Sometimes, you just gotta listen.

Several years ago, I was very excited about route 66. The newly de-certified route 66. De-certified because interstates made it redundant. It was in vogue to travel the old road. It wasn't like you could just get on in Chicago and drive for four days and be in L.A. anymore. De-certified means little or no maintenance and plenty of dead ends. You had to really want to drive this road. There were a lot of detours and you got lost often.

The route 66 society of Illinois planned a road trip on the stretch that ran from Chicago to St. Louis. It lasted a weekend. Saturday night there was a block party for the participants of the road trip. It took place in downtown Springfield, Illinois. I met an older couple that had been dancing in the street. The woman told me that her and her husband had been in a Western Swing band in the 50's and that they had played many roadhouses along the old route 66. I asked her what Gallup, New Mexico was like. I had never been there and that name Gallup just sounded cool to me. I figured great things happened there. Nat King Cole made it sound important. I'll never forget her response. She said "Gallup is all drunk Indians".
I couldn't believe it. All I could think was that these were some serious rednecks who didn't know anything. Me with all of my culture would surely find all kinds of wonderful things in Gallup.

A few years later I drove the old road through New Mexico. When I got to Gallup, the main drag was very lit up. I found a motel and pulled into the driveway. There were some people off in the shadows near one of the rooms. I didn't pay too much attention to them. I parked. As I sat in the car for a minute, I looked in the rear view mirror only to see that these people were two Indians lifting a third very drunk Indian off of the sidewalk.

Tonight, I decided to go out and sit in at a bar I had heard about but never been to.
Let's just call this bar Snuckles to protect the innocent (and me). A review on the internet said, "white trash, convict and crack-ho heaven!" I thought no way could it really be that bad. First off, a little white trash never hurt anyone. Convicts? How would a person even know? Horizontal black stripes on a white outfit? One of those ball and chain deals hooked onto their ankles? And lastly, I think some people just love using a cliche like crack-ho. It sounds real hip. How many actual crack-hos do we ever really see?

I walked in with my amp and guitar and sat down near a window. The house band members were all fooling with a Casio keyboard. It sounded awful. A guy began playing The Entertainer. You know, maybe a keyboard player would play a few bars of that and there would be a chuckle or two and the joke would be over. This guy played the whole tune with fervor. And one of the worst keyboard sounds imaginable. It was like a slow death. This band could have been called White Trash. Then I overheard two guys talking (yelling) to each other about a mutual friend that was doing five years in the big house. They seemed to be delighted. One of these guys had one of those truck driver kidney belts on and a special harness that held a CD player right in the middle of his lumbar region. When it was shift change time, the new bar maid walked in with her poorly died dark red hair. As she walked past, she smiled a semi-toothless smile at me. She looked like I would imagine a "crack-ho" to look like.

I left before the house band started to play.