The Backyard Dusk

My Buckner summer vacation

So a couple weeks ago a buddy and I spent 8 days roaming around the vast American west in a rental car with an "unlimited miles" provision. We returned the car with 5,400 more miles than it had when we left. Yes, 5,400 miles . . .in 8 days.

We brought an absurd amount of music with us, and it was a good thing because, well, there's lots of time to listen to music when you're driving 5,400 miles.

Anyway, thought y'all might enjoy this story:The first day we drove from St. Louis to Casper, Wyoming (approx. 1,100 miles). As you might imagine, this was a loooong day of driving, and as we hit midnight, we were both exhausted (the endless prairies of Nebraska will suck the energy right of out you after a few hours in their vortex). But we plowed onward north to Casper on I-25. Perhaps out of subconscious instinct, or maybe destiny, we threw on Buckner's Since.

From the first note of "Believer," this record held us in rapture -- we were awake and alert again. Some records have places and times in which they sound utterly and completely PERFECT. Apparently for Since, it is I-25 at 1:30am on the road to Casper, with its giant Wyoming plains, foothills, and gulleys being lit up occasionally by thunderheads off in the distance on either side of the lonely interstate.

So it was a thing of transcendent beauty when "Ocean Cliff Clearing" came on and we heard the following lyrics: "Showboat Motel, Casper night, the river was high and losing . . . " The Showboat Motel! If such a place existed, THIS is where we would finally stop for the night. As the last notes of "Once" played at the end of this gorgeous album, we pulled into Casper, as empty a city as you will find in America late at night. We rounded hills and corners of the interstate hoping to catch some sign of this mysterious, legendary Showboat Motel.

We had all but given up as we came around the last bend in the interstate through Casper, when there it was with its beautifully kitschy neon paddlewheel gleaming in the night -- the Showboat Motel! Right on the banks of the lovely North Platte River (which was not high or losing, by the way).

We got ourselves a room for the night (unsurprisingly, the night attendant had never heard of Richard Buckner or "Ocean Cliff Clearing," but he did offer us free coffee in the morning). We asked for the "sick room suite" (referenced in the beginning of the song), but he said he'd never heard of such a thing. The room was quite comfortable and we enjoyed our stay so much that we considered making it a "10-Day Room," but alas, the road beckoned, so on we went up I-25 to Montana and beyond.

We decided to dedicate our daily "Mad Lib" ritual to Buckner (all blanks would be filled with Buckner lyrics and phrases), and here's what we came up with (blanks are in all caps):

"Specialty of the House"
Here is chef MR. KESSLER's award-BOBBING recipe for roast BIG BLUE of MONSTER: Choose a BIG BLUE weighing about 27 KNOCKANDO ROLLERS. Remove excess HOOKER OAK TREES. Add 5 cloves of garlic, peeled and JEWEL-BOMBED. Season with 2 tablespoons of chopped HALF SHELL BBQ. Add a tablespoon of RAINSQUALL. Sprinkle with a touch of LIL salt. Add a pinch of ground TOOLEY MUNI ISLAND NIGHT. Cook at 350 SOMA ROOMS for 22 minutes. Remove from the oven when the skin is BLUE AND WONDER. Serve with mashed FATERS and a SHOWBOAT MOTEL CASPER NIGHT.

There were, of course, other transcendent album moments on the trip (like listening to "California" on Farrar's Terroir Blues after we spent the day walking around Mission Street and Chinatown in San Francisco), but none quite as sublime as the Showboat Motel.

-- Nate "even after extensive driving in the Pacific Northwest, I am sad to report that there were no Sasquatch sightings" Woodard
(nate_woodard [a t] msn.com)
July 29, 2003