03-30-11 In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina

03-30-11
In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina
158.8 Miles
I get up after a second drizzle subsides just about 7:10am and load the contents of the tent into the car. The last item in, besides myself is the tent. About 17 minutes for everything. I drive up to take a shower and by the time I’m out it’s raining in earnest. I drive the route I’d seen from two days before to get to the radio station WUNC. Farrington Road to old Farrington Road to Farrington Mills to US 62 to Friday Circle. This is a picture map in my mind but I have no concept of distances. The road I’m on leaving the Park is easy, Farrington road - turn right. I know that someplace to the north I am driving on a bridge across water for a good distance, so I have that to look forward to and use as a marker. I’m listening to the radio just aster 8:15am and I hear a traffic report from the morning DJ’s about “pigs spilling out the back of a truck on I-40” during the morning commute backing up traffic near Airport Blvd where I spent the first two nights in NC. Rain is steady and medium heavy, windshield wipers on full. Traffic behind me knows the road better than I and moves along at a faster clip than I am willing to go. I pull over several times along the two lane to let the more insistent drivers to move along. I’m looking for the road that veers right and north, Old Farrington Rd. and am suddenly I’m disoriented by passing a big road that veered of to the right and north before I could see it’s name…and another expanse across water! Didn’t I do this already? I don’t remember two on on my mental map. Will I have to double back to find out the name of that road? But as I approach land again I’m relieved to see a sign that says “Farrington Point”. I do know that that is the north end of my water passage, so I am still on track. And once I find Old Farrington the rest is simple. I get to the Friday Circle turn with little trouble other than commute time traffic. At least I wasn’t caught behind “Pigs on a Blacktop”.
I am searching for WUNC radio studios in a vast assemblage of buildings and see a likely looking building and I pull to a side road that seems to lead directly there, but I’m wrong. It lead beside a day care facility and my care nearly has it’s axels broken by what at first I take for speed bumps, but realize just in time they are the concrete block that you see in supermarket lots to prevent you from doing a drive thru. “Speed blocks“?
Anyway, I’m forced to back out and turn around and as I do, to my left, I see the sign for WUNC Radio studios. Eureka, . I found it! (By pure dumb luck. I get a lot of that these days. I’ll take it!) Getting out of her car in the rain is a woman and I ask here if she knows of a McDonalds or Starbucks nearby ,I explain I’m doing a radio interview at 2pm on “The Story’ and I’m looking for a place with WiFi to wait out the time after she suggests there’s a Hardee’s nearby. Oh, If you take Friendly place across 62 and go into “the Meadows” ther’se a place called Café Carolina that has WiFi! I thank her and make my way over. A spot is available right in front. I park and get out my computer and work until the rain lets up and I get hungry. It’s just after 12:30 and I go in and get a croissant. Then we drive back to WUNC. I figure I’ll wait outside in the parking lot until they want me at 1:45. Not too long a wait.. Then I notice on the visitor parking sign “By Permit Only”. I walk Mischa briefly (much to her relief) while I mull that over. I decide to see if I need to have the permit. I walk in and the receptionist is very nice and offers not just the permit but to let us sit inside. Its’ way warmer than the car and I know Micha would like the warmth that the car only provides when I run the engine and the heat disappears nearly as soon as I turn it off. This is a much better option. Everyone loves Mischa! Steinbeck was right again! My contact for the show was Phoebe Judge and they said they’d notify her that I was there. One of her colleagues brought us back to a room until Phoebe was available. She was a dog person and just adored Mischa from the look of things. I was happy for Mischa to get so much attention. Our communing time and play time sometimes goes by the wayside by the pragmatic needs of the day. So anytime she gets the star treatment by others, that warms my heart. I love that she is so easy in most people’s company.
Phoebe came out and it seemed that rather than waiting for 2pm that we’d be setting up for the interview in just a few minutes. That worked great for me because I plans for shelter tonight involved driving down to Charlotte after the interview and, depending on when I got there, either finding my way to the radio station he works at, or, If I get there early enough, to his home.
I get into the studio and meet Dick Gordon, the host of the radio show. He is a welcoming man. I’d not been familiar with the show, but when I was down in Orlando, it was my friend, Bob Allen who suggested the show. And, it was he, who wrote the show about me and got Phoebe’s attention. And when she called my last week when I was on my last days in Hilton Head, it was a welcomed surprise.
