Came across this today... I was still living in Upstate NY when I wrote this on my first out of state road trip back in August of 2007... Yes... I edited it... See my comments about talk radio...
So anyway… What goes through a road comics mind or anyone’s
mind during all those hours in the car???
My first stop on this trip was to home of my old Navy buddy
Gary, in Toledo, Ohio… It’s more than a coincidence that it was Gary and I who
made a cross-country trip from San Diego to Maine and back to San Diego in
1982… 31 states and 10,000 miles in 30 days…
Gas was cheaper back then that’s for sure… The camping is
easier now though… Now I’m in a hotel room with a king sized bed… Or sleeping
in my car... Then I was in a tent with a sleeping bag on the ground!!!…
The radio for one can certainly effect where your mind
wanders off to… I can’t stand talk radio any longer… If I wanted to listen to
people argue… I would have stayed married… So it’s usually music, a ballgame or
just plain quiet time…
Constantly hitting the seek button as stations faded in and
out… There must have been at least a half dozen stations or more of Prairie
Home Companion yesterday as I reached the edge of Minnesota… Quick change the
station!!!
Just kidding…
The Spanish guitar music I found on a classical station took
me back in time again to San Diego and trips to Tijuana… Boots clunking on
wooden sidewalks like a scene out of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly… I
don’t think I will elaborate on that any further… We’ll stop right there
on that thought…
The countryside is beautiful here… And it took some hearty
people to settle it… Needless to say most of my sightseeing today will most
likely be pioneer/western history associated… But as I thought about it
yesterday… I remembered some scenes from the movie Monte Irvin… Originally
starring Lee Marvin… The remake stars Tom Selleck… Both versions are excellent…
Anyway… Life on the frontier was changing… Fences were
starting to be strung… The Prairie was being tamed… Old cowboy Monte was being
asked to change along with it… His mind clouded by a bottle of whiskey… He
almost considered it… Coming to his senses he refuses and tells the man asking
him to change… “I won’t shit on my life!!!”
A cowboy he was and a cowboy he’d stay… Walking away, he
drunkenly takes a buckin’ bronco ride through town to break a horse no one else
could ride…
As the end of the movie nears… An old friend sitting on a
porch in town spots him riding into to town… As a boy plays with a lasso
nearby, already enamored with “playing cowboy”… The man on the porch says to
him… “See that guy riding in he’s a “real cowboy”, he’ll teach you to throw
that rope”…
To which Monte replies to the boy… “He’ll teach you to throw
the rope… He’s a real cowboy, too… He just doesn’t remember being one.” (I
might be paraphrasing that)
Asked where he had been, Monte replies… “Driving cattle from
Mexico to Canada and getting paid for it…”
Why this long dissertation??? Well, a couple of reasons… One
night in Chicago as I sat in the bar sipping a bottle of water before the show…
Talking to the guy running the show… He introduced me to the kid who would be
the MC that night… “This is Steve”, he said, “He’s a Road Comic.”
Smiling to myself yesterday while on the road, I thought…
Yes, I drive from New York to North Dakota to tell jokes… And I get paid for
it!!!
To my fellow road comics out there… Yes, the business is
changing, but let’s not forget who we are… Watch both versions of the movie…
OK, time to giddy up into the shower and get back on the
road…
Rollin’!!! Rollin’!!! Rollin’!!!
Keep those wheels rollin’,
Get ‘em up!!!
Move ‘em out!!!
Rawhide!!!
