This is a true story.  I wrote it last summer when all I did was keep scattered notes lying about.

My friend Keith and me played a small gig last July in Terre Hill, PA which is somewhere in the Bermuda triangle between New Holland and Ephrata.  The event was Terre Hill Days which is a weekend celebration of the hamlet.  It’s pronounced Terry and not terra as you might think.  So welcome to Terry Hill.

It’s about as small town America as you can get and it’s not the ” Coolest Small Town in America” which is Lititz, PA and what does that mean anyway?  There were a large number of plain people, new and old order mennonites and so there was a huge pile of bicycles which were stacked against a tree with not a bike lock in sight.  The kid who was running sound for us had a Macbook attached to the sound board and at one point he wandered away for lunch I guess but in any case he was gone for a good while.  The computer was not locked down and  it never budged one inch.  People walked by and noticed it and left it right there.  It didn’t grow legs and walk.

At this point I’m feeling as though I’m in some kind of time warp like back to 1950 something when everyone liked Ike.  While I’m daydreaming about all that I hear an announcement on the house PA for “Skydiving Bingo” and as Dave Barry might say, ” I’m not making this up.”

The deal is this – An ultralight plane flies over an open field where dozens of people are waiting below with Bingo cards.  The plane swoops down to about 100 feet above the ground and the pilot dumps a bucketful of bingo numbers printed on small pieces of paper over the crowd.  The crowd politely scampers around picking up numbers.  Then the plane comes around for a second pass and repeats the process.  This goes on a couple of more times until some lucky person shouts ” Skydiving Bingo” and the game is over.

I don’t know what first prize turned out to be as we were playing something like “Satin Doll.”  The music was out of place but it didn’t matter. I was out of place but that didn’t matter either and as the afternoon wore on I felt more comfortable and relaxed.  It was like being in Shangri-La or maybe Brigadoon.  I forgot to mention that we had a hard time finding a place to park because we arrived during the Outhouse races and the local ambulance was parked right behind the stage on standby in case a calamity occurred.  Thankfully all the participants and their vehicles survived the race.

So this some of what I plan to write, mostly true things that have happened and maybe some things that I make up.  I’ll be sure to tell which is which.  I can’t tell you exactly what this blog will be but I can tell you what it won’t be.  No puppies, kittens, no recipes or what I ate last week.  From ” Brigadoon,” Nat King Cole with an arrangement by the great Nelson Riddle.

Have a great day.