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Progressive Travels

The haphazard chronicles of a professional musician and his relentless pursuit of an otherwise boring life.

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Location: St. Jacob, Illinois, United States

If it ain't Baroque, fix it!

28 September 2005

Moonshine and Kidneys

Saturday, 03 September 2005
Every year for about the past seven or eight, BenWahBob has played Memorial Day Weekend at Bearcats Getaway on the Black River in Lesterville MO. This year was no exception, and in addition played Labor Day weekend as well. We play on the big stage on Saturday night, camp over night, then float on Sunday. It’s a long drive down there from St. Louis, but is usually worth the trip. The stage is enormous, Mike brings out his big system, and there are always large crowds.

Dawna and I had decided after Memorial Day that we would rent a small trailer the next time, and so we did. We picked up the little 4x8 U-Haul trailer first thing Saturday morning, packed all of the necessary gear (she had to remind me to grab the stage lights...again), and headed out. We all met at the usual spot in South County just off the highway, picked up a few more items at the Schnuck’s Market there, and caravanned down the road. I must say, it was nice for all four of us to all ride in one vehicle this time. With all of the equipment and camping gear in the trailer, we had plenty of room in her truck (oh, wait...sorry...it’s an SUV).

We made the traditional stop in Farmington at the Dairy Queen where we exit MO-67 onto Highway W. The service there has been less than inspiring the last few times, but we eat there anyway as it is pretty much the halfway point. We then continue on to Highway V, cut through Pilot Knob to Highway 21, and take that the rest of the way to Lesterville. We always stop at the same gas station in Pilot Knob, too, for Mike to refill his van. Since he’s hauling a trailer full of PA gear, he uses a stupid amount of gas on this trip. We decided to refill as well while we were there. The rest of the trip is winding roads through the rolling hills that are the beginnings of the Ozark Mountains. I think Dawna really enjoyed this as her first time hauling a trailer. It is a beautiful drive, though.

We arrived at the campgrounds earlier than usual and began to instantly unload and set up the equipment. Bobby was the last to arrive, as he had stopped off at a store along the way. He told us that the people at the front office were upset because none of us had stopped to check in when we arrived. We always do it this way. After eight years, you’d think they’d know us by now. It turned out that they had some new people there who didn’t know us. The women (unofficially dubbed the “BenWahBabes”) usually go to the office to check in and gather the necessary armbands and meal tickets while we finish the set-up. Not this time. They came back and told us that we had to go there in person and have them put on our armbands. There was also some issue about the number and availability of meal tickets for Dawna’s son and nephew, but we worked that out with little effort...and a little money. This was a bit aggravating, but nothing really serious.

The campgrounds were less crowded than we had expected. Apparently they had had quite a few cancellations by people who didn’t want to spend the money for gas to get there. Those who were there were no less rowdy because of it, though. We started playing around 20:00, and the party was already in full swing. Right from the start, though, we had a couple of guys trying to get around the barricade to the back of the stage to try to come up on stage. This resulted in a small disagreement between us, the two drunks, and the camp’s security personnel. An effort to close one of the openings in the fence resulted in Carlos’ wife Dawn acquiring a rather nasty cut on her leg from the edge of the fencing. She lived, though, and eventually got the bleeding to stop with the help of the other BenWahBabes.

We rolled through our sets in the usual way, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the show...in spite of some of the atrocities that we were emitting from our speakers. Carlos had brought along an updated version of the new Ampeg SVT-6PRO for me to try, and I had picked up a monster 8x10 cabinet from SLME Friday. This cabinet alone weighs about 210 pounds, but will handle the 1100 watts from this amp much easier than my 2 4x10 cabinets that we tried to use (and blew up) Memorial Day. The sound was fantastic, and I was loud as..... well, I was loud. It’s too bad this rig weighs so much. I would hate to have to haul something like that around all of the time.

At some point during the last set, some guy came up to the front of the stage – which is about eight feet high – holding a mason jar full of some odd liquid and telling me that I had to try it, all the while pointing at his head. Huh? He repeated himself several times, then chucked the jar up onto the stage right at the foot of my mic stand. It was then that I heard him say “moonshine.” Uhh...yah...right, dude. When I looked down at it a little later, I could have sworn I saw something floating in it. Upon closer examination, there were what appeared to me to be two internal organs of unknown origin (kidneys maybe?) floating in this reddish-brown liquid. Nice. At the end of the night, the guy had disappeared. So, I politely requested over the PA that whomever had tossed their kidneys up on the stage, please come back and retrieve them. I never saw him come back, but somehow the jar disappeared during teardown. I did get a picture of it lying there, though.

We tore down the equipment, moved it all to the sides of the stage, and carried our tents up to camp on the stage again. This seems to be much better than the ground. Dawna had inflated the air mattress when she set up the tent earlier, but it was now a bit flatter. We aired it up again before crashing and hoped for the best. Around 06:30, we awoke lying on the plywood floor. Ouch. We both got up, made the walk to the necessary facilities, then she whipped out her coffee machine and made fresh coffee. Soon the rest of the camp was starting to wake and was buzzing again. Some guy across the road from us was already playing a tambourine when we got up. Apparently, if the band is awake, it’s OK to party again, because the moment they saw us stirring, the loud music came on again.

We loaded the equipment off of the stage, ate breakfast, changed clothes, loaded the coolers onto the bus, and prepared for the bus-ride-from-hell to the drop point on the river. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad this time, as we had a different driver. The engine on this bus runs a bit rich, though, and every time he would let off of the accelerator, it would emit a loud backfire. Several jokes about Baghdad and hillbillies were bandied about. Dale’s lovely wife Chris chimed in with “Hey, I think we just broke the sound barrier!” and we all lost it. I thought we were just kicking up dust from the road, but I guess it was actually a vapor ring.

We arrived at the drop point completely intact this time, and put the canoes into the river. What a beautiful day it turned out to be for a float. I got to pair up with Dawna from the start this time, as the boys took a canoe to themselves. The river was in pretty good shape. Some of the people at the campgrounds had warned us that the river was low, but we really only had a few spots where we had to actually get out and drag it through. Dawna threw a couple of looks back at me each time. Yes, I know I need to loose a few pounds, and this was not the time to be reminding me of that. So that became a running gag. Every time we scraped along a shallow spot, I would apologize, saying, “sorry...that’s me.” It sucks getting fat...especially when your girlfriend is wafer-thin. We didn’t have too much trouble, though. Dawna is an excellent navigator (it’s the Cherokee in her, I’m sure). We all stopped a couple of times along the way, had lunch on a beach around the half-way point, stopped again later and played in the river for awhile, saw some incredibly huge carp in one of the deeper pools, and wound up back at the take-out point around 16:00. Everyone had a great time, and I got sunburned again.

After some parting words back at the camp, we all headed back toward our respective homes. Dawna and I decided to stop again at Dairy Queen in Farmington for dinner. If we thought the service was bad the day before, we were in for a real treat. The girl taking our order simply couldn’t get it right, the manager had to get involved and refund some of our money, the order was still wrong when we finally got it, and I was soundly ignored when I went back to the counter to advise them that the ketchup dispenser was empty. Dawna went off on the manager and got some packets of ketchup right before someone came out and filled the dispenser. None of the employees would even make eye contact with us after that. Perhaps we need to rethink this BWB tradition.

Other than that, though, it was a pretty good weekend overall. We got to play, camp, float, swim, and tease all weekend. By the time we got back to St. Jacob, I was tired and crabby and just wanted to unload the equipment and go to bed. We cleaned out the trailer, dropped it off in Highland, and went home to our real beds. I spent the day Monday back out in the sun helping Dawna mow at her farm. What can I say...I’m a glutton for punishment.

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