The strangers keep getting stranger around here
FRIDAY
After the convenience store clerk asked for my I.D. she raised an eyebrow, "Born in seventy four, huh?" I nodded. "Yep, I'll be thirty-one next month." As she leaned over the high counter and handed it back to me, she looked me square in the eyes and snarled, "Someday you will look your age!" There was something very wicked about the way she said it--I mean, she sounded right down hateful--like she was laying a hex on me or something and I imagined by the next morning I'd wake to look like a withered old woman.
SATURDAY
It wasn't enough to spend the wee hours of the morning talking to Sam on the phone, no, we decided we wanted to have breakfast together. Only we live about an hour's drive apart. We decided to meet somewhere in between, which happens to be this little town called Mountainburg. There is a gas station with a restaurant attached and not much else there. I think they have a school, and the psychic lady we visit every year lives up there, too.
On that particular morning the place was full of locals and bikers, as some sort of biker convention was going on nearby. There was a sign on the wall that said, "Sat. Night Country Music 6:30" and I wanted to know what that was about. Was it live music? Karaoke? Or did somebody just roll out a stereo and pull out the Hank records?
When a man came by to bus our table I asked him about it and he said, "The fellow you need ask about that is sitting right there!" And he got the attention of a man who was sitting in the booth directly behind us. So I asked that fellow a little about his band and in turn he asked us if we play anything. Sam told him he plays drums and just as soon as he said that, from the booth on the other side of us an older woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked me, "Honey, do you sing?"
Caught off guard, I said, "Umm. No, not really." I just couldn't understand why in the world she would ask me that, and all I knew is that I wasn't in the mood for singing. So she says, "I used to yodel." I tell her that I think yodeling seems like a hard thing to do and she says, "Oh, no, not really."
She turns all the way around in her seat now, straightens up and schools me.
"If you want to yodel, you need to listen to Patsy Montana. Patsy Montana can yodel."
She goes on to tell me a long list of other people she listened to in her days of learning to yodel, names I should know, as well, because apparently I want to yodel, too. And to be honest, I started thinking, "Yeah, I do want to yodel! I just didn't know it until know, but I need to yodel!"
I don't know how he did it, but Sam managed to extricate us from the restaurant, and while I was having a fine time after I realized I was going to be asked to sing in front of the locals and the bikers or anything like that, I'm glad he did it. After we got out of there, he told me while I was talking to the yodeler, the old guy was trying to get Sam to join his band.
When we were leaving they seemed pretty sad about it, and told us to come back, wished us good luck and things like that. It seemed sort of strange, really, considering I just wanted to know what kind of music they played at their restaurant.
Obviously they were trying to suck us in, brainwash us, turn us into one of THEM.
After the convenience store clerk asked for my I.D. she raised an eyebrow, "Born in seventy four, huh?" I nodded. "Yep, I'll be thirty-one next month." As she leaned over the high counter and handed it back to me, she looked me square in the eyes and snarled, "Someday you will look your age!" There was something very wicked about the way she said it--I mean, she sounded right down hateful--like she was laying a hex on me or something and I imagined by the next morning I'd wake to look like a withered old woman.
SATURDAY
It wasn't enough to spend the wee hours of the morning talking to Sam on the phone, no, we decided we wanted to have breakfast together. Only we live about an hour's drive apart. We decided to meet somewhere in between, which happens to be this little town called Mountainburg. There is a gas station with a restaurant attached and not much else there. I think they have a school, and the psychic lady we visit every year lives up there, too.
On that particular morning the place was full of locals and bikers, as some sort of biker convention was going on nearby. There was a sign on the wall that said, "Sat. Night Country Music 6:30" and I wanted to know what that was about. Was it live music? Karaoke? Or did somebody just roll out a stereo and pull out the Hank records?
When a man came by to bus our table I asked him about it and he said, "The fellow you need ask about that is sitting right there!" And he got the attention of a man who was sitting in the booth directly behind us. So I asked that fellow a little about his band and in turn he asked us if we play anything. Sam told him he plays drums and just as soon as he said that, from the booth on the other side of us an older woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked me, "Honey, do you sing?"
Caught off guard, I said, "Umm. No, not really." I just couldn't understand why in the world she would ask me that, and all I knew is that I wasn't in the mood for singing. So she says, "I used to yodel." I tell her that I think yodeling seems like a hard thing to do and she says, "Oh, no, not really."
She turns all the way around in her seat now, straightens up and schools me.
"If you want to yodel, you need to listen to Patsy Montana. Patsy Montana can yodel."
She goes on to tell me a long list of other people she listened to in her days of learning to yodel, names I should know, as well, because apparently I want to yodel, too. And to be honest, I started thinking, "Yeah, I do want to yodel! I just didn't know it until know, but I need to yodel!"
I don't know how he did it, but Sam managed to extricate us from the restaurant, and while I was having a fine time after I realized I was going to be asked to sing in front of the locals and the bikers or anything like that, I'm glad he did it. After we got out of there, he told me while I was talking to the yodeler, the old guy was trying to get Sam to join his band.
When we were leaving they seemed pretty sad about it, and told us to come back, wished us good luck and things like that. It seemed sort of strange, really, considering I just wanted to know what kind of music they played at their restaurant.
Obviously they were trying to suck us in, brainwash us, turn us into one of THEM.