Bikes, Blues, and Bucky

Friday March 30

I have the rather sad task of returning my rental bike today to "Randy," the bike dealer at the Fleamasters flea market.

My vintage 1980s Murray "Westport" has been my trusted steed throughout my stay here, and has never let me down. I've missed having "gears" for a little faster transport on the more lengthy uninterrupted stretches of flat terrain.  However, the simplicity and durability of a coaster bike cannot be denied. I remove the custom seat I installed on the bike, and re-install the seat that came with it. Then I drive it over to the flea market, where Randy happily returns half my money -- $50 -- and says he will have no trouble reselling it. I have no use for the basket I bought to go with the bike -- $15 -- so I throw that in for free, along with the cushion handle bar grips that I bought.

I return to the condo, and start packing a few things, although tomorrow will be the major packing day. I also start  cleaning the condo in anticipation of Heather's inspection of the place tomorrow. The vacuum cleaner she has  provided me sucks -- or rather DOESN'T suck very well -- and it has no upholstery attachment for the hose, so the chairs and couch and sectional and area rug do not get very clean of all the cat hair. But I do the best I can, and at least suck up all the dust/cat hair bunnies that have accumulated in the corners.

(Heather will later assess me a $59 fee for having a maid come in to clean up the cat hair, and I assume the maid had her own vacuum cleaner. So mental note to myself and warning to those relatives thinking about traveling with cats: Most landlords are going to "get you" one way or another for your cats!)

Carol and I continue a few more emails and phone calls about our final "date" for this evening. I am to meet her at approximately 9 p.m. at a placed called“Buckingham Blues Bar,” which according to her can be a very fun place to go, dance, listen to music, etc. But that can vary, she warns, depending on who’s playing, what the crowd is like, etc. When I ask if she knows who's playing this evening, she has no idea.

The bar/club is in the town/village/hamlet (whatever) of Buckingham, which is northwest of Ft. Myers and out in the sticks a bit. The owner is apparently an avid blues patron and hosts regular blues festivals in his fenced-in patio/lawn in back of the bar. I later see that this space includes a HUGE deck area with an outdoor stage, and lots of picnic tables, lawn furniture, etc., to sit, along with a fire pit for colder nights. In the very rear of the property is a pen which houses "Bucky the Buckingham Mule," which is the bar's  mascot. So Carol informs me that, if I'm lucky, I'll get to meet him. (I can hardly wait!)

I head out to the bar at about 8 p.m. It is dark, so I set my GPS unit for the address, and it's a good thing. I would never have found this place without it. It's on a twisty, curvy road (perfect for the cops to pick off drunk drivers) and I've got cars on my ass who obviously are paying no heed to the 45mph speed limit.

I get to the place about 8:45 p.m., ahead of Carol, pay the $10 cover charge, stake out a table, order a beer, and watch the "band" finish setting up. I say "band" in quotes, because there are only three people. It is a guy by the name of Bobby Messano (on lead -- and only -- guitar, who apparently is the leader of this rather motley looking crew, and for whom the band is named). He will be accompanied this evening by a drummer and a bassman. All of them looked to be in their late 50s or early 60s, so they were all seasoned musicians. Bobby, in particular, looks like he's got about a million miles on him, and he's got the "no hair in front, but back hair down to this shoulders" thing going on, and he bears an uncanny resemblance to porn star Ron Jeremy.

OK, folks, I know extremely little about blues. There's B.B. King, and everybody else. That's what I know. I guess Messano is somewhat famous in the “blues circles,” but I’d never heard of him. So for a $10 cover charge -- to see what amounts to a trio -- I'm hoping they're passable and at least play some stuff that you can dance to, seeing as how Carol wants to dance.

Carol shows up. She is very tastefully dressed, by the way, in black pants and black blouse with a deep V-neck showing some nice cleavage. So still a little daring, perhaps, but no catwoman costume, thankfully.

