[MD] MOQ/BOC

[Krimel]

Hi Dan,
More years ago than I can count exactly, I went to a rock festival. It was
in those post Woodstock years when many of us felt empty and incomplete
because we had missed one of the defining moments of our generation. Some
would end up lying in our waning years,  concocting outrageous tales of our
back stage exploit with dead rock idols. But I am a horrible liar. 

It started when a buddy of mine saw a poster advertising a festival called
"The Celebration of Life." It was to be in Louisiana and would feature
people like Joe Cocker, Chuck Berry and The Animals. Bunches of bands like
Pink Floyd and the Allman Brothers were supposed to show but didn't.

At this remove I can't say why adult authority didn't step in but four of us
barely out of high school scrounged up enough cash, loaded our camping gear
into the trunk of a '61 Impala and headed out for our first road trip. I was
shocked at the Florida/Alabama border where Interstate 10 abruptly turned
into two lane blacktop. I think George Wallace was still governor at the
time and perhaps federal highway construction was not a priority.

The four of us were looking forward to getting to Louisiana because the
legal drinking age at least for beer and wine was 18. We spent a night
jammed into a cheap hotel drinking Boonesfarm Apple. As it turned out the
concert promoters had done less that a stellar job of organizing and
eventually it seemed like 50,000 of us got diverted off of the state's
highways and onto a network of dirt roads that ran across the top of a
system of levies.

We spent to next night on top of the levies meeting hippies and stoners from
Tulsa and New York. By the middle of the second day it became questionable
as to whether there really would be a "Celebration of Life" at least in the
musical sense. There was a bit of frustration of course but pretty soon
people began to celebrate in ways of their own. We were parked near a small
stream or maybe a pond... it's been awhile... At any rate someone got the
bright idea of rolling around in the mud until completely covered in the
stuff. Pretty soon a whole species of mud people emerged from the ooze.
After a skinny dip in the pond and a roll in the slime, they walked around
the levy tops wearing nothing but mud.

Trapped as we were off the beaten path people shared their food and wine and
substances and although there were none of the usual trappings of
civilization a kind of pleasant social order emerged. If you had a bottle of
wine and someone asked for a hit you gave them a hit. Perhaps it was the
sound of Neil Young's After the Gold Rush album streaming out of the back of
microbuses but it changed my ideas about the nature of the social order.
Here people were being kind to one another without the formal force of law
and order. Many of the traditional social conventions remained while others
were discarded or treated as optional; clothing for example.

At some point the State of Louisiana supplies a host of state troopers and
cops from far flung parishes to supervise. There wasn't really much they
could do but try to keep the peace and there was already plenty of that. Any
attempt to enforce "laws" that were being treated as optional by the
community would have been disastrous, time consuming and ultimately futile.

I think it was on the third morning I was sitting on the hood of the Impala
listening to Neil's falsetto... "Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor
coming." 

There was a Louisiana state trooper with dark aviator glasses and blue
Smokey hat sitting on a horse near me with his arms crossed. He was a big
man and his saddle creaked that leather sound when he or the horse moved.

"Sayin' something about a queen..." 

It was hot, summer hot, Mississippi delta muggy hot, but we were in a shady
patch and it was still morning and we had the midday sun head of us. After a
while a girl walked by with two black and white puppies on leashes. The pups
bounced along the dirt road with their tiny tongue moving in time with their
breath and adorable pink wet noses sniffing the air.

"There was a fanfare blowin' to the sun. That floated on the breeze..."
 
The girl was beautiful. Dark hair pull back in a bun, wearing only a pair of
black panties. Her breasts bounced before her in perfect harmony with the
puppies. Round and liquid they swayed and rippled, nipples catching the
breeze. It was a symphony of sound and color and movement that sings to me
from the edge of a bayou, distant in space and time.

"There was a band playin' in my head. And I felt like getting high"

The troop watched her pass, the aviators concealed his emotion at this
flagrant violation of Louisiana state law. But as she passed he tipped his
hat and I distinctly heard him tell her, "If you got it. Flaunt it, I say."

"There were children crying and colors flying, all around the chosen
ones..."

Eventually there actually was music at the festival. The anarchy continued
and midway through the event, streets formed in the makeshift "city."
Troopers idled their time away at intersections marked by card board signs
proclaiming the meeting of "Smack Street" and "Cocaine Lane." On the last
night we were there someone was advertising a future street festival in LA.
They passed out postcards in the crowd. On the post cards there was a
drawing of a sun with a small orange barrel pasted in to add color. Turned
out the barrels were orange sunshine, a powerful close cousin to Purple
Haze, but without a song of their own...

"All in a dream, all in a dream..." 

I still think of those black and white puppies and those perfect breasts
from time to time. Noses and upright nipples catching the breeze in harmony
with the crazy rhythm of jello beneath those nipples and the wide V of those
black panties shrinking in the distance as she passed with that trooper's
wisdom hanging in the air. "If you got it, Flaunt it, I say..."

"Flyin' mother nature's silver seed. To a new home in the sun..."

Beyond noses and nipples and my eternal gratitude that she was not one of
those mud people, there is no-point to any of this. 
There is no-reason for it. 
I have no-thing to flaunt.

And so, I did...

Which, I suppose, brings to mind another bit of Louisiana folk wisdom that
applies equally  to nipples and Zen-esque MoQ posts: "If you can't lick 'em
join 'em, I say."

Thank You,
Krimel