Traveling Times Thru the Modern Mind

We are coming down to the end of the line. Two more shows to go and then we head home for Christmas. Last night we played in the town of Chillicothe, Ohio (chilla-coth-ee for those of you playing at home). It is the original capital of Ohio. They somehow lost their status as state capital but regained it a few years later. Nobody seemed to know why Chillicothe lost their capital status or how they got it back and I think they were wondering why I even cared. I didn't mention Columbus in fear of insighting a very calm and polite riot. I played a club called Cardo's and the building was formerly the First National Bank Federal Reserve. Inside of the club are a series of safes. Each safelock door easily weighed 10,000 pounds and you could see the functional locking mechanisms still ready and willing to secure. It felt like being inside of a Rolodex watch. When they eventually closed this Reserve they removed more than 100 million dollars in cash from the basement vault. I'm sure this Union town never even knew they were sitting on top of a gold mine.

My voice felt really strong after having a day off. I was trying to persuade the crowd to interact with me and ask some questions but that was outside of their federally reserved nature. They sat and listened intently and clapped at the appropriate moments. The biggest rise came when I screamed the climax of the song "Creep". They came out of their shells with some hooting and hollering. One cool kid in the front row knew every lyric to every song and sang along with me. I got a little freaked out when I glanced over and thought I saw him singing one of my new songs that I knew he had never heard before. I kept looking over at him to see if he really knew the lyric. There he was singing along. I couldn't figure it out. Then finally I saw that he was chewing a wad of gum so big he was just jawing at it. For a moment I thought he was a clairvoyant.

All of the drives are fairly short between gigs. This string of shows is really easy breezy and we have been taking our time and stopping at a random restaurant (Glass City BBQ in Lancaster, Ohio) or a dusty resale shop along the slow moving state highways. Feels like we are driving thru middle America in 1957. Along the way we witness tree roots strangling the rusty skeletal frames of Model T's and 57 Chevy's; Rotting wooden porches clinging on to their chip painted farmhouses; Unfarmed fertile soil packing for the hard winter ahead. An impending winter as hard as the times that deserted these ghost towns. There is nothing much left here anymore. But, there has been a bit of a resurgence of sorts. The instigator is the least likely source. GPS... Yes, you heard me correctly, GPS. Global Positioning System. Thanks to this new technology many unknown routes and highways are being utilized by travelers looking for a more direct route or shaving a few precious moments off their total travel time. Dan and I saved 20 minutes by using alternate routes and getting off the predictably bland Interstate Roadways.

There is a deserted gas station along one of these old routes with a sign that reads: Regular Leaded $1.019. A Pall Mall Cigarette sign dangles awkwardly from rusty link chains in the window of the single bay auto repair shop. They never sold any bottles of water here, but I'm sure many travelers have filled up gallon tanks of tap water to replenish their thirsty radiators. On a side note, it's interesting to me that in the modern age we complain because gasoline is $3.05 a gallon but we readily and without thought pay $1.25 for 16 ounces of "spring" water. Based on my calculations this means we are in effect willing to pay $10.00 for a gallon of bottled water.

So we slice thru these blink and you'll miss em towns and are making our way towards Cambridge, Ohio. Neither Dan nor I have ever been there. Cambridge sounds very academic but I know that is guilt thru association. Nonetheless, I will rock both horses in this town.

Dan was particularly quiet while we were adventuring down a dirt road that was listed as "Unknown; Highway Information Unavailable" on the GPS. He cleared his throat and said, "It's fun going down roads that you know you'll never go down again. I said "Yea, that's a lot like life...a road you only go down once".

Marty Casey