My neighbors Clint and Cindi hosted a barn picnic the other night, a yearly springtime event that gives people around here a chance to set aside shovels, hoes, and other gardening tools, put on clothes that don’t have dirt stains on the knees, and visit, civilized-like. Leah and I walked over with our potluck hot dish contribution of hippie/vegetarian/Buddhist rice and lentils. Our dish took its humble place on a picnic table in Clint and Cindi’s barn, joining real food that others had brought: potato salad, baked beans, roasted chicken, burgers and hot dogs.
As she does every year, our neighbor Sue brought her “Jell-O Shot Eggs,” misleadingly innocent-looking orange and green egg-shaped thingies that are full of rum or liquor. My sense is that over the years it’s pretty well come to be expected that Sue will bring those eggs. If some year she shows up with chocolate chip cookies but no boozy Jell-O, I think many people would joke that the picnic was a bust.
People chat. We talk about how our rural area is changing, how there’s that new housing development going in down the road. We talk about our chickens and how many eggs we’re getting these days, and of course we talk about our gardens and our hopes for good, fresh summer produce.
For most of us though, I think the coolest part of Clint and Cindi’s picnic is the live music. A bunch of the guys have brought their guitars. After we’ve eaten our fill of burgers and baked beans (and lentils?) we head up to the loft of the barn, the guitars come out, and the jamming and singing begins.... Johnny Cash tunes. Old Hank Williams. I think back to that famous scene in the movie “Blue Brothers” where Jake and Elwood go into a bar looking for a gig for their band. “What kind of music do you have here?” they ask the bar owner. “Why we have both kinds,” the bar owner replies, “Country and Western.”
