081614 Jimmie Vaughan, Calabogie, ON

Of course August 16th is the anniversary of the death of the King, a date known internationally as Elvis Day.

I remember the day he died; I was nine years old.  I was home alone sitting in an easy chair with my prized possession, my small am/fm stereo/cassette deck, on my lap.  I was listening to Moncton’s AM top-40 station CKCW when the tragic news came on, followed by an endless stream of Elvis Presley songs.  When my mom and my brother came home I looked up cheerily; my mom was a big Elvis fan and I knew she’d be interested in this! 

“Hey mom!,” I said excitedly as she ran through the door, “Elvis Presley died!”

I was too late; she had of course heard the news on the car radio (though for years I thought I had been the first one to tell her).  She bee-lined it to her bedroom, her hands held over her sobbing face.  As I recall she stayed in there until morning, crying her eyes out.  My brother and I made ourselves peanut butter sandwiches for dinner that night.

I always think of The King on this day.  I even visited Graceland on his death date one year, along with about 25,000 other people.  Being the middle of August I’ve also seen plenty of concerts on the 16th, including the day I thought I was going to join The King up there in the clouds: August 16th, 2014.

I woke up early, much earlier than I thought.  I and three friends were at the Calabogie Blues & Ribs Festival to celebrate my buddy Brucey’s 50th birthday, we were all staying in tents and we had done it up right the night before.  

David Wilcox had put on an excellent show and we’d had a really great time.  I don’t know what time it was when we finally hit the tents for the night and I sure didn’t know what time it was when I woke up and started making coffee in the morning, but I assumed it was about 9am.  The other guys heard me clunking around and started getting up too.  It was drizzling a little so the four of us crowded into one tent and welcomed the day with a round of tequila shots in honer of the birthday boy, followed by tons of coffees and half-remembered tales from the previous night.  That shot of tequila was the only alcohol I would have all morning, though I can’t say the same for the other guys.

After several hours of this I suggested lunch and that’s when we discovered that it was in fact only eight o’clock in the morning; we must have woken up around 5:30 or something!  We suddenly had a long day coming so we cowered together in the tent killing time until the rain let up around 1pm.  Underslept and undernourished, I embarked on a hunter/gatherer mission and walked myself down to the food trucks by the concert filed where I ordered onion rings, chicken strips, pulled pork sandwiches and so much to take back to my crew.

Shortly after I placed my order I started feeling woozy.  I saw a picnic table nearby and walked over.  I wondered if I should really sit down – the bench was soaked with rain – but it occurred to me that if I didn’t sit down I might just fall down so I wiped the seat with my shirt sleeve and plunked myself down. 

I was sitting there feeling pretty weird when I noticed that right next to my food truck was an ambulance with two attendants sitting up front.  I thought what the heck, those guys are here to help out people who might need it, I might as well ride this weirdness out in the ambulance if they’ll let me.  As I walked towards the ambulance I was feeling even dizzier.  I kept telling myself to just make it to the ambulance and you won’t make a scene.

And I did make it to the ambulance.  When I got there I hung my arms inside the passenger window and told the paramedic sitting there, “I need some help.”  

He looked up and me with a smile and half-chuckled.  “Really?” he said, clearly thinking I was pulling his leg.

“Yeah, I really need to sit down,” I said.  “I think I’m going to pass out.”  They both quickly saw that I was serious and sprang into action.

(For the record I totally get the guy not taking me seriously at first.  This was a small country festival with maybe 250 friendly folks having a fun weekend, and I’m sure the ambulance attendants got plenty of country bumpkin jokesters over the course of the weekend.  However, when they saw that they were truly needed they dove in fast and were nothing but professional and efficient at every turn.)

They threw me in the back of the ambulance and got me on a stretcher, taking off my shirt and sticking sensors onto my chest.  The put their heads together and started talking calmly but urgently to each other, then they gave me some baby aspirin to chew and closed the door of the ambulance.  By this time my three friends had left camp to search for me and I saw them arrive at the concert field just as the ambulance door was closing.  I didn’t know this at the time, but from the glimpse they caught of me laid out on the stretcher they thought I was getting shocked, like when dudes grease up those plungers and yell “Clear!” before trying to bring a guy back to life.  (With no cellphone coverage in the area two of my three friends would end up spending the day fearing that I had joined Elvis up there in rock and roll heaven, and they were having some difficulty deciding who would be the one to break the news to m’lady.)

Back in the ambulance, once those doors closed we started what would be a forty-minute trip careening through Ontario backroads and secondary highways with the siren wailing.  I laid in the back not knowing what was happening, staring at the ceiling with a very real knowledge that I could actually die before we got to the hospital.  I’ve had near-death experiences before but never a situation where I had time to really ponder it.  I was lying there with no pain – just feeling odd – and I realized that if I had a massive heart attack right there and then there wasn’t a whole lot that these two paramedics could do about it, and it was seemed like a long drive to the hospital.

I truly thought that this could be it.  I didn’t know it at the time but the paramedics thought the same thing.  When they first pulled me into the ambulance my heartbeat had been just twenty-nine beats per minute.  They thought I was about to have a heart attack, though they didn’t tell me that (of course and thank goodness).

Just like my late father, I tend to spend much more time thinking about dying than I should, and I often picture myself lying on my deathbed and wonder what will go through my mind in that moment.  And what went through my mind in that ambulance as I lay there thinking that I might actually be on my deathbed?

Turns out I just kept think about how great of a time I’d had at the David Wilcox show the night before.  It was literally all I could think about, how awesome it had been to have seen a great concert and had such fun with good friends.  And I’ll tell you honestly, these thoughts put me very much at ease as the siren screamed us through turn after turn.

Enjoy every sandwich.

After a full day in the hospital it was deemed that I’d experienced a vagal nerve response (which is what happens when someone faints at the sight of blood, for example), likely from the three-punch combo of no food, no water, and little sleep over the course of the weekend.  It turns out that the worst thing that could have happened to me would be to have momentarily passed out, in which case my brain would automatically ‘reset’ back to normal.  It occurred to me that this is exactly what had happened years before when I passed out in the bathroom at a concert in Montreal, crumpling to the floor only to immediately get back up feeling completely fine, but that’s another story.

One of my camp-mates had found his way to the hospital and kept me company throughout the whole ordeal.  When the results came in and the doctor discharged me I asked if I should I go straight home or (fingers crossed) did he think it was okay for me to go back to the festival for the rest of the weekend?

He assured me that so long as I took care of myself and kept my friends nearby in case of trouble then I was good to return to the festival.  My buddy and I made it back onsite by 8:30pm, and man were the other two guys glad to see us!  Jimmie Vaughan was playing that night but to be honest I don’t remember much about the show besides being very, very glad to be there.

I love ya Elvis, but I’m not ready to see you in the great hereafter quite yet.

After Jimmie’s set I spent the night dragging my guitar from campfire to campfire, playing my heart out with the hospital bracelet still dangling from my wrist.  I sang with a little extra vim and vigour that night and stayed up pretty late too, but I made sure to eat plenty (of chips) and drink lots (of beer).

Doctor’s orders.

(There was still a bit of festival left for the following day but we had little of it.  As I recall there were a small handful of local acts playing quiet, subdued sets up until mid-afternoon or so and then that was it for the weekend.  If anything it was background music for our little crew as we packed up and got out of there on the early.  No need to make a separate entry for that.)