Thursday, October 4, 2007

holler and swaller

I guess I know I'm busy when I can't get a post about my weekend out until Thursday and even then it's a shotty job. I took some pictures, but the effort to post them is too much.

Here is an idea of my weekend: On Friday evening, Aaron and I went to something called a Buckwheat Festival. Buckwheat seems to be a major food source here. They make these buckwheat cakes, that taste a lot like the most plain pancake ever to grace your plate. We ate some in the city hall of a small town and listened to Appalachian music. The band had at least 7 members and one of them played the washboard.

My dog wasn't feeling that well, he had a tummy ache because I'm pretty sure he took a taste of a dead toad in the driveway, so I stayed up all night with him because I thought it might be serious. But it wasn't. So I got no sleep and we went looking at houses from 9am to 4pm and that was pretty much my Saturday. We didn't really find anything. We told our friend that we'd go see his band play. They were playing in this insane roadhouse-type bar on the side of a desolate road. First, the band: it was a 70's cover band and the singer was around 5 feet tall and did all kinds of wild moves like Robert Plant (who, I found out later, is his major inspiration in life). It was so funny. He made everyone all riled up and dancy. All of these really old biker guys were out on the dance floor living it up. They had the moves. I would have taken pictures, but I noticed that most of them had knives strapped to their belts and there were heads of more than one kind of animal on the walls (Michigan people, this won't phase you).

On Sunday my landlady had a bbq and Ruby Jean and Bobby from a local band called the Weedhawks came and played music around the campfire. Ruby plays the fiddle. We're in the middle of the woods, with a campfire and fireflies and mountains all around, and they're playing this old-time music. Again, I felt very Appalachian.

2 comments:

Dusty said...

I think you just described pretty much every bar in the U.P. You may have to add that the majority of the bar is wearing blaze orange or camo though.

Unknown said...

hahaha
at least you have music, sounds wonderful. i hope alf is ok. we had this cd release party thing for robert plant aT THE LL the other day. we are in sync...