One More Gig

The driving distances are getting longer as I continue West. Still, my excitement grows as I draw closer to the mountains, home and family.....

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Last night I performed the final show on this first tour at the bookstore, Indigo Bridge, in Lincoln, Nebraska’s famed Haymarket District.  Lincoln is a city with with an interesting character.  The capital city of the state of Nebraska, it is second in population only to Omaha, which is situated an hour to the East.  It has the tall buildings of a larger city, the traffic patterns, congestion, attractions and population mix of a state capital and major university town.  Still, it is accessible to many people who live in the rural areas or smaller towns that surround it.  So the Haymarket is full of people, young and old, urban and rural, who are “in town” for the diversions of the evening.....

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The show draws people, once again, from different eras of my life, and I entice Bill Behmer to join me for a dulcimer-didjeridoo duet, to the delight of the audience.  Unfortunately, my godson, Aaron, is at summer camp and unable to attend this concert, but his older brother and folks—my good friends, Ron and Teri—are.  Ron did a yeoman’s job in setting up and publicizing the concert.  To my surprise, part of my compensation for the evening is the opportunity to choose a book from the shelves of the store!  Wow, so many to choose from—they don’t have my first choice in stock, but I am able to find a reader of articles chosen from the first 150 years of the Atlantic Magazine that I will enjoy….but not until I finish licking the maple-grapenut drips along the side of my ice cream from the next-door shop, Ivanna Cone!....

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Afterward, as we drive the ½ hr south to his house, the cool, moist air carries the rich smells of fertile earth, bringing forth its fruit into the winds, borne on the loud cricket symphony and night songs through the open car windows.  Ron, a radio DJ by avocation, and I reminisce and listen to some new music.  A fitting end to a fulfilling tour.....

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All that remains is the reflection time that the final leg of the journey will provide, accompanied by a novel-on-tape, written by John Grisham.  As, expected, I arrive home an evening before my family, who have been working up in the mountains for the past two weeks.  The usual rhythms of unpacking the car, beginning laundry, cleaning up the trash and re-stowing instruments in the house are conducted in their zen-like move to bring the first tour of the summer to its completion.....

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