She is taken aback that there is $10 cover charge, saying in all the times she has been here, there has never been a cover. So I pay her cover charge as an act of chivalry and tell her not to worry about it ... and that this Messano guy is supposed to be pretty good. She tells me she's never heard of them either. I order up a Bud for Carol, and a fresh one for myself.

They hit their opening number, and they are so earsplittingly loud that Carol covers her ears, and in a short time goes outside and retrieves some earplugs from her car. (OK, show of hands ... anyone out there customarily travel with earplugs in their car? .... Anyone? ... Bueller? ... No, didn't think so. I ask Carol about this, and she says that sometimes she works security patrol at rock concerts located in venues within the Edison College camputs. So there you go.

While Bobby and his two others were very talented, musically, is was not dance music. They were doing a lot riffing, tempo changes, etc. A lot of his songs had long introductions where he’d do some strumming/picking, while talking about where he was and what he was doing when he first heard a particular song. He was dropping a lot of big names, but it was hard to tell if he actually PLAYED with any of these people, or merely attended one of their concerts! What they lacked in depth (due to only being a three piece) they made up in volume. They were WAY over amplified, in my opinion, for a bar of that size.

(I later Google the guy and found out he wrote a tune called "That's Why I Don't Sing the Blues" which I guess was a semi-final contender in a recent Grammy award draft pick. It never made it as a nomination, but apparently you can put some PR spin on just being considered, and this is what Bobby has done. But working blues bars and state/county fairs is about as far as you get when the Grammy committee merely "considers" your song, but you don't make it to a nomination, let alone winning an actual award.)

Anyway, the band takes a break, and we both need some fresh air and some relief from the pounding music, so we go outside to the patio/lawn area to see if we can find Bucky. I stop at the my car and pick up the carrots I have brought.  There's no one at the patio tonight, and the flood lights are turned off. Guided by my micro LED keychain flashlight, we make our way back to the paddock, through the latched gate, and start calling for Bucky. And I'll be damned if he doesn't saunter up to the fence, and we proceed to feed him carrots.

It is said the Bucky has a taste for beer, and on "festival nights" back in the patio, people get a big kick out of getting the mule drunk.When Bucky hears a band tuning up out on the patio, he even starts braying in anticipation of his beer. I am not sure of the legality/cruelty aspect of this, but apparently it’s a local institution, and it is said that bets are taken as to when Bucky will keel over from inebriation. I think he enjoyed the carrots just as much.

There was also a nice double-seat swing back there, and Carol and I sat and talked for a while, about nothing in particular, but it was a break from the bar and a chance to get some fresh air (no smoking the bar, by the way, which was kind of surreal watching people out in the parking lot having their smokes.) You got your hand stamped upon entrance, so you could come and go as you pleased, and even take your drinks outside into the parking lot and/or the deck in back.

The "crowd," if you can call it that, was real thin, perhaps about 20-25 people. So apparently, cover charges do not go over real big around these parts. We stayed a while longer. There were a few clumsy attempts by people there to start dancing, but there was no regular “beat” to the music, if you know what I mean. The drummer was hell on wheels, and he was VERY good. He had a couple of solos that were awesome. Bobby performed his "big number" and after that we decided to go. It was about 11:30, and the crowd had thinned even further, to about 15 or so people.

We hugged and kissed out in the parking lot, then got in our cars and went our separate ways. There was no awkward conversation about “where do we go from here” or anything like that. I think we both understood that while we liked each other and had a pleasant enough time together, that we were not compatible mates.

It was kind of an inauspicious (if not somewhat surreal) ending to our time together. Buckingham's wouldn’t have been my choice as a place to meet. I would have picked a place that was maybe a little more “upscale” and had a band (or even a DJ) doing ‘80s music or something of a more "danceable" nature. The place had a lot of “character,” I will give it that, but just didn’t “flow” with what I think Carol had in mind for a final date. I think she felt a little embarrassed that it had turned out to be find of a flat night at Buckingham’s, but I rolled with it and made the best of it.

I drove back home, and exhausted, hit the sack.

Bruce