I guess what I'm a-sayin' is there ain't no better reason
In retrospect, I really should have known better. What has history taught us about hippies, if not that once they have gathered it takes police dogs and firehoses to disperse them? What, after all, was a simple free Flogging Molly concert in the face of peace and tranquility and sitting in a circle while humming in unison? Oh, be reasonable, I thought to myself. They'll go for Flogging Molly.
On Thursday, Ben, the friend from work responsible for my interest in the Israel thing, mentioned that there was an Irish festival over in St. Paul this weekend, and Flogging Molly was doing free concerts, and would I like to go? Uh, tchyeah. Tchyeah I would like to go. But, he warned, he wasn't quite sure how we would be getting rides over there, and he'd be going to some little shindig outside the capitol first, so I'd have to come along to that, too.
Well, that was no biggie. I'm used to dubious travel plans, and when I asked what the thing at the capitol was, he made vague but reassuringly bland references to meditation and discussions. All right, I figured. They'll contemplate existence for a while, discuss universal enlightenment, and I'll read my book at a reasonable distance. Then we'll look at our watches, let out a collective "Oh!" and prance lightly over to the Irish Fair. And all will be fabulous.
I made it through the hour of meditation just fine, armed with my book and a fit of wanderlust. The group I'd arrived with dispersed to meditate in solitude, which suited me fine, so I wandered until I found a decent stopping point, which worked out to be a statue of Charles Lindbergh, and then sat down and read. After a while one leg fell asleep and the rest of me decided I was hungry, so I put the book away and dragged my sleeping leg along on a journey to find food. After a number of false starts and misdirections (where but St. Paul do you ever find a Sears that isn't part of a mall anymore? It's like I'm wired to see a Sears and automatically assume a food court cannot be far away, but this one was a lie) I spotted a White Castle.
My original thoughts, when I decided to go on a dinner hunt, were along the lines of "this is the capitol, it is filled with many people who want to eat sometimes. Where do they go?" I'm still not sure where the political elite of Minnesota go for a quick lunch, because it sure as hell ain't White Castle. Not that one, anyway. There's something just a bit discouraging about ordering a tiny hamburger from a surly man hiding behind bulletproof glass. It somehow took ages to crank out my order of one tiny burger and an enormous bag of fries, forever in a tiny White Castle with no ambient music and one despondent old man in a corner booth, staring out the window. I hadn't ordered a pop because I knew if I drank any I'd have to pee sooner or later, but when the manager handed me my food, apologized for the wait, and gave me a cup, I couldn't really turn it down.
So I walked back to the capitol lawn sipping vault and feeling very smug, in the hunter-gatherer sense. I had procured shelter (reading by the Lindbergh statue), I had procured food (not getting shot dead in a White Castle), and now I was going to procure musical entertainment (free Flogging Molly). Or not. I didn't have to walk very close to see that Ben's small group had swelled in number and were sitting in a circle. Oh, right. Discussion. Well, how long could that take? I sidetracked into another hunter-gatherer mission, which was to find a place to pee. Having just experienced a White Castle burger, I decided I probably didn't want to see what the White Castle bathrooms looked like, so I drifted over to Sears instead. It was half past seven by the time I headed back to see what the hippies were doing, and my heart sank a little bit when I realized that the only thing that had changed about them was that one of them was lying down and rolling away through the grass. I'm not sure why.
Ben tried to call me over to join the circle, but I declined and continued my own circling of the grounds. There are worse places to have to kill time, I think, than the state capitol. At least everything is very pretty. Eventually dusk won its tug-of-war with daylight, pulling twilight into darkness, and somewhere behind the clouds and city lights, the stars were out. Nate called, back in town for the first time since December, and I caught him up on the major points of Savers gossip he'd missed in his absence while the circle finally realized there was a free concert they were missing out on and I had to get Nate to look up directions to the place, which turned out to be almost useless. If you don't know where something is in St. Paul, you're probably never going to find it. It may have gotten Ventura in trouble, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that not only were the Irishmen responsible for city planning drunk, the livestock they hitched their carts to were drunk, too.
