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On June 29th, 2003 I was in Vernon, New York for an all-day triple-bill starring moe., Willie Nelson, and The Dead at the Vernon Downs racetrack. It was a road trip comprised of three old friends: myself, Jojo, and Evil. We met when we shared a dorm in university (as if the nicknames weren’t a dead giveaway) and though we had gotten up to plenty of no good together over the years I believe this might have marked the last time the three of us did something with, well, just the three of us.
Evil (who was doing and continues to do much better financially than…pretty much anyone I knew) had booked us into a Bed & Breakfast called The Governor’s Mansion. We might even have stayed there two nights, either that or we got there nice and early, because I know we had plenty of time to sit down with the owners of the B&B and get on good terms with them.
(Such good terms that they eventually shared their other occupation with us. Both husband and wife were paranormal investigators who were paid good money to suss out the ghosts and spirits that haunted old battlefields, which New York state has in spades. In fact it was the state government that paid them to tromp the fields looking for ectoplasm and such.
After some time and a few beers the husband lowered his voiced and shifted his eyes from one of us to the other. “You guys are cool, right?”
“Oh yeah,” we all chirped in, cucumber-like. “We’re cool!”
“Well,” he said, leaning in. “This here house is haunted. We’ve seen the ghost of a little girl here twice. Matter of fact, the bedroom of your suite is where she appears.”
Cool.)
After a few beers the guy gave us a ride in his pickup truck to within walking distance of the venue and if I’m not mistaken we made arrangements for him to pick us up afterwards as well. We got into the venue in time for moe.’s short set – which was actually pretty good – and soon the great Willie Nelson took the stage.
Amazingly enough the seventy-year-old man played a full show – like what, maybe two and-a-half hours? – standing in the blistering sun, and he just killed it. I truly think Willie Nelson is the unsung Keith Richards of country music. Nothing can stop the guy. Song after song, little two-minute vignettes of greatness spilled from a well-worn guitar behind a pure voice of truth.
Willie even had the stamina to join The Dead for a couple of songs during their first set, and you know two Grateful Dead songs generally last about as long as thirty Willie Nelson songs, so that’s saying something.
The Dead for this tour consisted of the living members of The Grateful Dead (Lesh/Weir/Kreutzmann/Hart, in that order) plus Jimmy Herring killing it on guitar, Jeff Chimenti and Rob Barraco on keys and get this: Joan Osborne on backup vocals.
I might be wrong but I think this was the only incarnation of the band other than Donna to include a backup vocalist. Crazy. That they think they need a backup vocalist, I mean.
Anyways, the show was tons of fun – as one would expect – and it was full of songs and moments too epic to describe.
Whether we met our host after the show or not eludes me, but I do recall that we got a ride back to the B&B with a local and it wasn’t a taxi. It could be that we bummed a ride off of some friendly person – who knows – but I’ll never forget that we stopped to fill the tank on the way and the guy at the next pump was smoking a cigarette while he pumped his gas. I said something to the guy about it and he replied that it was all a myth; a cigarette would never ignite gas fumes in such a situation and he did it all the time.
That may be so, but I would have preferred that he conduct his experiment in a closed laboratory.
Fortunately we made it back to the Mansion in one piece and retired to our quarters. We were in a suite that comprised of two rooms: a sitting room that held the television set and a pull-out couch, and a separate bedroom which held a beautiful, antique four-poster bed replete with drawable curtains, and of course the haunted spirit of a young dead girl.
We stayed up having a few beers and watching old episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus as a lightning storm built up outside (honestly). Eventually I noticed that it was getting late and nobody was making any moves to turn in.
“Are you guys afraid to go to bed?” I asked.
“Oh no, no, no, no, no…yes,” they replied, Monty Python-style. I had just assumed that Evil was going to sleep in the bed – he was, after all, footing the bill for the place – and Jojo and I would be sharing the pullout. To be honest I wasn’t scared at all so I offered to take the bedroom and turned in for the night.
(I figured out when I was a little kid that if a ghost could travel through walls and stuff then they couldn’t grab you – their arms would go right through you – so I wasn’t afraid of them.)
I drew the curtains that surrounded the bed (the better to shut out the intensifying lightning and thunder) and hit the ensuite bathroom. A few minutes later I emerged, turned off the light and crawled into bed.
I lay there listening to the thunder and stretching out after a long day. I opened my eyes and was alarmed to see something odd at the foot of the bed.
It was dark and I can’t see a thing without my glasses, but as I started to sit up a lighting bolt lit up the curtains and there was unquestionably a figure standing in the corner of my enclosed bed. I squinted hard as an arm reached out towards me.
I don’t think I screamed. I actually don’t remember when I realized that it was actually Jojo playing a trick on me, but it was certainly after the point where I should have been screaming. Of course I got up and had another drink and listened as Jojo explained that the plot was hatched so quickly (when they heard me go into the bathroom) that he hadn’t actually had the time to think it through, and when I crawled in bed and didn’t see him immediately he had no idea what to do.
Evil just laughed and laughed, but in the end I was still the only one willing to sleep in the haunted bedroom.
Gosh, that was such a good time.
(Less of a good time was me driving 150km/h the next day so I could be back to Ottawa in time to start my teaching day at 4pm, only to have all of my students but one cancel on me, and his lesson wasn’t until 6:30. Sometimes you gotta take your lumps.)
Todd Man Out 