear to have made it past the ground floor. More unfortunately was that our rooms were not in the “money zone.”

Our rooms were the kind of rooms you would expect to see Anthony Perkins dressed in a wig and his mother’s clothes hiding in the shower, but you would be mistaken. Although incredibly heinous murders frequently took place in the fictional Bates Motel, I’m pretty sure the Bates’ rooms had things like, soap, door knobs and acceptable health code practices. Norman Bates would have run screaming from these rooms; he may have been a killer, but his modest motel was tidy.

Please understand, I do not wish to keep coming back to the rooms. There’s so much more to this story than just how bad the rooms were. It’s just that, I’m not a good enough writer to explain to you, the reader, how absolutely awful these suites were. I kept asking the guys if they were SURE they were up to date on their tetanus shots.

As we made our way to the lobby…

Did I mention that the windows in the room had long spider-web cracks in them, some of which were thoughtfully Scotch taped to avoid further breakage? Alright, alright, I’m sorry.

As we made our way to the lobby, we heard someone ask a woman at the front desk if she was the owner and she had replied that she was. We decided to walk down and introduce ourselves as the band and glean any details that might have been glossed over by Full Ride, the band that had graciously passed this gig along to us.

The owner was a little person. Not a “little person” little person, but she was not tall and not heavy. A dwarf? I don’t know. She was tiny, but not… she was very small, and had a well-kept blonde loose curl afro the size of a beach ball. We politely introduced ourselves as the band and she looked at us as if she didn’t think we were up to the challenge. Like, she sent for the Army and what she got were some Cub Scouts. It was clear to us that this woman would accept no crapola from ANYONE, and was not to be messed with or crossed. I didn’t take offense to this as I saw in her face not disappointment that we were going to be bad musicians, but that we might not be up to the task of playing her bar. The other guys got this sense too and we all assured her that we came to play and we meant business. She still eyed us suspiciously, like one would survey a creaky rope bridge over a ravine. She then advised us to get some dinner at the restaurant and make sure security knew who we were… for some reason. Security?

We went in and did our sound check and did indeed meet security. Two brawny men in T-shirts with the sleeves strategically cut off (for maximum ventilation),introduced themselves with their names but I knew them as Mullet and No Mullet. I was surprised that they had wireless headset walkie-talkies like I had only seen special operations military types use in the movies (equipment that outdated every other machine in the Caribou Inn by ten years). They were nice guys that assured us that no matter what, we would be safe and they would make sure nothing happened to us. They told us the place fills up quick on the weekend and it gets ugly fast. They said it was the only place around that had liquor, music and entertainment, and that most of the people have a lot of steam to blow off from their lousy collective weeks. We thought the headsets were a little unnecessary. We were incorrect, and we figured we were when they sincerely apologized for not having chicken wire up in front of the stage to shield us.

We had a pleasant dinner. The food and the restaurant were quite good. No complaints. The food was part of our payment and although it wasn’t fancy, it was hearty and delicious. We were seated near the bar, where we enjoyed some of the local characters swapping stories of drunken indiscretions that bordered on the supernatural.

Drunk 1: O…kay, so, we were up at the creek.

Drunk 2: Which creek?

Drunk 1: Not Witch Creek, the creek I, took Tom to fish at last,, year.

Drunk 2: I didn’t say Witch Creek… I said, “WHICH CREEK?”

Drunk 1: No, it’s the other side of the canyon… Course, we were drunk at the time.

Drunk 2: When?

Drunk 1: Then.

Drunk 3: You’re actually pretty drunk now too.

Drunk 1: No, I was drunk then, with Bill…Tom, who was with me.

Drunk 2: Bill was with you.

Drunk 1: Tom was with me, and Bill stayed home. He’ll tell you we … wait, was I telling you the creek story?

Drunk 3: Did you say Tom was a witch?

Fascinating.

We took the stage at 9pm. For those of you not familiar with how a cover band works, they typically start around nine and play until the bar closes at 1:30am or so. You get a ten to fifteen minute break from playing about every 50 minutes to an hour or so. We call it playing, and it is fun, but it is also hard work. As a drummer, I’m told that I expel the same amount of physical energy as a professional basketball, football or soccer player. I would believe that is a fair assessment. But this night, I was sick with a throat infection. I had to sing lead and backup in a room that was so thick with tobacco smoke, you would have thought that a plantation had caught on fire. Tonight, purely from a physical point of view, was going to be one of the toughest gigs I had ever played.

I climbed behind the drum set and heard the pop of the amplifiers come alive. Toby called out our first song, a Garth Brooks tune that was sure to please the crowd in Okanogan. Nope. I heard the groans and the booing before I even peered out to see what the audience looked like. Lights were shining down on us on the stage and it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to being able to see into the audience. There were more people in that giant ballroom than I’d ever seen at one of our gigs. The place was packed to the gills. There must have been close to 150 to 200 people out there, and they did not care for our song selection. At. All.

After speeding through the first tune, we made a friendly plea to the audience and asked them for what they wanted to hear. Doom, utter doom, loomed over us as we gave them permission to call out what they wanted to hear. To keep it simple, we had half the bar wanting Slayer, Megadeath, or some other metal bands I had never even heard of. The other side of the bar sure didn’t want to hear any bubble gum pop music like the Garth Brooks we just played. They preferred Country music and they were prepared to angrily scream, both musical camps, until they heard what they wanted. The crowd got out of hand very quickly.

There’s this joke that you can use to diffuse the situation when someone heckles you. It is designed to turn the tables on the yelling audience member and embarrass them to get the crowd back on YOUR side. It goes like this:

Audience Member: You Suck!

You: Now sir, let’s quiet down, I don’t come to your place of work and knock the broom out of your hand, spit on the toilet you’re trying to clean, push the wrong happy meal combo button on your touch screen…etc.

