The Haymaker Memoirs (Part II)
(con'd...)
May 20th; Oakley Farm (Haybarn Stage), Spotsylvania, VA
(1:30PM)
We have arrived safely in Spotsylvania just as the rain is turning into a fine mist and I am finally beginning to get into the spirit of what I had preconceived in my mind as being typically Virginia; the smell of lilacs blooming, the soft drawl, the intensive presence of security and drug-sniffing dogs, and red mud – lots and lots of red fucking mud.
Let me backtrack a little…
To merely say that it “rained” last night shortly after we had arrived in Virginia would be paying a great diservice to moisture as a whole. The sky literally opened up shortly after 10:00PM last night and what fell down to earth from within would have made the deep end at the Banda Ache public swimming pool seem like the Sahara Desert by comparison.
As I passed out on my blow-up mattress in Alexandria, I listened to a steady Niagara Falls of water crashing down on the concrete porch below from a plugged up eaves trough just on the opposite side of the home's wall from which I was trying to sleep. It made me have to pee constantly. I must have passed an entire Mississippi River * of urine by the time I managed to successfully fall asleep. Even then, I was still waking up unconsciously every so often to go some more. I’d be surprised if any of the other party-goers were able to sleep that night, what with all the driving rain, plunging eaves trough cascades, and the flushing of toilets every 15 minutes.
Oakley Farm; Campsite - (3:00PM)
The tents are pitched, the beer is chilled, and we're ready to party hearty.
The sun is now beginning to peek from behind the dissipating clouds and the day is now shaping up to be a grand one. The mud on the concert ground is molded with thousands of feet prints, as if a herd of Sasquatch has just earlier stampeded across the field; which in a way is exactly what happened.
After that last thought just crossed my mind, the incessant drumming in the campground around us seems a little more anxious and foreboding. If these festival-goers did decide to go all ‘Lord of the Flies’ and suddenly turn into a tribe of carnivorous marauding Yeti, I figure that in the state my body is now after last nights rest stop session of beer and bong hits, I’d probably represent one delectable morsel of marinated hippy steak. The best I could do to defend myself would be to go all limp and pretend to be a leaf of lettuce.
Inevitably, this will probably be my last journal entry for the day since from this point forward, and tribes of cannibalistic hippies permitting, I plan on putting back as many beers as I can and take in as much musical flavor as possible.
Adieu.
May 21st; Oakley Farm (Haybarn Stage) – (2:00PM)
In true Crazytigerrabbit fashion, I have managed to procure a nice little sunburn that makes me look like a boiled lobster on a bed of greens while sitting here in my green lawn chair. All the weekend’s prime directives have now been successfully accomplished in fine fashion.
Judging by the toxic lamb gyro farts that I’m already emitting this afternoon through the strata of my underwear that I’ve been wearing for the past 48-hours, I do believe it’s time for a little dose of my festival camping staple – Immodium.
The Lord has no mercy when it comes to festival porto-potties. By high noon, when that sun is beaming down harshly on those small plastic shithouses, the stench alone could make you sterile. Therefore, the ever-prepared camper, like myself, will come to rely on these little white miracle pills that literally suck the moisture out of my bowels like an industrial wet-vac. The only way to really handle the porto-potties; is to avoid the porto-potties altogether!
After only a few hours into the weekend, I begin to feel like Alice in Wonderland when my stomach goes a little wheezy and my head begins to race with psychedelic delusions. Before you know it, I’m rummaging around my tent frantically looking for my little pill underneath a business card with “Eat Me!” embossed across the front.
The Hackensack Boys; Haybarn Stage - (4:00PM)
I’m basking in the cool shade of the barn like a dehydrated walrus. Bubbles are floating across the stage in front of me like little crystal balls into another miniature universe. Sunlight reflects on the opaque surfaces of these weightless orbs giving the impression that they are floating portals into another realm, separate and undisturbed from that on which we are floating in now. Each bubble microcosm hangs suspended lazily in a faint cloud of dust being kicked up from the ground by the feet of the many dancing freaks below…
(4:10PM)
…WOW! I’m high.
