(for past weeks, click here)
4 Weeks ending April 7, 1998 A.D.
(our special condolences go out to our keyboardist Tony Crow, who lost his grandmother this week)
Dear Diary,
I am the behindest of the behinds. I have not written in over a month. I have been lax, lackadaisical, languishing, limpid, and Laotian.
Actually I have been working on my taxes and getting sound files up on our merchandise page. I'm also writing a computer book and am about 3/4 done.
Starting this week I am going to be writing about whatever comes to mind- beware.
This week's subject: our RV, Mom.
Travel prior to April 1997 was a nightmare. We would pile ourselves and our instruments into a 15 passenger van and fall out, broken, at each week's end of journey. The only good seats in the van were the two front captain seats. Since we are all too big and proud to sit in each other's laps that made 4 of us relatively uncomfortable at all times. On a whole different pain level was the right side on the first bench known as The Point. It was virtually impossible to sleep in given the fact that you couldn't lean against the window to snooze. The two foot gap between the Point and the door was enough to fall thru and never be seen again. Many a sleepless night was spent there.
Each drive back I would feed myself a Valium and konk out. Always spent at the end of the show, I was never in any condition to drive. Poor Chris, Mark and Lucky would share driving duties, which on long drives back from Athens and Auburn were horrific. It is not unusual for us to get in Nashville between 7 and 10 AM Sunday as we always drive back from shows on Saturday nights.
Tony, who once fell asleep at a stockcar race, was sleepytime from the getgo, but poor Dibble, our sound man who at the time had no drivers license, slept on the floor behind the captain's chairs. One memorable night he said the floor had whupass written all over it, and that was very true.
It became clear that we were losing our fight with the rolling metal torture chamber. To avoid getting beaten down any further Dibble and I started looking for an RV in February 1997. By April we had well acquainted ourselves with the heretofore unknown RV market and found ourselves a deal. Nashville Easy Livin Country was the dealer, Coachmen was the model, and happy happy were the boys of Mel and the Party Hats with our new vehicle.
She is more than a vehicle, however. She is Mom. She ministers to us and takes care of us on our wayward way. The mother ship sleeps 6, has a kitchen, bathroom, plenty of headroom, a TV, VCR, and Sony Play station. And she's 26 feet long. We are loaded for bear. Life is oh so very different- to the extent that BM (Before Mom) seems an ugly dream. We already have 50,000 new miles on her in the year since then and maintaining it is like maintaining a house, but it is truly a recreational vehicle. We love it.
E-Mel