Or if you want to go for the jugular, the joke infers the audience member is a prostitute. Typically the joke happens, tables turn, audience member shuts up.

We couldn’t do that here. For one thing, there were too many of them. The other thing was that anything we thought up had a better than average chance of hitting too close to home for some of these folks. The joke would cease to be absurd, which therefore would be too literal and mean. That’s not only impolite, but would have probably got us cut, shot or very badly beaten. And all the mullets and headset walkie-talkies in the world wouldn’t be able to save us from THIS crowd.

I looked to the back of the bar at Mullet for some kind of guidance. He just gave me the thumbs up, nodded and brushed his fingers at us to just keep going like everything would be okay.

We just started running our song list, and as the alcohol started lubricating the anger and distaste in the minds of our audience, the booing gave way to cheers and applause. But the trouble wasn’t over yet.

Normally, when a fight breaks out at a bar here in Seattle, the place shuts down for a while. Everything stops, people stare, the music grinds to a halt, grief counselors are brought in, its a big darn deal. But in Okanogan, an altercation broke out every ten minutes or so, with people being ejected from the bar each time. But new people would come in and THEY would start to get pushy. It was then that we saw the value of the wireless headset radios.

At one point, I looked over to the left of the stage to see a very large woman reach across her table and without standing up, lift another woman almost completely over her head, swivel 90 degrees to her left and begin to slam the woman in her clutches repeatedly into a fire exit door. The door was blocked shut by several feet of snow that had been plowed against the building outside, but that did not deter the woman doing the slamming. Again, without standing, the sitting woman used the other woman as a battering ram to finally open the door enough to push her body completely out the door, kicking and screaming. The woman then pulled the fire exit shut, put her cigar back in her mouth and continued listening to the rest of the conversation at her table as if nothing had happened. Part of me was appalled at seeing such a violent act of inhumanity displayed from one person to another. Yet a different part of me was relieved that the exit door I had been eyeing as my escape route was now cleared to be open. Mullet and No Mullet didn’t even bother to step in and investigate. I guess they figured if the woman didn’t even stand up, it wasn’t worth the bother walking over there. Plus, I think that lady could have taken them.

Security was big, but respectful. They handled themselves professionally and methodically. Even when they were slapped, pushed, yelled at, spit on, spilled on and probably bitten, they didn’t get angry, they just kept calm, picked up the offending party or parties and casually walked them out the door. Coordinating expertly on their headset mics, they could work their way around the crowd and warn one another of any danger of being hit with a bottle or thrown up on.

The first ten minute break, I think we all stayed on the stage instead of our usual mingling with the crowd. Today, you could look any of us in the face and ask us why we stayed on the stage for that first break and we would all answer the same way. We were terrified. Any sane person would have been. That first set, although ending well, with lots of dancers still drew several looks from audience members that we had never seen before. One person stared all of us down individually and pulled his finger around his neck, slowly; which meant, he either wanted to slit our throats, OR measure each of us for a dress shirt collar size.

Buddy Holly was there. Not the spirit of the band leader of the Crickets, who famously died in an airplane crash with The Big Bopper and Richie Vallens, but the actual Buddy Holly, frozen in time, alive and thriving in Okanogan, Washington in the mid 1990’s. Historian’s will be interested in knowing that Buddy, in horn-rimmed glasses and the Pomade raven black signature haircut was now living as a woman in the North Central Washington town. OR… There was a woman in her twenty’s that looked exactly like Buddy Holly the day before the music died. Either way, she got the band’s attention and seemed to be enjoying herself to our song selection, none of which were tunes penned by Holly. Dave, my friend from pre-school on up was the rhythm guitar player of Longshot and the heart and soul of the band, looked at “Buddy” and then to me and asked if I would go score an autograph . I declined, but every time she came into view on the dance floor, Dave would catch my eye and give me a look like THE Buddy Holly had just walked in. The joke did not get old.

As the night came to a close, the bar began to filter people outside. I just sat behind the drums utterly pooped. My sore throat had survived singing through the smokiest night I’ve probably ever played, but it felt worse. I wondered if I could even make it through another night of this. Normally I would immediately go strip off my sweat soaked clothes (I work hard back there) and hop into a nice hot shower to rinse clean the film or grime that accompanies such a night of drumming in the honkiest of honky tonks. However, facing the prospect of a hotel room that a Zagat’s guide would undoubtedly review with the words” BURN IT”; I wondered if my parents had any wet-nap packets outside in the van’s glove box.

As I was realizing there was no hope of an EPA approved shower, we watched as our brand new bass player, Erik, was invited to an afterhours party at a local’s house. He accepted. The rest of us thought he was out of his mind, but in hindsight Erik had simply found a way out of our hotel room predicament. The group, including Buddy Holly, whisked him away and he was GONE. With no idea where to and when or IF he would be back, we honestly worried for his safety.

I climbed off the bandstand and Mullet walked up to us and told us we did great job. We asked if it was always this rowdy and he said no. No Mullet chimed in and said Friday night is always the slow night, because not everyone comes out after working hard all week. He said it would really pick up the next night. It’s like they had planned to tell us this way. We congratulated them on keeping the peace and trudged up the terrible stairs to our certainly terrible night of sleeping.

I took one look back at the still illuminated stage with all of our instruments set-up and ready to play the next night, the “rowdier” night, and couldn’t help but think of another band miles away. Full Ride was leaving the stage somewhere at the exact same instant (as per Washington State Law). I imagined the leader of the band was thinking of us, and beginning to giggle and share an enormous laugh with the rest of his band mates about what he had done to their rival band.

I plotted my revenge, but first, sleep… terrible, awful sleep.

To be concluded in Okanogan Part 3, The Final Chapter.