Steve Kimock; Main Stage – (6:00PM)
Hippies have a very odd sense of “festival fashion”. Most of them look like a cross between Wavy Gravy and those creepy children from ‘The Village of the Damned’ with their gaping lifeless eyes.
I have observed this weekend that there is a distinct correlation between the earthy cuteness of some of these girls and degree of rank emanating from her armpits. Quite frankly, the prettier the girl, the more potent the body funk. The prettiest of the twirling mamas on the concert field you probably wouldn’t be able to get within 15 ft of her for the toxic cloud wafting out from under her patchy skirt. Some of these “flower girls” could stop a charging rhino! Mind you, in their defense, there is nothing “flowery” about spending days on end in a tent wearing the same clothes - not unless you were thinking of stinkweed, or the less common blossoms of Wildebeast Fart or something that is.
Robert Earl Keen; Haybarn Stage – (7:00PM)
Another odd festival fashion faux pas is that the native hippie men tend to wear their baggy pants or shorts so that the waistband is down at their knees. How on earth do they keep their pants from falling off altogether and tripping ass over teakettle? To me, every male under the age of eighteen looks like some penguin waddling across an Antarctic ice field. Christ, the by the looks of it, the only thing keeping their pants, heavily laden with a weekends worth of mud, body funk, and crusty vomit, is the gravity generated from the enormous balls that it must take to walk around all weekend looking like a complete and utter moron!
Soulive; Haybarn Stage – (12:00PM)
I love watching people dance. I am particularly interested in some guy who dance resembles a chimpanzee having a seizure. Obviously all hepped on goof balls, or whatever it is that makes you bounce and vibrate on the spot like an excited proton, this guy is dancing so fast and hard that he could probably pass his molecular structure through solid objects. It was as if the Flash were auditioning for Saturday Night Fever.
May 22nd; Oakley Farm; Spotsylvania, VA
(10:30AM)
We are packed up and ready to hit the road home. After a brief scare last night at having lost the rest of our dry rolling papers, we have secured ourselves and our equipment away and already getting the itch to feel the pavement pass underneath our asses.
It looks like my sunburn has spread across my face, marked by a very prominent line across my forehead where my bandana has been previously. With my dark brown beard underneath the two bands of hot pink and white flesh, my face now looks like a big scoop of Neopolitan ice cream mounded on top of a chunky piece of apple pie.
Many of the campers have already rolled out, leaving little black and green dung piles of garbage and recycling. The bright festive grounds of the past two days now looks like a waste land of garbage bags and discarded broken camping equipment strewn around like skeletons. The odd forgotten flag, or torn shade tent flutters in the breeze as the remaining campers pack up their shit, cook the last of their food, and say their goodbyes.
I can't help but notice one poor guy with a black-markered handlebar mustache, as well as other random doodlings on his face, still soundly passed out in his lawn chair just in front of his tent, which had been gaping open the whole time just welcoming anyone to help themselves to it's contents.
Party on, Inspector Clouseau!
After a quick pulse check (his not ours), we got under way...
May 22nd; some unmarked dot in Pennsylvania
(7:00PM)
We are over half way home after our weekend’s adventure – and I have just committed the sin of the century. This is going to prevent my getting into heaven for sure. Unfortunately, the site of this unworldly abomination was the cute roadside “Patty T’s Country Restaurant”. This was the setting of impending disaster, complete with quaint pink and green painted walls, lacey napkins, tatted doilies, ceramic ducks and puppy motifs, and colorful cardboard menu boards on the wall. The place was about as innocent as a Catholic Bible Study classroom.
However, after three days of Immodium cocktails before bed and my bowels don’t care how cute or endearing the surrounding décor is, when it’s ready to release the full force of its pent-up fecal fury, nothing is sacred. And at Patty T’s, the cheeseburger and onion ring combo was all the lubrication necessary to pull the plug on my excretory system. All that was left of the country diner by the time we pulled out was a smoking crater along the side of Route 15N where Patty T’s once stood.
