solstice shows

"Mama, mama many worlds I've come since I first left home."
~Robert Hunter

May 1993

It's different the way they treat you at 6 o'clock on Saturday morning dressed just as yourself on the same stretch of sidewalk you cover five days a week looking just like them. There's no good reason to be hanging out across from the State House now, checking the morning paper in the box. I'm alone on the sidewalk and it's already full sunlight but not bright enough to burn the cold. Jeans busted out at the knees, flowy skirt over jeans, t-shirt under Guatemalan sweater - purples,blues, pinks. I'm not thinking about the morning paper, looking past the State Capitol dome, Ohio flag hanging limp, to the building across the street, where I need to be in a few hours, showered and changed and dressed as my other self. The reporter this cop would breeze by without a nod. Definitely not more than a "good morning." This way, this me, I'm out of place. He sees uncertainty, me looking like I'm not sure I should be here, and I'm not. There is no sign of anyone else coming for tickets.

I should not be here. Should have, would have, mail order tickets, if I
hadn't missed the first day of mail order. If my hostage, the guy who's
story I'd been following last month, whose mother I'd been talking to
for days, hadn't been released on day six of the longest prison riot in
history, I'd be right where I should be now: home beneath the covers
hours away from waking. That's not how it went down.

It went down like this. Friday morning, April 16, I stop by my friend Craig's house early to pick up his mail order for Deer Creek Solstice shows. We go, line by line, over the 3x5 index cards, make sure everything is just so. If it's not exactly right there Grateful Dead Productions won't process. If it's not postmarked on the day mail order opens, forget it.

The 3x5 card says:
Grateful Dead Ticket Sales – Deer Creek Music Center
P.O. Box C-S 8190
San Rafael, CA 94912

Craig pulls smoke through a purple Graffix so the cloud lifts past a Europe 72 sticker and fills in the lighting bolt of a Steal Your Face, then passes the "Bad Cop, No Donut" sticker wrapped just below the mouth. Bobby sings from the speakers "… alone in the rush of the drivers that won't pick me up…"

Craig's belly sucks in under his ribs.

" …the highway, the clouds, the moon and the stars …"

Smoke pushes into the room and Craig's belly pushes back out into his shirt.

"… Ah, mother, American night. I'm lost from the light …"

I fit the card into a #10 envelope, any other size will be returned unopened, with a money order and another #10 addressed to me, with 55 cents in postage to cover the cost of mailing six tickets.

"So pavilion for Solstice and lawn for the second two nights, right?" Taking the bong and lighter both into one hand, envelope in the other.

"Yeah. Ohhhh. Solstice is going to be so smoking." He takes the envelope from me and seals it while I fill and clear the tube.

And Bobby's still at it on the stereo "whats to be found racing around? You carry your burden wherever you go. All full of the blues, trying to lose. You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know …"

"OK Bro." I'm standing, setting the Graffix on this mess of a painted table that has that same lyric across it in blue marker: You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know.

"I'm going taking this to the post office. But, one more first."

Stuff the whole number 10 set up into my briefcase and I'm down the hall out into the sunlight of my day off. The thing is this prison riot. Half the staff in on it and no one really has a day off. I stop in to the paper to quick check on something before the post office. Too stoned to be there, I'm on the fourth floor where no one works. Where I can get in and out without a conversation. Why didn't I run errands first, let the buzz fade and then come here?

Doesn't matter now. Before I escape, Tony Demons is walking free from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, skull cap on his head, cops flanking him as he passes through the chain link to the media area. Suddenly my day off is up in smoke. The number 10 never leaves my bag.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Good morning," the cop says, leaning almost to my face, "What's going on?" Not exactly accusing, but in this tone that has me feeling like, actually, I'm about to throw a rock through the one-story glass front of Players Theater.

I'm not sure whether to be pissed of at his judgment, his narrow assumptions, based on the cloths that look like I've slept on the sidewalk, or proud that he thinks I could be committing a crime. I probably walk past this guy six times a week.

"Do you know if Players is selling tickets this morning?" I have one hand on the newspaper box so my upper body is almost entirely over it. "I went across the street and called, I work at the paper, so I went over there and called, but I couldn't find out if they are selling Dead tickets here today."

I make a point of telling this guy, whose opinion means nothing, that I work at the newspaper, that I'm a reporter, to justify that it's OK to be me. That I can look like this, and he can be completely wrong. Really, it's just, I like the idea of being dangerous, of looking the hippie-rebel better than I like actually rebelling. A compulsive rule-follower masquerading.

"Yeah, I don't know," he says, easing back.

Why does he believe me so easily? I'm fidgeting and nervous and arrogant in a way that must be yelling "LIE! LIE! LIE!"

But he lets it go and I circle the newspaper box again debating, go somewhere else or chance it on staying here where I will be first in line, if there is a line, if there are tickets being sold. My head slowly swings from a little drunk to the edge of hungover. I want a cigarette. Should have bought smokes on the way down here. I'll go get a pack and find an open TicketBastard. For sure there would be someone else here if it were opening.

I turn to go, there is.

Three people, two men and a woman, all long hairs, round the corner and closing in from down the block. The blonds are obviously a couple and the other guy, brown hair down past his shoulders, green and black plaid flannel jacket, khaki shorts, Birkenstocks, is a half-step ahead of the others. His arms hang forward from his shoulders, swinging in a funny uncertainty, like his body can't decide between lumbering and swaggering. I'm watching like the cop, my own judgments coming quick
and then easily dismissed.

The other guy, the brown-haired guy looks good. The closer they get the better he looks. So by the time he's right up to me, I've totally forgotten his funny, lumbering walk. There's a short exchange about whether we should stay or go to another TicketBastard.

Then me: "It's such bullshit. This cop was just hassling me a minute ago and there's no way he would have done that if I was dressed for work. Total bullshit that he's watching me because of my cloths… I hate cops."

The brown-haired guy is agreeing, rocking back on his heels. "I fucking hate cops." He palms a whole cantaloupe in his hand and reaches out with other. "Hi. I'm Scott. You want a slice of cantaloupe?"

I hate cantaloupe. "Yeah. I'd love one."

To be continued … and continued … and continued ... and continued