When I was in college, my friend Cherry and I decided to check it out (Note: Cherry is not her real name, but the name she chose for herself for me to use for blogging purposes. She would also like her fake last name to be Ginger. I don't know what this says about her.)
So me and Cherry Ginger buy our tickets and head over to the picnic. We were excited to see Willie, of course, but we were mostly excited to see our most favorite, semi-famous, local country hero, Pat Green. If you don't know who Pat Green is, do yourself a favor and look him up.
Cherry and I loved, loved, loved Pat Green. Pat was just famous enough to be cool, but not famous enough yet that he still had to play frat parties. So we felt like he was our own personal country music celebrity. We just knew that if we got close enough to the stage he would recognize us (why?) and probably pull us up on stage (again, why?).
We arrived as the gates opened at 10 AM, per our tickets. Since this was one of our first big music festivals we didn't yet know that the crap bands come on early and that Pat, let alone Willie, would not take the stage until late into the night. We really thought that we'd walk in and Pat would be there waiting for us.
He wasn't. In fact, not many people were there yet. The vendors were still setting up, I think they were still unloading the Port-o-Potties. Never mind, we were undeterred. This just meant we'd get primo seats! We were going to have fun!
So we pulled out our beach towels and made camp next to a hippie looking couple with a baby. The hippies were not sitting on beach towels. They were not actually sitting on anything. We observed that they had brought their baby to an outdoor festival and were sitting with him in the dirt. We immediately began judging them.
We noticed that they also didn't have a diaper bag, or sunscreen or water for the baby whose name we heard was....wait for it...ELVIS! Apparently naming him was the only thing they got right.
"Poor Baby Elvis," we kept saying under our breath. As two very good nannies, we knew that babies needed things. Lots of things. Like diapers and food. And, maybe a ball or something to play with during an all day music festival. They did mash bright orange earplugs in his head at one point, so I guess that was good of them. Other than that, Baby Elvis just crawled around in the dirt.
Then it started to rain.
It was okay though! We had smartly brought ponchos! We put them on and then sadly watched as Poor Baby Elvis' horrible parents put him in a trash bag with his head pocking out the top. The three of them were now sitting in mud. I would like to say we offered them our towels, but those were muddy too, so we just all sat in the mud and waited.
When the rain stopped, slowly people started to arrive, and the sun came out. See! We were going to have fun! Everything was okay!
All the people arriving were pretty hippy looking, and with them, were some of PBE's parents' friends who brought a big blanket. Now, thank God, PBE didn't have to crawl in the mud. Things were looking up for all of us.
Then a band took the stage, and they were pretty hippy looking too. Turns out, The Dead was the opening band. Yes, as in The Grateful Dead. Only without Jerry, they're just The Dead, no longer grateful.
Cherry was excited. Her dad had gone to Woodstock and she had grown up listening to the The Grateful Dead. I was less familiar with their music, and I really just wanted to see Pat Green, but hey, we were having fun! I was keeping an open mind!
If you like The Dead, grateful or otherwise, I'm really sorry, but they're terrible. It turns out I do not like The Dead. In fact, I hate them. I am not grateful at all. The first song was fine, but it lasted an hour. It was just one long song with psychedelic pictures projected on a screen behind the band. The second song lasted another hour.
I was becoming less open minded, but Cherry was just laying on our towels, grooving right along with the hippies. Just as I was about to lose it, they stopped playing their forever song and left the stage. I was relieved, but acted like I had kind of enjoyed the whole thing. A new experience!
But then...they came back. Turns out, the next band didn't show up due to the weather, but not to worry, The Dead was happy to keep on playing! They played, and played and played. The hippies twirled, and I got more and more pissed off.
This was not why I was here. I was here to see Pat Green and Willie Nelson, not listen to The Dead for hours in the mud. At one point I was so angry I got up to find someone in charge. I don't know who I thought that would be or what they would do, but I wanted some answers, damn it!
The closest approximation of an authority figure I could find was a bored security guard who said he didn't even know who Pat Green was, and no he didn't know what time he would play. I think I cried a little.
When I got back to our blankets, Cherry was veeeerrrrry relaxed. She had made friends with some of the hippies while I was gone. For some reason this made me even more angry. Maybe because she was having fun and I was not having fun, I don't know. Angrily, I took a nap.
When I woke up, The Dead had stopped playing and the sun was out again. Cherry brought me some ice cream. Baby Elvis' parents gave him some ice cream too.
Finally, it started to get dark, and around 8:00 Pat took the stage. We were so thrilled! None of the hippies knew a single song, and we were the only ones standing up in our little group of people, but we didn't care. It was our turn to twirl!
When Willie joined Pat, the whole crowd went bananas. Even the hippies were singing "On the Road Again." We were all sunburned and muddy, we had survived four hours of The Dead- literally they played for four hours- and we were all going to sing our little hearts out.
And really, isn't that the miracle of Willie Nelson? He can unite the hippies and the cowboys. We all love him, and we all have a piece of him in our hearts. As the show ended to fireworks celebrating a glorious Fourth of July, we were one- Poor Baby Elvis, the hippies, The Dead, Pat, Willie, Cherry and me. It was lovely, and for that, I was truly grateful.
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