So, after all that, no Flogging Molly. Fortunately, they're doing two shows, Friday and Saturday, so Nate and I are going to try to find the place tonight.
Better luck this time, hopefully.
On Thursday, Ben, the friend from work responsible for my interest in the Israel thing, mentioned that there was an Irish festival over in St. Paul this weekend, and Flogging Molly was doing free concerts, and would I like to go? Uh, tchyeah. Tchyeah I would like to go. But, he warned, he wasn't quite sure how we would be getting rides over there, and he'd be going to some little shindig outside the capitol first, so I'd have to come along to that, too.
Well, that was no biggie. I'm used to dubious travel plans, and when I asked what the thing at the capitol was, he made vague but reassuringly bland references to meditation and discussions. All right, I figured. They'll contemplate existence for a while, discuss universal enlightenment, and I'll read my book at a reasonable distance. Then we'll look at our watches, let out a collective "Oh!" and prance lightly over to the Irish Fair. And all will be fabulous.
I made it through the hour of meditation just fine, armed with my book and a fit of wanderlust. The group I'd arrived with dispersed to meditate in solitude, which suited me fine, so I wandered until I found a decent stopping point, which worked out to be a statue of Charles Lindbergh, and then sat down and read. After a while one leg fell asleep and the rest of me decided I was hungry, so I put the book away and dragged my sleeping leg along on a journey to find food. After a number of false starts and misdirections (where but St. Paul do you ever find a Sears that isn't part of a mall anymore? It's like I'm wired to see a Sears and automatically assume a food court cannot be far away, but this one was a lie) I spotted a White Castle.
My original thoughts, when I decided to go on a dinner hunt, were along the lines of "this is the capitol, it is filled with many people who want to eat sometimes. Where do they go?" I'm still not sure where the political elite of Minnesota go for a quick lunch, because it sure as hell ain't White Castle. Not that one, anyway. There's something just a bit discouraging about ordering a tiny hamburger from a surly man hiding behind bulletproof glass. It somehow took ages to crank out my order of one tiny burger and an enormous bag of fries, forever in a tiny White Castle with no ambient music and one despondent old man in a corner booth, staring out the window. I hadn't ordered a pop because I knew if I drank any I'd have to pee sooner or later, but when the manager handed me my food, apologized for the wait, and gave me a cup, I couldn't really turn it down.
So I walked back to the capitol lawn sipping vault and feeling very smug, in the hunter-gatherer sense. I had procured shelter (reading by the Lindbergh statue), I had procured food (not getting shot dead in a White Castle), and now I was going to procure musical entertainment (free Flogging Molly). Or not. I didn't have to walk very close to see that Ben's small group had swelled in number and were sitting in a circle. Oh, right. Discussion. Well, how long could that take? I sidetracked into another hunter-gatherer mission, which was to find a place to pee. Having just experienced a White Castle burger, I decided I probably didn't want to see what the White Castle bathrooms looked like, so I drifted over to Sears instead. It was half past seven by the time I headed back to see what the hippies were doing, and my heart sank a little bit when I realized that the only thing that had changed about them was that one of them was lying down and rolling away through the grass. I'm not sure why.
Ben tried to call me over to join the circle, but I declined and continued my own circling of the grounds. There are worse places to have to kill time, I think, than the state capitol. At least everything is very pretty. Eventually dusk won its tug-of-war with daylight, pulling twilight into darkness, and somewhere behind the clouds and city lights, the stars were out. Nate called, back in town for the first time since December, and I caught him up on the major points of Savers gossip he'd missed in his absence while the circle finally realized there was a free concert they were missing out on and I had to get Nate to look up directions to the place, which turned out to be almost useless. If you don't know where something is in St. Paul, you're probably never going to find it. It may have gotten Ventura in trouble, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that not only were the Irishmen responsible for city planning drunk, the livestock they hitched their carts to were drunk, too.
So, after all that, no Flogging Molly. Fortunately, they're doing two shows, Friday and Saturday, so Nate and I are going to try to find the place tonight.
Better luck this time, hopefully.
posted by Betsi at 3:51 PM
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