Curmudgeon
Los Angeles
Bring lawn chairs — 1 year ago
Not worth it!
About this time of year in 1983, I got my sister to agree to accompany me to an unidentified event. The wry expression on my face convinced her that whatever I was up to was worth the risk. I tossed a couple of lawn chairs into the trunk of the car and hauled her about 40 miles northwest from our hometown Arcadia, Louisiana, through piney woods and across red clay hills until, to her puzzlement, we followed road signs pointing us to the community of Shongaloo, a place neither of us had ever been. The event in question was a fiddling contest at the Red Rock Jamboree, at the time a monthly gathering, I believe. Bluegrass was/is not our musical genre of choice; nevertheless, she was intrigued enough to sit through the men’s gospel group’s renditions of old brush arbor hits in order to get to the fiddling. The fact that we were actually there is more memorable to me than anything we heard while there.
Later, when I reported our outing to my dear friend Kathy C., I learned that her family knew all about the Red Rock Jamboree. Her mother Robbie, a beautician of long standing with a salon attached to their house (about 5 miles north of town, in the middle of cow pastures), appeared regularly there as commedienne, reciting jokes, I was told, that she memorized out of Readers’ Digest.
I’m so sorry to have missed THAT.
