cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
Willy Nelson is singing in the background, "if you've got the money honey, I've got the time. We'll go honky tonkin', honey, we'll have a real great time..." The nasal tones of Willie -- or is it Willy? -- remind me that my own nasal passages are conflicted. They want to take her new Cadillac -- are they still making Cadillacs? -- and leave my old wreck behind, but right now they're trying to exorcise some demons that found the perfect climate to go honky tonkin' in my nose and throat.
Willie's voice is a product -- perhaps the product -- of Sudafed -- Sudafed for Sore Throat and Runny Nose in this very particular case. You see, sometime during my travels with the Madonna of Wright - Patterson and her three street urchins, I began to feel a ticklish sort of scratch in my throat. All of my aspirin and zinc -- the CSI unit of nose and throat problems -- were ensconced in my toilet kit, inside my checked baggage, and not in my laptop bag with my contact lens paraphernalia, three chargers, one for laptop, one for cell phone, one for digital camera -- where I might have gotten to them and forestalled this infestation. Willy Nelson, of course, is in my i-pod, which is in my laptop bag and Willie has been accessible, though not called upon, in my travels and my toilet kit has not -- so here I am at 1:47 European Central Time, 20:04 Eastern Daylight Savings Time where most of you reside -- don't ask why the 17 minute offset; maybe it's the delay built into satellite communications systems-- nose stuffed, throat sore, and trotting back and forth to the toilet like one of the men in the Flomax commercials currently burning up the airwaves where you reside, alongside the guy with the four hour non-dysfunctioning apparatus that may require a doctor's attention -- and Willy or Willie or Riley Nelson or Don Nelson (after all, it is NBA basketball playoff season) or Full Nelson or Admiral Nelson or Penny Nelson, who you probably won't know because she was in my eighth grade English class at dear old Van Buren JHS along with teacher extraordinaire, Mrs. Dixon, who once confiscated my mini-squirt gun and then turned around and shot me with it, but I digress. You see Penny Nelson was an early bloomer and the cause of my own four hour dysfunctions, except that in eighth grade it's not a dysfunction, it's just life.
Anyway, Willy won't shut up. I don't know how many times he's repeated his lines or why, if I were going to suffer from songstuckinthebrainitis (I'm in Germany, I can string words together like that, it's part of the culture along with the beer, the wurst and the fat lady in the horned helmet singing about gotterdammerrung -- which may be the source of Larry the Cable Guy's shtick about "get'erdone." Imagine that, ol' Larry, the fat gal, and Willie, up there on the stage in Obersalzengraffenbruckenberg, singing the Ride of the Valkyries, over and over and over. At least that song would have more lines to go non-stop hurtling through my Sudafad-clogged brain instead of the endless cycle of "we'll go honky tonkin' honey, we'll have great ol' time." I mean, I did play Dylan's Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Lands while on the plane. Why couldn't that song, with it's sad eyed prophets saying that no man comes, and Arabian drums and her amphetamines and her pearls -- or was it her leopard skinned pillbox hat?
So how'd I come to leave my old wreck behind? The second day was the charm. All ten intrepid Space - A travelers reconvened in the bluish-gray hell hole at Wright - Patterson and with ol' Willy strumming his virtual guitar in my i-pod, but not in my head as yet, we sat and waited and sure enough there was another malfunction -- not of the four hour variety-- which was miraculously fixed and we landed in a soft mist at the Space A passenger lounge at McGuire Air Force Base in greater New Jersey, whereupon ten more kids, three of them hellions to match the two of the Madonna's, joined us. After an interminable wait we proceeded to endure the same take-off-your-shoes-watch-belt-money-keys-and-place-them-in-the-gray-plastic-box you suffer when you fly out of Greater Cincinnati or Port Columbus. This despite the fact that everyone flying on that aircraft had some sort of connection with the Department of Defense, but there I go, honky tonkin' about something that really doesn't concern, or interest, you.
We sat in a new, terrazzo-floored hell hole with black leather chairs and couches that did not turn to concrete in the three-hour time frame we had to test them. The six kids from Dante's Inferno raced about the place, howling like dogs with Willie Nelson's If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time stuck in their brains, repeating endlessly.
We were finally called forward at 10 PM sometime, somewhere, in a bus, in a galaxy far, far away and sat for an hour and watched Air Force kids try and place a passenger loading ramp next to the gargantuan C-5. It took forever and I gained a whole new respect for the fine folks who drive those Star War ramps that tie up to civilian aircraft in less time than it takes Willie to sing all the stanzas to his damn song which is still reverberating in my cranium.
