I popped round to Sonic, sort of the long way home, picking up a chili cheese dog. Love that stuff, from time to time. Unidentified meat wrapped in casing of unidentified origins, smothered in a sauce that’s guaranteed to harden arteries at twenty paces, topped off with some kind of yellow cheese substitute that’s probably made from nothing but chemicals. Nope, nothing natural in all of those ingredients.
Detouring around behind Steamboat, heading for Sonic, I was watching a band unload for a South By South West showcase, or so I’m guessing. You know what it looked like? The drummer, absolutely, has it the worst. Them guitar players, they can sling a thin-bodies guitar in a soft case over their guitar-playing shoulders pretty easy. But the drummer? His full kit has to be unloaded and set up.
“Ten years on the road, man.” I was chatting with a future tenant about that, musician type. Weekends are road trips, doing all the hotspots. San Angelo. That blues club in Alpine. El Paso, San Antonio, Galveston, Executive Surf Club in Corpus Christi. Sounds really familiar.
Really familiar. The first year I was traveling a good deal, I would spend a whole evening or maybe more, getting everything together. Crystals, sea salt, tablecloth, paper, flyers, business cards, selecting the correct tarot deck to travel with, checking my charts for where the moon and the planets would be, all sorts of preparations.
Tape recorder, blank tapes, batteries. Printer and printer cable. Extension cords. Banners.
I hauled two suitcases up on the bed. One is my standard “show” bag. Has everything in it. The second is a slightly larger, still “carryon” size case. Empty the bare essentials out of the show bag throw in two clean shirts (heavy starch), clean pair of jeans, make sure I had enough blank paper for printing up charts, and I was done.
Elapsed time: less than fifteen minutes.
I own a huge collection of tarot cards. But for traveling, I usually carry one small deck in my computer bag, and for working, I carry a larger “show” deck with my work gear. Simple enough.
Looking at that drummer unloading his kit reminded me why I opted for the tools that I use. Simplicity. Got to keep it simple.
Midland-Odessa, Permian Basin, this weekend. It also marks the tenth year I’ve been hitting that area, for this work.
What’s so strange, is that I still hear another reader’s voice in my head, a fellow out of the Dallas area, telling me how folks just lined for readings in Midland. Busy as could be, the whole time. Never has been my experience there, but that could be me.
