by Darrell Laurant,from book entitled "Mama Never Told Me About Chittlins." copyright by Carter Glass Newspapers, Inc. 1983.
It was the annual Christmas party at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda, Mich., the one that starts on December 5 and continues past New Years. A party that smolders like a banked fire during the week, only to burst into potato chips and margaritas each Friday night.
"Up here," explained a cocktail waitress named Cindy, "we have parties just to keep warm."
On this particular Saturday night, however, the area was enjoying a veritable heat wave. Temperatures were in the low 20s, the gnawing wind from Lake Huron had taken the night off, and it was quite cozy inside the Wurtsmith Noncommissioned Officer's Club. As a special treat, the entertainment had been imported all the way from Lynchburg...a four-member group known as Lower Forty Grass. A live band, composed of flesh and blood rather than vinyl.
"This is great," said club manager (F. F.). "Usually we have to settle for playing records."
Still, while the lady at the front-row table seemed to be enjoying the music, she was obviously anxious for the boys in the band to take a break. And finally, when group leader and mandolin player (Hubby Jack)stepped up to the microphone and said the magic words..."Don't go away, we'll be right back" she left her chair as if yanked by a string and walked across the dance floor toward the stage. She was wearing a pearl necklace, a long evening dress and the uncertain half-smile of a sinner called to the altar during a revival service.
"I sing," she told (him), "and I was, uh, wondering if I could,uh, you know, get up and do a song with you."
With(Jack), the customer is always right.
"yes ma'am he said, "be glad to. What would you like to do?"
"Do you know any Barbra Streisand?" She asked.
"No ma'am," (he) told her, deadpan, "We're a bluegrass group."
The lady pondered this for a moment, then brightened. "I know," she said finally. "How about 'White Christmas'"?
And she did, indeed, step up on stage later in the show and sing "White Christmas," her thin, reedy soprano all but washed away by the background of mandolin and banjo music."There's a guy in the audience named Don Chew who'd like to sing, " somebody told the band at one point. "How about calling him up?"
Later, another man approached the bandstand. "I hear you're going to ask Don Chew to sing," he said. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Don Chew can't remember the words to anything, and he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. He's awful...you don't want him up there singing."
Thanks for the information," banjo player (Tim)told him. "What's your name?"
I'm Don Chew," the man replied.
As Jimmy Durante used to say, everybody wanted to get into the act.
Around 1:30 a.m., 30 minutes after the show had finished, a lone airman from Dover,Del., wobbled over as the band was packing up its equipment.
"you guys have the life," he said. "I'd love to travel around like you do. Get away from this place...it's a dump."
True, Oscoda, Mich., will never be confused with Las Vegas, but if the fellow from Dover, Del., had been staring at a 17 hour drive back to Lynchburg, he might have felt differently about the romance of the road. I know I did.
Sometime last month, (Nan) had called and asked if I would like to accompany her husband and his group on a road trip. She remembered me because I had once mentioned the band in a column and called them "Olde Forty Grass," but she was willing to forgive and forget.
"I thought you might like to see what it's really like out there," she said.
Well, now I can tell you. It's mostly boring.
To be sure, (Jack) and fellow band members (Greg, Will,Tim)proved very congenial company. I saw a part of the country I hadn't visited before (and probably never will again), and I found that Lower Forty Grass' music caused my right toe to begin tapping involuntarily, and that's good.
But it still wasn't what you'd expect. The van picked me up at 10:30 on a Thursday night and we rolled through the main gate at Wurtsmith (a Strategic Air Command post three hours above Detroit) at 3 the next afternoon. After setting up the equipment, we went to our on-base rooms and slept for a few hours (Jack had driven 17 hours straight). Then, I went back to the NCO Club, sat at a table and watched Lower Forty perform for a rowdy group of airmen fresh from a keg party.
Isn't it a little early for Christmas decorations?" I asked the assistant manager.
"Yeah," he replied, "but these drunks will probably tear them down anyway."
After breakfast at Bob's Breakfast Hut in Oscoda.,Jack and I spent Saturday afternoon watching cable TV in our room. Saturday night was the Christmas party, and then we packed up the equipment and left.
There were no wild times involved, in part because Jack is relentlessly straight-arrow when it comes to drugs and alcohol.
"I don't mind it when people drink or smoke dope," he explained. "That's fine....that's their business, but that sort of thing will kill a band faster'n anything."
Consequently, the only drugs I saw on the trip were Will's vitamins and sinus pills. With this group, the addiction was to junk food. We must have hit every 7-11 in five states.
(Jack) is 47, a central Ohio native with a background that reads like a country and western song. He's been just about everywhere and done everything, and he still has a hankering for the big time."
"It's out there somewhere," said (Jack), who has played on four Lower Forty Grass albums, "but bluegrass is a tough road to go.
(skipping some biographical stuff)
Most of the trip was a blur of green exit signs and turnpike rest areas, although I do remember Jack's expression when confronted with 50 cent coffee on the Ohio Turnpike.
"Ya'll sure are proud of your coffee here, aren't you?" He asked dryly.
Tim, Greg & Will slept most of the way up...one on a bunk, the others down on the carpeted floor along with the equipment. From time to time, one of them would join Jack and me up front.
Most of the trip was by daylight, however, and as we crossed the jagged spine of West Virginia on u.S.60m staring at rotting shacks clinging to the sides of mountains, Tim took out his banjo. Automatically, Will began singing the bass part of an old bluegrass song and everyone else joined in the appropriate harmony. And they picked and sang their way across the Appalachians, all the way to the next Burger King.
Just caught up to the story....read and enjoyed!!
Feel free to post any of your stories. Maybe someone reading the thread will have been there.
((HUGS))