Coming Home

Coming Home                  5548  (1608)

Tuesday, September 5, 2006-11:55 P.M.

Good evening from Cleveland, Ohio, home of the Browns, the Indians, and the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame.  I know I haven't checked in for over a week, you can scold me later.

When last you read me, gentle reader, I was working the Laugh In Comedy Cafe with Amaru from Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Saturday, I was supposed to see my good friend Rickey K., but a family emergency precluded that meeting.  The shows Saturday were interesting, to say the least, and during the late show, some folks got kicked out for being too noisy in the showroom.  They wound up buying CD's from me in the parking lot...it always strikes me that some of the nicest people just don't "go out" well.  Joe Galanis, the owner of the club, showed up Saturday night to pay the comics and had some nice words for me.  I hope to return to the club sometime in the spring of next year.

Sunday, we packed up and left the beautiful Holiday Inn Select and headed toward the Atlantic Coast through Alligator Alley (route 75) and hooked up with Pam's Uncle Paul and his family in Sunrise, Florida.  We went out to a Chinese buffet, and I learned how to crack open crab legs.  We had a nice visit, then headed back to Dad's house, some 4 1/2 hours away.  We had lunch plans to go to (yet another) Chinese buffet with Dad and one of his friends from the Villages the next day, so we had to get home relatively early, but still didn't make it until almost midnight.

Pam, Harmony and I bid our tear-stained farewells to my Dad on Wednesday, and headed on up to Daleville, Alabama, home of the MVP Sports Bar, and my comedy show with headliner D. T. Owens.  Our show was pretty sparsely attended, as Daleville is an Army base town, and a lot of the soldiers were shipping out for Labor Day weekend.  We still had a nice little showing, including a couple of civilian girls who turned out to be "really into each other."  One was dressed like Gwen Stefani in camouflage, the other girl was more a Goth chick with a leather bustier that had straps in the front, some sort of black spandex pants, and a Tuesday Addams haircut.  Or something like that, I really wasn't paying attention....Lesbians don't really do anything for me.

We canceled our plans to see my sister in North Carolina, the time aspect just wasn't going to shake out, same for my friend Bruce in Fredericksburg.  We drove all day Thursday and when we couldn't drive anymore, I called the Days Inn 1-800 line for reservations.  What a mistake.

The first guy I spoke with had a bad computer system, and a foreign accent.  It was clear to me that Days Inn was farming out their reservation line to offshore operators, and he implored me to call back and get another operator.  I did, and a young lady from Sri Lanka or Pakistan took my reservation for a room in Fort Wright, Kentucky, just three miles south of Cincinatti, Ohio.  We got a great room rate, and they took our credit card info over the phone, and we were on our way.

When we got there, there were four police cars in front of the place and two "guests" handcuffed and seated on the ground.  That should have been red flag number one, but we soldiered on anyways.  The front desk clerk didn't have our reservation, so I made one at the desk, and they honored the rate I was quoted over the phone.  We made our way to the elevator, which smelled like urine, and were greeted with dirty laundry in the breezeway.  Harmony didn't really notice that the place was a shithole, but Pam was staring daggers into my head.  Our room was dingy, with ceiling panels that were bowing from water damage or perhaps some other sort of detritus that had fallen.  Regardless, we weren't going to see what was on them when they fell, because we weren't staying.  The clerk happily rescinded our reservation, and off we went.

We rolled into Covington, Kentucky, about 2 o'clock in the morning, and wound up at the Holiday Inn.  They signed me up for a Priority Club membership (complete with late checkout), and we wound up paying triple what the Days Inn was charging, but for a room that was 1000% better.  Checking out of that hotel was really painful, I can tell you, and we still had eight hours of driving to do.  We stopped at a Golden Corral for lunch, and made it home around 11:30  It was great to be home, but after a month on the road, I didn't look forward to the piles of mail and laundry to be attended to, and the empty fridge that we left (don't wanna come home to rotten produce, spoiled dairy and other non-edible treats in the fridge).  It took a day of rest and recuperation to really get rolling (Harmony, was of course, full of energy and treated our 6,200 mile journey like it was nothing) and a couple of shopping trips got us up to speed.  I had one day of rest to get ready for this week, and after paying car insurance, picking up prescription medication, doing banking and hitting the post office, I was ready to leave home again.  My laundry hadn't even dried yet!

I'm working this week at the Cleveland Improv with headliner Jack Mayberry and feature Nathan Craig.  I knew Jack from the old Alt.Comedy.Standup newsgroup, we both used to be contributor to the board before it became overrun with trolls (non-participants who egg the regulars on and start pissing matches).  Nathan is a new friend who hails from the Chicago area.  When I arrived at the club around 6:30, he had just called and was speeding across western Ohio to make it to the show on time (he did).  He sat on someone's gum in the bar, and I just happened to have a jar of peanut butter with me for the trip, and we're in the process of testing the reliability of that home remedy.

O.K., I'm about to go off to sleep.  Unfortunately, my last memory of home was little Harmony crying when Pam told her I had to leave to go to work.  I think she saw the luggage and realized that it wasn't just going to be for a few hours.  It ripped me up, that's for sure.  I fed her breakfast and changed her and hugged her this morning, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to be gone for a whole week and not just a few days.  It really hurts.  Next week, I leave for two and a half weeks, and that's gonna hurt, too.

Pleasant dreams.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY