A Wet Weather Creek

A creek runs through it.

            Along with our Crab pal, Cowpuncher, and my former band mate and football teammate Crowbar (he could drive), we took off for Knoxville way earlier than necessary. It was just past midday when the expedition got started, and along the way stopped at Rose Music. I saw the first Magic Chord organ that day, as well as the apple of my then eye, a Hammond Porta B organ. It was sweet. I thought of all the worlds I could conquer with a keyboard like that. I was glad we’d stopped. We messed with the keyboards and wore out our welcome before getting back on the road.

            Crowbar parked on a bridge between Gay Street and the Coliseum. There were still hours to spare, so we walked up to Gay street to see what was happening, which, in a word, was nothing. I don’t think I’ve been on Gay Street on a Saturday afternoon since that lovely April day, so there’s nothing to judge it by, but it was darn near deserted as we roamed the streets. In fact, the only people we saw on the street at all were former US Senator Albert Gore, Sr. and his wife walking alone on the other side of the street going away from us. That was the first time I had encountered a famous person in the wild (not the last, either). When we got up even to the elderly couple, Cowpuncher yelled, “Give em hell, Brock!” (Bill Brock had defeated Gore a few months earlier), as a good Crab might be expected to do.

            The celebrity hubbub wore quickly off and our little knot of assholes started back toward the Coliseum. This little knot of assholes did have definite anarchist tendencies, and I assure all that not a one of that crowd was above hurling objects for amusement, but our true aims were gentler than that. In truth, we’d all bought into the reality that love was the key to happiness. The Beatles told us that, and we loved The Beatles. The Christian religion (I believe that all The Crabs, at that time, were Christians) told us that, too. The political leaders of the country, then as now and forever more, said it, urged it on us, nearly insisted on it while at the same time waging a pissing contest war with the Soviets in Southeast Asia (using the native population of Viet Nam and America’s drafted poor as punching bags), and that great sore thumb of a contradiction riled the ire of the average Crab. Hell no we won’t go! But would we?