Aqua Chautauqua Journal Episode Ten Tour’s End
Port Angeles, Washington, USA
I suppose there is no way to end this episodic saga of the New Old Time Chautauqua Eau Canada Tour without mentioning sausages. Honestly, I’ve been trying to avoid it, but then it became a thing, you know the way things sometimes become “A THING”. So I guess I will have to deal with it.
It starts out with a very generous man in Port Alberni who owns a sausage company (Hertel’s) and donates what seems like an infinite amount of frozen sausage to the Chautauqua kitchen. In order to thank him and his company the Chef asks me to take a company banner down to where we are doing a teaser show and display it to show his generosity.
Of course, I think I’m too clever for this sort of thing so instead of just putting up the banner (it’s on a spring-loaded rollup with a tall pole) I decide to walk right into the show, where Paul Magid is giving his little promotional talk about the tour. I interrupt him and I say:
“Hey there Dmitri, I was just wondering. Have you had your Hertel’s sausage today?”
He just loves to be interrupted like that, so we do a little impromptu routine. Afterward everyone thinks I am the actual representative of the sausage company.
How do I get myself into this stuff? Trying to be clever, that’s how.
Ok, it might not seem that funny, but in reality we end up eating Hertel’s sausage at almost every meal for the next three weeks. Yes, there was THAT much sausage. In fact at the show on Saturna Island we actually raffled off something like 16 lbs of excess sausage. To one lucky winner. May he rest in peace.
Well the sausage and three weeks of touring finally catches up to me in the lobby of the Field Performing Arts Hall just before the LAST Big Show.
It all comes together after another epic ferry shuffle, packing up the show and the trailer and the equipment truck in the dark on Saturna and getting everyone up to make a 6:10 AM ferry to Swartz Bay (if we miss this ferry the Port Angeles show is toast). All of it going so well but then the big van and cook trailer stop for gas on the way to Victoria and on the way out to the highway hit a sharp curb and split both tires on the starboard side. No problem, we have spares. No problem the spares are flat. No problem we will just buy two new tires. No problem they are only available in Victoria. No problem we will send someone to get the tires, come all the way back, put them on the trailer and drive to the 3PM Blackball Ferry to take us back across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and show up in time to do the Big Show.
Again, I have very little do do with this, but while I am waiting in the ferry line to get on the international ferry I am once again amazed when the bus, the trailer, the truck all show up within about 2 minutes of losing their reservation on the ferry. When I walk up to the bus and shake my head at the bus driver he leans out the driver’s window and smiles.
“No problem,” he says.
Gosh damn I am so glad that this tour is almost over.
It’s VERY exciting folks. The marching band is down to about 10 people. I have to give up my beloved cymbals to play the base drum. I haven’t played the base drum since about 1996 when they finally fired me from the band (I could not hold a steady beat) and then relented to let me play the cymbals (“Just not too often and not too loud” the band leader told me). But what the heck. I’m finally going to have fun with it.
Okay, the last big show.
It’s in the Field Arts and Event’s Hall. This is a beautiful modern theater where real people pay real money for real tickets. This is not some ball-field where we are passing the hat after the show. There is a different kind of expectation here. They are expecting to see The Flying Karamazov Brothers. You know, like the famous ones who did the broadway shows. The ones who did the movies. You know, THOSE, Flying Karamazov Brothers. They, the audience, is expecting to see a show that deserves the $30 they paid to get in the door.
Oh well. All I can do is my best.
So we are gathered in the lobby of the theatre, the marching band, the jugglers, the clowns, everyone very quiet as we prepare to make our big entrance and parade down the aisles playing the Chumlieghland March. The Executive Director of Field Hall is making the usual before show pronouncements. Shoooossshhhhh, everyone. Wait, wait…
Which is the moment when my diet, my stress, my bad knee, my total life on tour, everything is suddenly summed up in one large and voluminous moment of flatulence.
I can’t stop farting. I don’t mean little piccolo farts, or even clarinet farts. No, not even trumpet farts, or trombone farts. No, my friends these are big beautiful bass drum sausage farts and they are coming in groups of four, maybe five and the whole percussion section is looking at me and everyone is trying to step away and the band leader is still trying to quiet everyone, and the executive director keeps droning on about upcoming shows and yes, yes, I just keep loudly farting.
Will this then be my legacy? After coming through all of this?
Possibly. The show goes off okay, it was not our best effort, everyone is pretty exhausted and Artis the Spoonman has returned and he exhorts the kids in the audience to “Not let yourself be SPANKED” and I’m sitting in the back of the band wondering: ‘just how does his mind work?”
But you know, it’s all okay. I play the base drum with gusto, because it just doesn’t matter anymore, and we end the show with a big Kumbaya moment singing an old Faith Petric song and everyone is smiling and I have finally stopped farting. Even though Our British Friend is no longer speaking to me, I feel okay. Somehow purged. Somehow relieved that I made it all the way through the whole tour.
Everything gets thrown in the back of our Euro-van, and it is a big pile, and it is now pretty late and I’ve decided to beat the heavy summer afternoon heat of I-5 South by driving home at night.
In dressing room number 2, I find Dimitri Karamazov, and Professor Noodilini, and the lovely Clown Kristin and I give them all a goodbye hug and I say something like I will see them again, and maybe I even will. I have to drag Our British Friend away because she is now all-in, like she has found her tribe, like she has found the true meaning of life on the Aqua Chautauqua Tour.
It can be like that.
The Eurvovan starts right up and in a moment we are back on the road, on the outskirts of Port Angeles, then down the track of the Olympic Peninsula on Highway 101, driving south in the coolness of the dark under starry skies.
Finally heading home into the night.