Sunday, March 27, 2011

Assumptions of the Young


OK I must be getting old. There, I said it. How do I know this at 9:30 on a Sunday morning? Because I just read an article online about how to choose your companions for Coachella.
huh?
In fact Coachella is so well known and renowned that they don't even mention who or what or where IS Coachella. I must KNOW that already so the writer just gets to the point of who you should go there with. But that's not the thrust of this post.
In fact the article was entitled

How To Choose Your Coachella Posse

See? right there. I've shared my life with various wonderful people at every stage but never had a posse. It was "just" a bunch of folks I loved and loved hanging out with. In my life a posse was in fact a group of angry and vengeful townfolk in black and white westerns who would hurriedly saddle up and go after the bad guys. Usually with one guy left behind who had some moral hesitations about the level of retribution his unwashed neighbors were showing toward the now track making miscreants. But I digress.
Anyway, I bit and googled Coachella. Of course it's a music festival. Taking place in Indio, California. (FYI: Countdown: 19 days)
I'm guessing Indio, California has had it's share of posse stories from back in the old west. It being a desert town resting between LA and the Arizona border. This I didn't need to google as I spent one night there many years ago. It wasn't the location I and my friends had planned on staying but a brokedown pickup truck made our decision for us. Our roadtrip started in Tempe, Arizona and was heading toward Los Angeles. Or was it the beach towns just below? I forget. This trip was fueled by all sorts of things not the least of which was half cocked youth. (This confirmed by the fact our vehicle of choice for the journey made it 2/3rds of the way to it's destination.) And when i say we were in the center of the desert I do mean it quite literally. When I asked the tow truck driver what town we were in he said quite deapan, "Desert Center". Yes there is a town called Desert Center and we found it.
Now remember this is 30 years ago so facts are blurry. Was the truck fixed that night or ? did we have two vehicles with us? Were we hitchhiking? it's vague now. But somehow we got to the nearest town that had a motel. Indio. The six of us?? this number too is vague.
We sent one guy in to get a room. The conversation probably like this:
one guy: "yeah i'd like a room"
them: "how many of you?"
one guy: "just me. yeah got stuck out here all alone. car broke down. yep, just me"
them: "OK that'll be 20 dollars."

About ten minutes after we all snuck into the room very surreptitiously, the knock on the door came. The motelkeeps were none too pleased with our little economically based maneuver. They didn't want the likes of us around their livelihood. We tried with the best argument we could muster...something akin to "C'mon". In short, the gig was up. We got our money back but ended up all stretched or scrunched up in various uncomfortable positions in a pickup truck, trying to sleep while most of the acts at Coachella this year weren't born yet.
I guess I did have a posse. I just thought they were a bunch of guys i knew and hung out with all the time.

Here's a picture of four of us still with the belief we were gonna be in L.A. in 3 hours.




1 comment:

Rick Monaco said...

Posse, crew, girls calling each other dude, that's what she said, fail, chief .. it all comes and goes and comes back around again. Unlike Coachella, which I predict will go and stay gone.