Something I equally hate and long-for are drives on back roads traveling to and from Springfield, Ohio. Personally, I believe I’ll one-day die in Springfield, if I ever end up living in Ohio again, which is my Plan-D.
The vast, openness of Ohio rural landscape as bleak in the summer as it is in winter, leading into town on Route 40, the tire place looking like a fallout-shelter of rubber with a decaying super-hero mascot drawn on the window. The putrid cemetery and vacant apartment and business buildings; half the warehouse and home garages open and empty. There’s a route interchange in the middle of town next to the car-lot going deeper in and the theater, heading out. Smoking blunts behind dumpsters and $75 for an ounce and maybe your dealer is sleeping with her dealer, who grips from the heroine addict that demands to be called Dolphin, is maybe your parents’ age, and only has an e-mail to his name. Dressing up like H1N1 and/or Charles Barkley. The smell of popcorn on the way outta town next to the theater. Multiple burned-down porches. The lingering lady who catches you blazing, takes a hit from you at the stop light explaining how she “just got outta the clink for the night.” You question “For the night?” but not aloud.
My dream is to host a huge music festival out there (that inevitably nobody would go to), invite people like Goat Bath Eternity, and other Goaty Tapes musicians Chicklette, Banana Head, Gem Jones, with one-offs including Tracey Trance and Savage Young Taterbug and German Army, u kno ukn o. All these magicians travel out to Springfield, Ohio, nobody else shows up but some locals who don’t pay, and I can’t pay the line-up, so they tare me apart, limb from limb. Then the VHS tape of it ends up next to Faces of Death releases at the Family Video in the middle of town. As for now, tracks like “Couchlocked On Mars” by Goat Bath Eternity will merely have to remind me of my doomed fate.
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