7 Days
We’re reduced to this: counting the final week until the collecting of names becomes a collection of former classmates in a small shed in Manchester. This could sound almost dreary but I’m a New Orleans boy and I can tell you we’ve blown the doors off shacks smaller than that on a weeknight with just a couple of rounds of Sazeracs and a half-assed trumpet player. (The last part isn’t true: there are no half-assed trumpet players in New Orleans.)
Laurie has worked her ass off gathering a weekend crowd from all over North America and Becky promises great food, great music and a keg of beer. Rich McDowell is teeing people off on Saturday afternoon from a grassy knoll surrounded by ripe Iowa corn. I’ll be filling my sport coat pockets with hand-rolled Cigar Factory cigars and topping off the flask in my back pocket with 30 year old Scotch. Friends, it’s on!
Laurie is urging everyone to gather Friday night at Beaver’s Lounge after 8 PM for drinks, to gather at the Golf Club on Saturday afternoon for drinks, to gather at the Fairgrounds Pavilion on Saturday night for drinks. Am I the only one who sees the irony in her constant lectures to me about my drinking? Becky urges us all to drive safely and wear our name badges.
Drive safely into town you foreign travelers; drive long and straight on the weekend fairways. I’m driving toward the Gulf this week but plan to program my GPS by Thursday night to drive my wayward ass back north and drive Mr. O’Leary’s pretty wife to aggravated distraction.
Dave/IL
Gaze
