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wild wonderful Waverly weekend

Listening to:	crickets and cicadas
Reading:	Grave Matters
Weather:	74, lovely

Things aligned nicely making possible another awesome gathering of my St Marys peeps this weekend. Got the call from Fred Barley last weekend, it's a shindig, Titties will be in town. Woot! I had a conference to attend all day in Fairmont at the high tech consortium building, so I would just need to get my shit together the night before so I could keep on trucking toward Waverly from there(just upriver from St Marys).

Busy work week, several evenings busy, too, and thursday night I didn't get home till almost 11p after driving home from the WVU parents club meeting in Philippi at AB College and then driving Liv home to Morgantown, then finally heading back to my house. Too tired to pack, so I set my sights on getting up early Friday morning. No prob, rolled out, packed the car with some camping gear. No EZup cuz there are plenty of massive sugar maples for shade at Connie and Stacie's, and no rain expected. Pack a couple head of cabbage and some onions. Head out at 7:30a for the NASA complex at Fairmont.

So far so good. Conference groovy, hung out with some of the usual suspects (a great benefit of living somewhere for a long time), got out on time, continued south on 79 toward Bridgeport, sun shining, a little hot but sticking my hand out the window to ride the wind currents cooled me off just enough. Caught 50 west, a nice wide slightly curvy highway with the usual very few cars to share it with.

Stopped in St Marys to pick up some beer and hummus and chips. Beer: yes, hummus: not in this tiny burgh. You can get Yeungling lager and light lager, but you will not be finding any hummmus up in here, so give that up. A'ight, keep on trucking. Hit Rt 2 west, through Belmont and Eureka, pass through the shadows of the giant parabolas at Willow Island, past the groovy deco era old station/post office closed for years with the embossed tin ceilings all but rusted out by now, here comes Waverly. Take a right toward the river, which Rt 2 has been closely following, cross the railroad tracks (look both ways!), and there they are! My buddies are sitting in their camp chairs enjoying cold beers and catching up. Sweeeeeet!

There's food on the table in the yard, someone grabs my beers and stashes them in a cooler for me, hugs all around! Pull my chair out of the car and chillax, it's the weekend. Then Fred and Pam pull out guitar and fiddle and Willie pulls out a guitar to join. The musical ice is broken, let the real fun begin.

We take turns leading the songs, John Prine, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Petty, James Taylor, the Carpenters, old country, vocal pop one-hit wonders, a downhome Zepgrass acoustic version of Rock and Roll, the variety is just delicious.

But the latenight belongs to Donnie and the Beatles. The lager and the buds are making me sleepy, but I'm like a 3 year old who just won't go to sleep for fear of missing something awesome. There are kind memories shared about favorite teachers and friends who have died, a little talk about our jobs but not much, we revisit a few hilarious stories about our younger wilder days. We look forward to our gathering at Pipestem this fall, and plan one or two in the interim here or in Hamlin. Me: "I'm getting bug bit, what are these tiny bugs?" Patsy: "Pecker gnats." Mike: What's the real name for them? Patsy: "Penis gnats?" Come on, one more song, sing it pretty. One more. One more. Just one more. One by one we each eventually find a tent or a camper or a bed and the temperature is in the low 60's, perfect for sleeping, I crash about 2:45a.

I had carefully positioned my tent so as to keep the sun off it as late as possible there above the riverbank. The sun hasn't hit it yet, but I wake up and hear a quiet voice or two, somebody's up. I roll out, smell coffee, grab a chair under the awning and sit with the early folk, it's about 7:30a. I get a shower and when I come out breakfast is cooking. Fred is laying out the strategy for the work party today, he's head of the Veesion Committee.

We commence to all manner of lifting, moving, brush cutting, branch trimming, carpet cleaning, burning, demolishing, power washing, and whatnot. After a few breaks and admiring our beautiful outcomes, we start preparing lunch. While the chicken and corn are cooking and Pam and Connie are cutting up fruit we swap some veggies we brought from our gardens, and load a few new old treasures from the junk pile into our cars and trucks. Your trash can be my treasure! Even though I have a little Honda Civic, the back seat goes down and I wedge some shelfy thing into the trunk and scarf a few promotional rain ponchos from a local school.

After some lunching, some more planning, and just a little more working, I start making noise about heading home. My mom is expected in the morning, I need to do a little house scrubbing and whatnot. Hugs all around, I'm a little sweaty and tired and sunburnt, I slowly leave the gravel driveway and cross the tracks and head back east with the sun behind me. Life is so good here in WV, where people are happy to have an opportunity to help a friend and share food and drink and smoke around a nice summer campfire.

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