During this time the rain ebbed and flowed and even stopped for a few minutes, but then, when a sergeant waved to the bus to let us commence our dash across the tarmac and up the three flights of stairs, it broke loose in a tsunami of fat, heavy drops that soaked all of us. Babies crying, Madonna still belting out her, "If you don't sit down you're not getting on that plane," engines screaming and fat raindrops drumming on the fuselage, we took off and Willie entered my mind.
Willie's voice is a product -- perhaps the product -- of Sudafed -- Sudafed for Sore Throat and Runny Nose in this very particular case. You see, sometime during my travels with the Madonna of Wright - Patterson and her three street urchins, I began to feel a ticklish sort of scratch in my throat. All of my aspirin and zinc -- the CSI unit of nose and throat problems -- were ensconced in my toilet kit, inside my checked baggage, and not in my laptop bag with my contact lens paraphernalia, three chargers, one for laptop, one for cell phone, one for digital camera -- where I might have gotten to them and forestalled this infestation. Willy Nelson, of course, is in my i-pod, which is in my laptop bag and Willie has been accessible, though not called upon, in my travels and my toilet kit has not -- so here I am at 1:47 European Central Time, 20:04 Eastern Daylight Savings Time where most of you reside -- don't ask why the 17 minute offset; maybe it's the delay built into satellite communications systems-- nose stuffed, throat sore, and trotting back and forth to the toilet like one of the men in the Flomax commercials currently burning up the airwaves where you reside, alongside the guy with the four hour non-dysfunctioning apparatus that may require a doctor's attention -- and Willy or Willie or Riley Nelson or Don Nelson (after all, it is NBA basketball playoff season) or Full Nelson or Admiral Nelson or Penny Nelson, who you probably won't know because she was in my eighth grade English class at dear old Van Buren JHS along with teacher extraordinaire, Mrs. Dixon, who once confiscated my mini-squirt gun and then turned around and shot me with it, but I digress. You see Penny Nelson was an early bloomer and the cause of my own four hour dysfunctions, except that in eighth grade it's not a dysfunction, it's just life.
Anyway, Willy won't shut up. I don't know how many times he's repeated his lines or why, if I were going to suffer from songstuckinthebrainitis (I'm in Germany, I can string words together like that, it's part of the culture along with the beer, the wurst and the fat lady in the horned helmet singing about gotterdammerrung -- which may be the source of Larry the Cable Guy's shtick about "get'erdone." Imagine that, ol' Larry, the fat gal, and Willie, up there on the stage in Obersalzengraffenbruckenberg, singing the Ride of the Valkyries, over and over and over. At least that song would have more lines to go non-stop hurtling through my Sudafad-clogged brain instead of the endless cycle of "we'll go honky tonkin' honey, we'll have great ol' time." I mean, I did play Dylan's Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Lands while on the plane. Why couldn't that song, with it's sad eyed prophets saying that no man comes, and Arabian drums and her amphetamines and her pearls -- or was it her leopard skinned pillbox hat?
So how'd I come to leave my old wreck behind? The second day was the charm. All ten intrepid Space - A travelers reconvened in the bluish-gray hell hole at Wright - Patterson and with ol' Willy strumming his virtual guitar in my i-pod, but not in my head as yet, we sat and waited and sure enough there was another malfunction -- not of the four hour variety-- which was miraculously fixed and we landed in a soft mist at the Space A passenger lounge at McGuire Air Force Base in greater New Jersey, whereupon ten more kids, three of them hellions to match the two of the Madonna's, joined us. After an interminable wait we proceeded to endure the same take-off-your-shoes-watch-belt-money-keys-and-place-them-in-the-gray-plastic-box you suffer when you fly out of Greater Cincinnati or Port Columbus. This despite the fact that everyone flying on that aircraft had some sort of connection with the Department of Defense, but there I go, honky tonkin' about something that really doesn't concern, or interest, you.
We sat in a new, terrazzo-floored hell hole with black leather chairs and couches that did not turn to concrete in the three-hour time frame we had to test them. The six kids from Dante's Inferno raced about the place, howling like dogs with Willie Nelson's If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time stuck in their brains, repeating endlessly.
We were finally called forward at 10 PM sometime, somewhere, in a bus, in a galaxy far, far away and sat for an hour and watched Air Force kids try and place a passenger loading ramp next to the gargantuan C-5. It took forever and I gained a whole new respect for the fine folks who drive those Star War ramps that tie up to civilian aircraft in less time than it takes Willie to sing all the stanzas to his damn song which is still reverberating in my cranium.
During this time the rain ebbed and flowed and even stopped for a few minutes, but then, when a sergeant waved to the bus to let us commence our dash across the tarmac and up the three flights of stairs, it broke loose in a tsunami of fat, heavy drops that soaked all of us. Babies crying, Madonna still belting out her, "If you don't sit down you're not getting on that plane," engines screaming and fat raindrops drumming on the fuselage, we took off and Willie entered my mind.
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