Low Light
Drinking with cops in New Orleans requires discipline. I can’t go shot for shot, and I’ve got the body weight. Better to concentrate on the games I can win. Flirting with the pretty bartenders. Naming that tune. Pickled eggs.
We’re rounding out the Tomato Festival at the French Market. It doesn’t get any more Midwest than that, absent the Zydeco. We’re rounding out sunny skies and I have delicate skin so a dark side street tavern is my answer to SPF5o. A bar dog sleeping at my feet. Ronnie Earl on the Juke.
I had planned a week of fishing in Montana, late spring trout and rapidly moving water. Casting long and a good brace of sky. Coming home instead to these rough streets and pulling in a line of favors to ride with the city’s knights. Riding the night shift so you can bet I’ve been buckled up and vested, using my combat lenses to maintain a sensible perspective. Low profile in that low light.
Received, after a bit of forwarding, my official invitation to our 35th Class reunion. Your committee has been busy lining up entertainment, food and shelter. It would be a shame to let them down with anything less than record attendance this August. Rich McDowell has even organized a golf outing for the more sporting among you. Someone among the inner circle has arranged a tour of the High School for Saturday afternoon. (I spent most of my Junior and Senior year offering explanations in the superintendent’s office so I would be interested to see where the rest of you attended classes.)
The questionnaire includes the query: What is your best/worst memory? After thirty-five years of pills and alcohol that shows an amazing predilection for optimism. And yet already there is Randy Bishop’s jokes, Audrey Bishop’s smile. Barry Zebuhr’s amazing talent. Easier than I thought to mine for happiness there.
Here I’m sitting on the sidelines of a heavily armed fraternity. Abita beer. Checking equipment and killing time toward another tour. Thinking about trout leaping toward deep Montana skies and pretty Iowa girls in that dim past. Low light.
Dave/La.
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