It’s snowing. Eeesh! You know I was raised in the South, right? In the South when it snows even a little everything closes and your mother won’t let you go anywhere close to a car no matter what. So, if you’re female and raised in the South, you don’t learn to drive in snow because you never get to do it as long as you live with your mother. It you’re a musician, you live with your mother for a very long time. You see my predicament. Oddly enough, it’s fine for men and boys to drive in southern snow. I’m not sure they know how to do it either, but they act like they do and at least they get a little bit of practice at it.
So, it’s snowing just a little and Jackie and I have a show tonight in Burlington, IA at Starr’s Cave Nature Center … And I have to go because I booked a hotel through one of those services where you get to pay less money, but you get charged when you make the reservation not when you actually show up. So, I have to go whether the show gets cancelled due to snow or not … which it would if this were the South. But, it won’t because this is Iowa. We drive in the snow here even when there’s more than a little. Even I drive in the snow in Iowa … you pretty much have to … but, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m that person driving fifteen miles an hour, the one you have to pass, the one who makes the road dangerous for everyone else. When you’re behind me, you think you want me to drive faster, but, trust me, you don’t want that. You’d be sorry.
Maybe Jackie will drive to the show tonight. She was exempt from the no snow driving rule because she grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. It snows there. The roads are tiny and winding and aren’t ever safe even in good weather. People who grow up driving on roads that are never safe, if they make it to adulthood, are pretty much fearless. Jackie is not afraid to drive in a little bit of snow or even in a lot of it. Jackie is hardly afraid of anything.
Next Saturday Jackie and I, along with Mary Pat Reasoner on saxophone and Laurie Haag on drums, will be in Minburn, IA. I hope it doesn’t snow. Jackie won’t mind if it does.
Thanks for listening.