Parrothead Ramblings

What's up with Wayner's compass, anyhow?
My brother Wayners is a member of the Lone Star Parrothead Club, and he's planning to have a Parrothead party at his beautiful home in North Dallas. The Crime Dog Phamily usually phlocks over there once a year for the Dallas concert, but Bubba has yet to announce a Dallas show this year. What's up with that, anyway? It's a very abbreviated tour so far, with no shows scheduled in May or July.

So, if there is to be a phlocking in Dallas this year, it will be sans Jimmy. At least in person. No doubt Wayners will have a Buffett tune or two on the stereo for this June party, so I guess I'll have to head on over there for that.

Actually, there's a real up side to just staying at his house instead of going out to a concert. You see, last year was kind of a problem. Both our entire families were there for that Buffett/Jackson/Strait show at Texas Stadium. We had a fantastic time, but as always, all good things must come to an end, and we loaded up the cars and headed back to Wayne's.

Or so we thought.

It turns out some asshole shut off the navigational beacons while we weren't looking.

Now, you can take The Crime Dog, get me drunk, blindfold me, spin me around four times, drive me around for an hour, and kick me out of the car anywhere in the Metro Phoenix area in the middle of the night, and in two minutes I'll figure out where I am and how to get home. All I need is a street sign and/or some place to stand so I can see the horizon, and I'm Daniel Boone.

Not so with my beloved brother and his chosen home town. I was in the car behind him, playing follow the leader. We left Texas Stadium, got on some freeway and drove for like a half hour. Something inside my head told me we were in trouble when we passed Texas Stadium again. I began to suspect we were truly, deeply lost when we ended up off the freeway and on some pitch-black secondary road by an airport. That was when my cell phone rang. It was The Fetching Mrs Crime Dog, in the car ahead with Wayne. She whispered into the phone "We are so-o-o-o lost." You see, The Fetching Mrs Crime Dog is arguably the kindest, gentlest, least offensive human on the planet Earth - sort of my polar opposite - and she didn't want to hurt Wayne's feelings by verbalizing out loud what a dumbass he was. Now if it had been me up there in the lead car with him, it would have been a shoulder-slugging, finger-pointing, making a mockery of him good ol' time. We probably would have ended up just sitting it out in a bar somewhere. Anyway, we finally make our way back to a freeway. Whew! Problem solved, right?

The next thing I know, we're driving past Texas Stadium again.

So, long story short, we stopped and asked for directions, got on the correct freeway, and Christopher Columbus finally managed to lead the phlock back to his own home. Now, in all fairness, I have to admit that Dallas is one flat town. There ain't shit out there for landmarks. Well, besides this gigantic fucking building called Texas Stadium, which we encountered three times along that long, dusty trail.

The day we left Dallas, The Fetching Mrs Crime Dog, The Lovely Bo, Joe E and I all decided we would go back out to Texas Stadium and take a tour. We put Joe E in charge of navigation, and he was flawless. Joe E is the exact opposite of Wayne. He can look at a map one time, fold it up, put it away, and take you to any obscure address at any spot on said map. And he'e never even been to Dallas.

Oh well, Frank Bama once said the best navigators are not quite sure where they're going until they get there...and then they're still not sure. Guess that makes Wayners a regular fuckin' Magellan!
  |