Hot bluegrass--hotter weather!

It was cold in May of 1980 in Mountain View, AR, but how was I to know that soon we would have the hottest summer on record? The summer of 1980 was just around the corner, and today, 27 years later, Americans are still talking about that miserable summer when the day dawned at 90 degrees and it reached 110+ before sundown.

My bluegrass journey continued--scorching, searing heat and all! Throughout that long, hot summer, I hauled lawnmowers, hedge clippers, gallons of water, and weed-wackers out to the Tennessee Gentlemen Bluegrass Shack, in an effort to make the old place look a little bit more respectable during the summer when no one was there. I had my tape player and tapes; I had my folding yard chair and plenty of water; and I was a happy bluegrasser! I mowed a while, then I rested in the shade of the Shack. I cut bushes, I listened to tapes of earlier shows inside the now-locked little run-down building, and I wiped sweat! Sounds terrible, doesn't it? It was delightful! One interesting aspect was the "stuff" stashed under bushes in back of the Shack by local ne'er-do-wells who had just stolen things from shopkeepers in the area and had ditched the goods--maybe with the idea of coming back later to claim the merchandise. I never knew what I would find.

I picked the perfect summer to begin following the bluegrass circuit throughout the South and Southwest--nice and hot! The festival trail took me back to Arkansas and into Texas and Oklahoma, where bands onstage were throwing cups of water and ice on each other to keep cool. Their instruments wouldn't stay in tune because of the heat--and because of the big fans onstage which were supposed to cool the performers but played havoc with their tuning. Bluegrass music fans were fanning with those little paper festival fans. Many fled to their campers and motor homes during the heat of the day, saving their trips to their lawn chairs until their favorite bands came on in the evening. The evenings were just as hot--not a leaf stirring--but at least the sun wasn't beating down on the crowd.

Cars overheated, of course, in that mind-bending heat in the summer of 1980--including mine! A nice aspect of being on the bluegrass trail with a dead thermostat is that bluegrass fans and performers are more than willing to help a stranded soul. They all seem to know how to replace a thermostat, "jump off" a dead battery, or find a rebuilt alternator--and put it on. These people are amazing! My thanks goes out yet again to all the special angels along the way who helped me get to a festival or back home from one. Sometimes it wasn't easy.

Oh, you gotta love this music to put up with this kind of adversity!