I’m thawing out!

I hate winter. Let me just lay it all out for ya. I hate winter. I don’t understand why anyone would live in an area with cold and snow. And no fair pointing out that I’ve been living in the cold and snow for 40 years! There are reasons for that; mostly I have to blame my kin folk for settling me here. I’m pretty deeply entrenched at this stage in my life, and looking for a way out; it may take me a little bit yet, but dad-gum it I’ll be out of the cold before I’m 60. I’ve promised myself that.

I can smell the bluegrass in the air

Or maybe it’s that raccoon that someone ran over outside my apartment building. I’m not sure. I’ve been smelling such smells for dozens of year as I’ve gone to bluegrass festivals out in the country, so maybe they just go hand-in-hand for me now.

The cold, the snow, the ice…these have been my nemesis (wait…what’s the plural of nemesis?!) for many years now. You know, it didn’t used to be this bad, but the older I get, the more the disdain for the snow and cold comes out. When I was younger and not quite as affected by the cold and snow, I made the mistake of getting settled and deeply rooted in the arctic north. My family moved me from warm Georgia…GEORGIA!!!…when I was just a child. I eventually graduated high school, fell in love, had babies, developed a life…all in the frozen north. But there was a deep discontentment growing inside me, taking root and germinating and growing over time. It was kind of like an oppressive thunderstorm moving in; you can feel it but can’t quite put a finger on it. (Of course, the throbbing of the metal plate in my head is the clearest indicator of a storm for me.)

In hindsight, so many of my behaviors and feelings from the past and present are much clearer to me now: it’s the cold. I’ve been hating it all my life, but never vocalized it or congealed my motivations and hatred into conscious thought before. It’s been like a small sliver festering between my big toe and second toe. ( I kicked a wooden Indian once, but that’s another story.) How come my cars fall into disrepair so badly between December and March? The cold. I AIN’T GOING OUT THERE! Why does it have to be 95 degrees outside before I’ll get into a pool or a lake? The cold water. NOT ENJOYABLE. How come I haven’t been out of my house in two and a half weeks? The cold. Why do I keep the heat in the apartment at 80 during the winter? I’m freezing. Why did I have those voodoo dolls, made in the likeness of my parents, that I used to skewer with safety pins and roll over with my sled and throw against the house and press down into the snow every time my parents made me play outside in the winter?! *Ahem…sorry, never mind that one.*

Click me! Click me!

Finally, my bitterness is melting away, just like the ice is!

The day I posted this blog post is March 5. Miraculously, it’s finally warming up here in Michigan. We’re going from suicide-inducing 20 degrees to mere depression-causing 45 degrees. But it actually feels good and it’s a nice change. I can’t help but think forward to 60, 70, 80 degrees…and bluegrass festivals. There are so many good ones within a 3 hour drive from where I live!

Spring always takes me back to the many summer nights that I’ve spent around the campfire picking my banjo. I’ve seen the sun come up at many a bluegrass festival…not because I got up early, but because I didn’t go to bed! There’s nothing in the world like picking music with others around the campfire, and the time flies by in the blink of an eye. That reminds me of another old adage that I like to pass along:

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

That’s profound, I know. Believe you me, people think that I’m not deep just because I play the banjo. Don’t you believe it! Remember, half of this job is 90% mental.

Don’t forget: with warm weather comes cheap eating

I get a huge benefit from going to bluegrass festivals: my grocery bill goes down. Here’s what I do: on the way to the festival on Friday, I stop next to any road kill that I spot along the way. I take out my trusty can of yellow spray paint and I shoot a quick squirt of paint onto the critter. Then, when I’m headed home on Sunday and I see road kill that isn’t yellow, I stop and grab it! Since it’s not yellow, that means it’s fresh, and good eating! Mmmm, mmmm…sometime I’ll have you over for opossum innards. Often times you’ll find me serving leftovers when I couldn’t eat it all the day before. But you see, that’s the thing about opossum innards: they’s just as good the second day.

See you at the festivals

I’m tired of cleaning my nose prints off the windows. My neighbors think I’m stalking them through the glass as I stand for hours with my nose against it, longing for that snow and ice to go away and for the sun to warm everything up. I WANT TO GET OUT AND PICK IN THE WARM WEATHER! I suppose the sight of my pouting at my window is pretty pathetic.

Spring is right around the corner…I can feel it. (The plate is throbbing again.) Are you excited? I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at the festivals and jam sessions this year. I’ll be out and about this year, taking video footage, making recordings with my digital recorder, and most importantly: picking that banjer! Can’t wait. See you at the festivals, and oh…pick ‘em if ya got ‘em!

Banjo Paul
“Wunse, I coodn’t even spel bango pikker…now I are one!”
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