The weatherman promised snow beginning in the early morning hours, so I made the decision to leave the night before. I’d bought the concert ticket months earlier and was determined that weather was not about to keep me home. The band I was going to see, I had seen in concert before, back when I had wild hair and wild ways.
I have the t-shirt to prove it.
It was getting dark when I checked into a hotel close to my concert destination. There was a large tour bus in the loading zone and the lobby was filling up. I waited for the elevator along with someone my mother’s age, dressed in her very best.
“What a lovely necklace,” I told the silver haired lady, who caressed the strands of beads with her blue veined hand, like she had done that very thing countless times before.
“These were my mother’s,” she told me. “Quite out of fashion, I’m sure.”
“Oh, no.” I insisted, telling her how her silver hair and the blue beads caught the light.
“You look beautiful,” I told her, and she smiled, the look in her eyes making her appear younger than her years.
“I needed to hear that,” the stranger said.
The next morning, I woke to snow on the ground but nothing coming from the gray sky. I had all day until the concert that night, so I went without makeup and avoided my curling iron. I would have plenty of time to shower and change and do all that stuff it takes for me to look my best.
Right now this look would have to do.
I was on my way to the hotel restaurant, and there in the lobby was a man sitting on a couch, waiting. His heavy mustache looked vaguely familiar and I couldn’t help glancing repeatedly in his direction. Just then, another man showed up carrying a beat-up banjo case.
Wait a minute, I know these guys.
For the complete column, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard.
