The cats are stomping now here at the Country Saloon. The well-scuffed hardwood floor rumbles and thumps with footstomps beating time to Bird' sax. "I've got my eyes on you.. stomp, stomp." Hard to say what other lyrics there are. The sax is prime. And now it's over and the natives are really going wild. A major stomp, howls and cheers. Waitress Lou comes by to collect my empties and tells me how the Walkman-and-sunglasses-wearing bunny on the table beside me was part of her larger donation to the art car cause. Seems she gave Seven a bunch of toys. And she says when we come through next year (?) she will have all the town's used toys collected and will donate them to us. Wild.

I'm eavesdropping. Ramon is terrifying the blond in the booth with him with tales of California falling into the sea. Of course, we're not in California, so maybe terrifying ain't the right word. She laughs. Maybe she's thrilled.

So, I've just discovered that I've been drinking 3.2 beer here for hours. The blond says I'll find out tomorrow. Huh? How could it be bad if, as I'm now realizing, I've hardly a buzz? "We call it 3-too full," she says. Uh. Ok.

I'm hankering for a nice long night soak in that lake down the road. Take me to your lake. It's only 11 p.m., but suddenly I'm real wiped. Too much smoke inhalation. Wanna know the rest? Buy the rights.

[Retrospective..]

That night Chiquita, Ned and I swam far out into Lake Washington under the starry canopy of night. The party, now moved from the bar to Jim's lakefront property raged on, the musicians jamming acoustic by a bonfire. The next day Jim's brother Merrill cooked us all a breakfast fantastic breakfast of bratwurst and potatoes over an open fire. Some local ladies showed up from the Twine Ball Inn with 8 or 10 free pots of coffee for the celebrity artists that had brought their town so much fun the night before.

Ramon and Trip and the Yellow Submarine gang had fled sometime during the night intent on intercepting a UPS package containing Ramon's new movie camera in some town 30 miles to the north. The rest of us passed the morning and early afternoon hours swimming, making music, playing horseshoes and getting better aquatinted with our hosts. Every few minutes passerby on the road above Jim's stretch of beach would slow to a crawl and gaze in wide wonder at the weirdness they had found. Haha.

Jim had inner tubes galore, such that even Seven got out of his wheelchair and into the water. It was his first dip in a lake in years, and a well-deserved cool-off it was for our good will ambassador, the artist Seven who the time to whip out an oil painting of the caravan lakeside as a gift for our kind host Jim. It was a great gesture, and the first of many such painting-gifts he would hand out along the way.

Other gifts were exchanged. Chiquita makes wild, colorful necklaces out of plastic beads, fish hooks and rubber nightcrawler worms. She gave one to young Sam, daughter of Jim's mistress Cheryl.

Mistress. Damn. What a wild scene that was. Jim, you pirate, you! Both Jim and Merrill were good candidates for the pirate role.

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by Pineapple Publishing and Consulting
Art Cars in Cyberspace ©2004 Pineapple Publishing and Consulting
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Last update April 1, 2004