* Or would that be “MississipPEE River”?
May 20th; Oakley Farm (Haybarn Stage), Spotsylvania, VA
(1:30PM)
We have arrived safely in Spotsylvania just as the rain is turning into a fine mist and I am finally beginning to get into the spirit of what I had preconceived in my mind as being typically Virginia; the smell of lilacs blooming, the soft drawl, the intensive presence of security and drug-sniffing dogs, and red mud – lots and lots of red fucking mud.
Let me backtrack a little…
To merely say that it “rained” last night shortly after we had arrived in Virginia would be paying a great diservice to moisture as a whole. The sky literally opened up shortly after 10:00PM last night and what fell down to earth from within would have made the deep end at the Banda Ache public swimming pool seem like the Sahara Desert by comparison.
As I passed out on my blow-up mattress in Alexandria, I listened to a steady Niagara Falls of water crashing down on the concrete porch below from a plugged up eaves trough just on the opposite side of the home's wall from which I was trying to sleep. It made me have to pee constantly. I must have passed an entire Mississippi River * of urine by the time I managed to successfully fall asleep. Even then, I was still waking up unconsciously every so often to go some more. I’d be surprised if any of the other party-goers were able to sleep that night, what with all the driving rain, plunging eaves trough cascades, and the flushing of toilets every 15 minutes.
Oakley Farm; Campsite - (3:00PM)
The tents are pitched, the beer is chilled, and we're ready to party hearty.
The sun is now beginning to peek from behind the dissipating clouds and the day is now shaping up to be a grand one. The mud on the concert ground is molded with thousands of feet prints, as if a herd of Sasquatch has just earlier stampeded across the field; which in a way is exactly what happened.
After that last thought just crossed my mind, the incessant drumming in the campground around us seems a little more anxious and foreboding. If these festival-goers did decide to go all ‘Lord of the Flies’ and suddenly turn into a tribe of carnivorous marauding Yeti, I figure that in the state my body is now after last nights rest stop session of beer and bong hits, I’d probably represent one delectable morsel of marinated hippy steak. The best I could do to defend myself would be to go all limp and pretend to be a leaf of lettuce.
Inevitably, this will probably be my last journal entry for the day since from this point forward, and tribes of cannibalistic hippies permitting, I plan on putting back as many beers as I can and take in as much musical flavor as possible.
Adieu.
May 21st; Oakley Farm (Haybarn Stage) – (2:00PM)
In true Crazytigerrabbit fashion, I have managed to procure a nice little sunburn that makes me look like a boiled lobster on a bed of greens while sitting here in my green lawn chair. All the weekend’s prime directives have now been successfully accomplished in fine fashion.
Judging by the toxic lamb gyro farts that I’m already emitting this afternoon through the strata of my underwear that I’ve been wearing for the past 48-hours, I do believe it’s time for a little dose of my festival camping staple – Immodium.
The Lord has no mercy when it comes to festival porto-potties. By high noon, when that sun is beaming down harshly on those small plastic shithouses, the stench alone could make you sterile. Therefore, the ever-prepared camper, like myself, will come to rely on these little white miracle pills that literally suck the moisture out of my bowels like an industrial wet-vac. The only way to really handle the porto-potties; is to avoid the porto-potties altogether!
After only a few hours into the weekend, I begin to feel like Alice in Wonderland when my stomach goes a little wheezy and my head begins to race with psychedelic delusions. Before you know it, I’m rummaging around my tent frantically looking for my little pill underneath a business card with “Eat Me!” embossed across the front.
The Hackensack Boys; Haybarn Stage - (4:00PM)
I’m basking in the cool shade of the barn like a dehydrated walrus. Bubbles are floating across the stage in front of me like little crystal balls into another miniature universe. Sunlight reflects on the opaque surfaces of these weightless orbs giving the impression that they are floating portals into another realm, separate and undisturbed from that on which we are floating in now. Each bubble microcosm hangs suspended lazily in a faint cloud of dust being kicked up from the ground by the feet of the many dancing freaks below…
(4:10PM)
…WOW! I’m high.
