Saturday, April 17, 2010

Camden Park

This story picks up where Trauma Car: The Legend Continues left off.
The tailpipe was still dragging on my pumpkin-orange 1978 Ford Fiesta (aka Trauma Car). I needed the car for the 125 miles back to Lexington and didn't want to drive it to Huntington. Steve didn't have a car. We decided to drop by to see Sara, his (married) best friend from high school.

Sara and Ronnie rented a double-wide in a trailer park between Prestonsburg and Martin. Sara was a cheerleader/wild child in high school. Ronnie was the high school bad boy--hot, a little rough and just a tad scary. Sara and Ronnie had no plans and a full tank of gas. Within the hour we were loaded up and on the way to Camden Park.

Thirty years ago Camden Park resembled a traveling carnival or county fair more than an amusement park. There was a small roller coaster and maybe a log plume but the rest of the rides were portable. The park was packed because of great weather, the holiday, and the promise of a big-name entertainer.

I don't mean to be unkind but this was one homely bunch of people. Everyone in the park wore blue jeans and too-tight white or black t-shirts featuring a Harley Davidson logo, liquor, a rebel flag, or some rock or country band. Many were the nearly transparent three-for-ten-dollar variety.

Out of nowhere the sky opened up. Rain came down in solid sheets for a good ten or fifteen minutes. There was no shelter anywhere. Getting soaked to the skin rarely improves one's appearance. Once-white t-shirts turned transparent. The images still haunt me.

We headed to the amphitheater to catch the big-name entertainer. We had great seats, close enough to reach out and touch anyone on stage. The excitement was palpable. Suddenly he was standing right in front of us. We were just yards away from big-name entertainer...Freddie Fender.

It was the saddest performance I've ever seen. The first thing he did was turn around and shake his middle-aged booty. We gave up our front-row seats after the first song and returned to the park.

We opted not to stay for the fireworks and left. After all, we were in the big city. The night was still young, and so were we.

To be continued...

2 comments:

CathyB said...

Hello, COM!! Thanks for your concern about me! I popped over to your blog the other day and realized that I had missed out on a plethora of posts. I've just now gotten back to where I can sit in front of a computer screen for any measurable period of time without getting either nauseated or a headache from hell.

Camden Park was the last entry I read before my surgery, and I am dying to read the rest of the story!!!

You absolutely have a book or two in you. I love your writing style! If you don't try authoring a book, you need to at least print your blog, like you printed T&Ts. Have you ever read anything by Jill Connor-Browne? She is an absolutely hilarious, irreverent, very wise, Mississippi girl who writes The Sweet Potato Queen series of books. You should check the library for some of her books. look at amazon or some of the other book sites to see some of the outrageous titles of her books. i swear, she is one of the funniest authors i've ever read, and men and women alike love her. she has a huge following and women all over the world have little Sweet Potato Queen chapters of their own and flock to Jackson MS every st paddy's day for a .... well, i'll let you read about it for yourself. i think you'd enjoy her books.

now i'm going to warm up my most delicious bowl of onion soup from Inoko's and enjoy 15 mL every 15 minutes. dang. i've been thinkin', though. A margarita should qualify as "clear liquid", doncha think??? thanks again for noticing my absence. cathyb

CathyB said...

CORRECTION: Paragraph 3 says "...women all over the world.."

should have said "women all over the U.S"

(I'm sure you figured that out, but.... let's just blame it on post-anesthesia brain fuzzies.)

 
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