Back to Babylon

Since I last posted, I have been out of touch with Babylon.  Or, in some people’s view, I may have been immersed in Babylon. Sleeping in a group house. Drinking mead. Singing and dancing with hippies.  They don’t define themselves as hippies, but then neither did we all those many years ago.  The road trip from Eastwind to Twin Oaks was….nothing you can describe in a nutshell.  Five people, 3 back packs, three suitcases, 2 duffle bags, 3 guitars, a banjo, a banjolina, a rifle, a fishing rod plus all the stuff I had originally brought along.

It was a tight fit, and each time we had to stop for a pit stop or a puke stop, I had to get out and haul out the suitcases which were stacked in top of each other between their seat and the door.

We rolled into McMinnville, TN about midnight.  Matt’s grandparents were up and waiting and had soup on the stove.  The soup was canned green beans, corn and carrots (the kind that are cut into little squares) and was served with saltines, but it was so good after 10 hours of nothing.  Matt’s grandparents were a caricature of the low-income south.  Sweet as you could want, amazing hospitality, angels and Jesus on the walls, playing Gospel guitar and an accent so thick, all I could do was smile and nod.  Great sense of humor, though.  A cartoon on the cabinet was of two, very large people talking to someone with the caption, “We sleep in separate bedrooms so the trailer doesn’t tip over.”

We went to bed after a bit of chat, since we had to get up at 4:30am to make it to Twin Oaks by the time Wren had to do her work shift.  It was a double wide, but barely.  Sabrina made the observation that if we were to all die that night, the authorities would have a hard time figuring out what was going on.  Grandma and grandson in one bedroom, grandpa and son in another bedroom and two middle aged women and two hippies laid out in a row on the floor.

The next leg of the trip was less crowded, since Matt stayed behind.  I became very aware of sense of smell, which usually is my least perceptive sense.  Peanut butter, jalepenos and 3 different types of musk were predominant.