Two Story Town

Two Story Town                            4319  (279)

Friday, April 21, 2006-10:50 A.M. CDT

It's the last stop on the Ralph Tetta Badlands Tour '06, Moorehead, Minnesota (sister city to Fargo, North Dakota) and I'm counting down the hours until I hit that big black ribbon that takes me home to my family.

It was a short drive yesterday, 78 miles on route 29 south, with a 75 MPH speed limit...that's one thing that I learned about the upper plains...you can drive as fast as you want, because everything's a million miles away.  One state over, Montana, has no daytime speed limit...90 MPH is o.k., the trooper just waves at you as you pass.  Of course, the state's so big, you never see a trooper, I was just making that up.

We arrived at the Days Inn, home of Courtney's Comedy Club, and headliner Al Katz and I checked into our rooms.  We got two rooms on the second floor, and I loaded up my luggage cart and headed for the elevator that wasn't there.  Al chuckled at me as he took his one bag up the stairs, and I headed back to the desk to secure a first-floor room.  They put me in a business King, which has a fridge and microwave, and I found out later that Al has neither of these, but he has the rack that would hold them, if such appliances were made available.

We dropped my car off at Corwin Toyota to see if they could do anything about my oil leak, which is dripping onto my timing belt, and they later called me and quoted me $500.  They might as well have said they wanted to defile my mother on an altar under a full moon on my birthday in front of all my friends, because I was hearing none of that.  All I was looking for was "Mr. Tetta, you have a busted seal, we can repair it, it will take 5 minutes and cost $10."  As soon as the guy said, "Well, it's pretty complicated..." all I heard was "you're from out of town, so we're gonna make you grab your ankles."  I'll take my chances...my wife is already looking at new cars.

I'm gonna miss the Toyota...she's good on gas, engine purrs like a kitten, and even though the body is battered and bruised, she's taken me across the country more times than I can count.  I've been to Wisconsin four times, Florida three times, St. Louis at least twice, and so many times to Michigan I might as well get orange and blue license plates.  I've eaten about a thousand fast food meals in that car, slept, listened to thousands of hours of music, heard Presidential debates and news of planes hitting skyscrapers.  I've taken my daughter to the doctor, brought home Christmas presents, taken cats to the vet to say their final goodbyes, and cried a river of salty, homesick tears.  It's going to be difficult letting go of the car and getting used to another one, but that's the way of the world.  I feel like I've done so much road work the last five years (5th anniversary comes up in June) that I've spent more time in this car than I have in my own bed....and I probably have.

I respectfully declined the repairs and made arrangements to pick the car up today, which Al and I will do sometime before our radio interview at 2:30.  We did laundry at a convenience store which had a laundromat in the back room, caught some quick dinner at Subway (the only place to eat within a short distance of the hotel), and returned to get ready for the 8:00 P.M. show.

The show was a mess, with no crowd being the biggest hurdle to overcome.  I did my time, although it felt like I went over, and I burned the first few minutes trying to get people to move up.  El, our host, seems like a funny guy, but I think that he hosts every week, so the locals have familiarity, and the contempt it breeds.  One girl spent the whole show sending text messages on her phone.  A lot of the guests were friends of the staff who were called to come out (at no charge) to beef up the dwindling attendance.  Al did his thing, snapping a little at a drunk girl who wanted to participate in the show, and we broke camp afterwards to our respective rooms and the cable TV and wireless internet that they provided to insulate us from the post-show depression.

I talked to my wife for half an hour, and she scolded me about working so far from home when I told her about my plans to drive the 20 hours home on Sunday.  I tried to explain that the money is so much better here than the work that is closer to home, and easier to get because I'm not competing with the comics from New York, Boston and Philadelphia, but I think that the two-week separation was getting to her, too.  I think sometimes that she'd rather live in a refrigerator box and have me home than have me out here earning a living.

Sometimes I feel like that, too.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY