March 2005
It all started with a desire to see Flogging Molly in DC. Their show was, however, on a Wednesday night and more or less impossible for me to do during the work week.
So...when and where else were they playing. Scanning the tour dates, I saw a show in KC on a Friday in March...the Beaumont Club...I hadn't been there in ages and the last time, Casey Clarkson and myself drove all the way up from Joplin to see Soulfly, who cancelled...Seven hours in a car...a totally wasted night...but I'm falling off course.
The plan began to fall together, fly to KC from Norfolk friday afternoon, pick up a car, get a room, see the show, drive to Joplin saturday morning, and stay until Monday, then fly home...perfect...a quick getaway and a chance to catch up with some old friends.
So began Fear and Loathing in Joplin...
"book online...take the ride..."
Stumbling Through Airports, rental cars in KC, and Flogging Molly
(journal entry: 3.11.05)
airborne,
The sweat on my gray gym shirt has now almost completely dried since my sprint across the entirety of the Charlotte-Douglas International airport. Our flight in Norfolk was delayed some 45 minutes while the cockpit and ground crew were arguing over payment plans, preventing our cropduster from being refueled in a timely manner. After the flight's eventual liftoff, we hit some nerve-racking, stomac-dropping turbulence that reminded me of an email my mother sent, where an elderly woman asked a flight attendant "have we landed or were we shot down?"
The animated stewardess read off the airport's various connection gates, with the tenacity of a second-string cheerleader.
"Flights to Detroit, Michigan will board at Gate 13-A...apple, gate 11-B...boy..." and she even got somehwta creative with "gate-E...enormous." Didn't take much to wonder where her head was, and I wish at that moment, with some 10 minutes to ctach my connection and 5 concourses to traverse, I had some of the C...crack she had been smoking.
It took an eternity to just get off the plane and when I did, to quote Forrest Gump, "I was ruh-nning!!!"
With a fully insulated army jacket and likely sixty pounds in the flight bag slung over my shoulder, I sprinted the passageways of the airport like a crazed madman on the run from the cops.
Minutes later, drenched in sweat in the clothes I had been working since 4 a.m. I arrived at my gate where they were just about to disconnect the ramp. Two stewards looked at me, in shock and amusement simultaneously, and asked, "Is there anyone with you?"
Panting, I replied "if there are, they are way the hell back there..." and stumbled along the gangplank to my seat where I would remainto drip and hyperventilate.
Thank God for the single-serving water distribution I received about an hour later. The water was gone in sconds but the ice cubes were the only thing that rehydrated me to my proper state while stinging my mouth with their frigid pins and needles.
Hovering over the skies of the midwest, the prodigal son returning home to the underworld.
I am excited and apprehensive about my return visit to Joplin. I've returned six times now, not counting my initial arrival in 1991 after a failed existence in the ghettos of Miami: a 21-year-old skater with ambitions even less than my motivation.
Now, some 14 years later, and two years since my final escape from my 8-year sentence in Joplin, I am returning, again.
And I already anticipate the most common quote of the local drunks when expatriates visit: "everyone comes back..."
My reply..."yeah, but I leave on Monday for the beach...how 'bout you?"
Arrival...
I arrived at a decent hour in Kansas City, grabbed my rental car, and bolted to Westport to find a hotel room. Little did I know there was a Big East NCAA basketball tournament in town and all rooms were booked and overpriced, which didn't matter since they were all booked. After an hour of searching, I found a hotel with a vacancy miles from the club where Flogging Molly was playing, but they had a shuttle service to get me to the Beaumont Club.
Settled, showered, and a beer or two later, I was on my way to Westport to meet friends and enjoy some So-Cal Celtic rhythms.
Casey Clarkson met me there with his girlfriend, Jennifer, and Lil Dave's wife's sister...yeah, I forgot her name...sorry...that will be a continual occurrence.
Pro BMX badass Phil Wasson met us out there as well, and we spent more time ctaching up and downing Guiness than checking out the band. It was a good night. A celebration...and in the morning, I was on the road to Joplin.
I got to Mike Denny's house, partaking in the commom ritual greeting, when he sprung "we gotta go to Wal Mart." Bleary-eyed, I argued "are you outta your damn mind?!?!"
"No..we gotta get food, and beer, oh, and a grill..." Yeah, these things were needed to BBQ proper but in our state, an immediate jaunt to Joplin Wal-Mart was the last thing I wanted to do...
Wal Mart was surreal...Mike entering video-game mode as he navigated through the endless aisles...and I just felt way too paranoid and out of place...a feeling I always seemed to have in Joplin. We got our accesories and got the hell out.
The bbq and beer started early. Arrivals included Eric Carl, Steve-O, Mike Harrup, Hutch, and who-knows-else...
We got too drunk...we crashed, and we made our way to the bar in a cab later. First the new Keystone, a now too bright, too sterile envornment, meeting up with Chubba
Mike and Brad at Father Jones' complex
again,
after a bumpy and delayed flight from Norfolk to Charlotte, I am cruising above the heavens, miles above the thick clouds below that are somehwat reminiscent of hurricane cells you might see on the news.
It is truly a glorious sight as the 737 makes way somewhere across Tennessee or Kentucky or some mountains midwestern state en route to Missouri...at 36,000 feet.
Alas, I am finally in nirvana...
Jill and Madalen
yeah...forgot his name...dammit...
Father and daughter
Madalen 2005...stupid camera!!!!