Steve Kimock; Main Stage – (6:00PM)
Hippies have a very odd sense of “festival fashion”. Most of them look like a cross between Wavy Gravy and those creepy children from ‘The Village of the Damned’ with their gaping lifeless eyes.
I have observed this weekend that there is a distinct correlation between the earthy cuteness of some of these girls and degree of rank emanating from her armpits. Quite frankly, the prettier the girl, the more potent the body funk. The prettiest of the twirling mamas on the concert field you probably wouldn’t be able to get within 15 ft of her for the toxic cloud wafting out from under her patchy skirt. Some of these “flower girls” could stop a charging rhino! Mind you, in their defense, there is nothing “flowery” about spending days on end in a tent wearing the same clothes - not unless you were thinking of stinkweed, or the less common blossoms of Wildebeast Fart or something that is.
Robert Earl Keen; Haybarn Stage – (7:00PM)
Another odd festival fashion faux pas is that the native hippie men tend to wear their baggy pants or shorts so that the waistband is down at their knees. How on earth do they keep their pants from falling off altogether and tripping ass over teakettle? To me, every male under the age of eighteen looks like some penguin waddling across an Antarctic ice field. Christ, the by the looks of it, the only thing keeping their pants, heavily laden with a weekends worth of mud, body funk, and crusty vomit, is the gravity generated from the enormous balls that it must take to walk around all weekend looking like a complete and utter moron!
Soulive; Haybarn Stage – (12:00PM)
I love watching people dance. I am particularly interested in some guy who dance resembles a chimpanzee having a seizure. Obviously all hepped on goof balls, or whatever it is that makes you bounce and vibrate on the spot like an excited proton, this guy is dancing so fast and hard that he could probably pass his molecular structure through solid objects. It was as if the Flash were auditioning for Saturday Night Fever.
May 22nd; Oakley Farm; Spotsylvania, VA
(10:30AM)
We are packed up and ready to hit the road home. After a brief scare last night at having lost the rest of our dry rolling papers, we have secured ourselves and our equipment away and already getting the itch to feel the pavement pass underneath our asses.
It looks like my sunburn has spread across my face, marked by a very prominent line across my forehead where my bandana has been previously. With my dark brown beard underneath the two bands of hot pink and white flesh, my face now looks like a big scoop of Neopolitan ice cream mounded on top of a chunky piece of apple pie.
Many of the campers have already rolled out, leaving little black and green dung piles of garbage and recycling. The bright festive grounds of the past two days now looks like a waste land of garbage bags and discarded broken camping equipment strewn around like skeletons. The odd forgotten flag, or torn shade tent flutters in the breeze as the remaining campers pack up their shit, cook the last of their food, and say their goodbyes.
I can't help but notice one poor guy with a black-markered handlebar mustache, as well as other random doodlings on his face, still soundly passed out in his lawn chair just in front of his tent, which had been gaping open the whole time just welcoming anyone to help themselves to it's contents.
Party on, Inspector Clouseau!
After a quick pulse check (his not ours), we got under way...
May 22nd; some unmarked dot in Pennsylvania
(7:00PM)
We are over half way home after our weekend’s adventure – and I have just committed the sin of the century. This is going to prevent my getting into heaven for sure. Unfortunately, the site of this unworldly abomination was the cute roadside “Patty T’s Country Restaurant”. This was the setting of impending disaster, complete with quaint pink and green painted walls, lacey napkins, tatted doilies, ceramic ducks and puppy motifs, and colorful cardboard menu boards on the wall. The place was about as innocent as a Catholic Bible Study classroom.
However, after three days of Immodium cocktails before bed and my bowels don’t care how cute or endearing the surrounding décor is, when it’s ready to release the full force of its pent-up fecal fury, nothing is sacred. And at Patty T’s, the cheeseburger and onion ring combo was all the lubrication necessary to pull the plug on my excretory system. All that was left of the country diner by the time we pulled out was a smoking crater along the side of Route 15N where Patty T’s once stood.
* Or would that be “MississipPEE River”?
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