Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Small Town Kid Awkward Moments

Here's a story I always forget to tell.  About Shane, actually...

We both grew up in small town north Idaho.  The kind of small town where, if you're a good drummer in the high school band, the band teacher may or may not actually approach your parents and ask them if they'd be willing to allow you to drum with a local band. IN A BAR.

 At age 17.

This is what actually happened to Shane.  There was a band playing in town, who needed a drummer, and he was the best in town (at 17).  Or possibly the only drummer in town.  His parents went and talked to the owner of the bar, because they all went to school together back in the 50s, and they all agreed that it would be OK, even though he was underage, as long as he stayed on the bandstand and wasn't, of course, served any alcohol or molested by cougars (although in the early 1980s, I don't think those had a name yet; they were just older scary drunk women...)

ANYhoo, off he went, after his mom threatened the bar owner that she would go down and raise heck if anything happened to him, because he was an innocent.

Like this


So...being the innocent that he was, one night he came down off the bandstand after a set (I think that's what it's called) to sit at a table with some people (and no, I don't know *why* he was at a table, instead of outside waiting for the music to start again).

The people were lining up piles of white powder on the table in front of them and rolling up dollar bills.

As far as my farm kid sweetheart could tell, there was just a mess of white powder all over this table.

He had no idea what they were doing, so...he pulled up a chair, looked in distaste at the table covered in lines of white powder, grimaced, and said "Geez, these tables need cleaned", and proceeded to wipe all of these people's cocaine off the table onto the floor.  He thought someone had spilled the salt or something.

He wondered afterwards, why that whole table got really quiet when he was done.

"What?"

He said there was just a stunned silence, so he figured, "Wow.  This table's kinda boring," and he left them sitting there with their mouths hanging open and went back up to finish drumming.

Looking back now, he says he's probably lucky they didn't actually take him outside and beat the crap out of him...






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