An engineer is working setting up a mike for where I’ll be sitting. I’m getting a few bits of information and Dick is saying high to Mischa. I’m handed a printout of something I wrote from before I actually left California. It is an ok excerpt, but I dread having to read it aloud. I’m terrible at reading aloud. Memorization, doing theater, no problem. But reading unrehearsed is always a problem for me. With my ADD, the words are just a bunch of characters on a page - I have to translate them into meaning. And I stumble over words as I try to get the context. I mean I wrote the damn thing and I still couldn’t get it right. My own dam fault. I wrote “had had” in a sentence. As in “I once had had that problem” or some other similar structure. It makes since when you say it, but when you read it…it just looks like a typo.
And it wasn’t one of the better passages I’ve written. It was also way early on. I’d intended to make a comment about how “Home” means differently to different people and how that concept was changed for me. Also that the habits we create in our homes and the possessions we have begin to “Own” us, or put us into easy habits that we fall into without thinking. And that can sometimes become exhausting.
The engineer has a boom on the mike that will hold and I play Goldilocks with three chairs until get one that’s “just right” or just right enough for the session.
We settle in to the interview and
Dick makes you feel comfortable from the onset. The questions can be a bit challenging and I’m feeling the onset of exhaustion from the anticipation, hyper-vigilance during the night (waiting for rain) and the effect of the morning’s rain on me. My brain won’t bring up some of the thinks I’m searching for. I’ve already given p that my voice (at least to me) sounds moronic - As Mark Thompson of the Mark & Brian radio show in LA once said “You’ve got a bit of an “Eyore” voice going there.” I can only rely on the Yardbirds & Mic D’Obo “Can you tell a wise man, by the way he speaks or spells? Is this more important, than the stories that he tells? Or call a man a fool, if for wealth he doesn’t strive? Well then, Mister, you’re a better man than I.”
We come to the end of the interview and they tell me they’ll notify me when It will air, I can link the pod cast to my site and they might like a followup interview someplace along the road. It’s all good news for me. The whole interview Mischa was lying on my leg in the the chair as quiet as can be. I think she shook here head once and that jingled her collar, other than that, it was just my changing legs as they would start to fall asleep, that might have caused noise thru my microphone.
And to top it off, I was done at 2PM and the rain was now more just fog or mist. Smooth sailing back to Charlotte.
I call my friend Lindsay along the way, he’s decided to unscheduled himself from work and he’ll be home. I get there about 5pm and it’s good to see him again. Lindasy is one of the few guy I can talk music with who never gets lost. In fact he’s often further ahead than I am.I met him on Facebook via an old Licorice Pizza buddy, Bryan Thomas, who worked with Linday on All Music Guide as a reviewer. AMG is like the IMDB of music (AMG also stands for All Movie Guide - but for movies, I go to IMDB). Bryan Thomas had Lindasy in his friends list and he referred me to him once plus I’d read his comments on Bryan’s page several times. We became fast friends. On a trip to California I finally met him and I took him to see Michael Bloomfield’s burial site and he lead me to Dennis Wilson’s last hang out Chez Jays!
Lindasy is welcoming and as soon I Mischa & I get a few things in he takes me to a local legend Eatery called R.O.’s (http://rosbbq.com/) He order’s me two pork slaw BBQ burgers -sliced and minced. I almost can’t get thru the sliced one And there‘s hush puppies and Tea! Delish!
After that he takes me by his “record store“ Manifest Discs“ It‘s like an old Tower Records! Huge and full of music and movies and misc. collectables.
We get back to his place and go to his office - floor to ceiling cds! Boxes of signed cd’s! It’s like dreams I had as a kid about finding a vault full of every comic book I’d ever wanted…but in CD’s! His system is alphabetical…but only in general letter. Steely Dam can be scattered in various places in the “S” area. I can appreciate the opportunity this stratagem provides for spontaneous surprise, but if you want to FIND something fast…it proves futile…unless you’re Lindasy. “I know were I put them.” he says, but a few instances demonstrate that even he has problems at times finding the desired disc.
We talk into the late evening and Lindsay gets a few calls. The night winds down and so do I. Mischa was out long before. I get some good news before calling it a night. Another FB friend in the next state I’m heading to, David Hungate can meet up with me in Nashville! A good end to a very long but remarkable day.