Party

Party                                7095  (313)

Saturday, March 10, 2007-4:00 P.M.

Greetings from Laurium, Michigan, way, way up in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan.  If you look at a map and look way to the west of the top part, there's a little part that looks like a cowlick.

That's where I am right now.

The wind is whistling on the shores of Lake Superior, and I'm just a few miles away from where the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald happened.  It's not just a snappy ballad by Gordon Lightfoot, it's an account of a real shipwreck that killed 29 men.  This is iron mining area, and much of Michigan and Wisconsin's economies in the 19th and 20th century depended on the industry.  I'm not sure if that's still so much the case, but they tell me that there are still vast reserves still in the ground, waiting to be plowed up and exploited.

This week's leg of the Ralph Tetta International Comedy Tour takes me to this wind-swept college town of Houghton, Michigan, just 14 miles south of Laurium where the gig is at the Irish Times Pub.  It's a nice little area as far as road gigs go, and I'm sure in the Summer and Fall, this place is probably hopping, but right now in the Winter, there are many other places I'd rather be.  The locals have a good sense of humor about the snow, though, and as you drive up route 41 into Houghton and into the Michigan Tech area, there are snow sculptures in front of the frat houses of all kinds; castles, six-foot-high Greek letters, and I even saw one pyramid made of ice blocks.  It's interesting to see how people cope with inclement weather.

I left Thursday night amids much crying and gnashing of teeth, piling into the car around 6 or 7 at night and making my way across Western New York and into Canada.  I crossed the border into Michigan at Port Huron and got a grilling from the U.S. customs agent regarding my profession.

"So you're a comedian, huh?  Well, go ahead."

He's still holding my driver's license and birth certificate, so I assume he's not telling me to go ahead and drive into Michigan.

"Well, sir, I don't really tell jokes.  I do a monologue."

He didn't really understand, or at the very least, he understood but wasn't going to let me go.  I gave him a one-liner which didn't seem to impress him much, but I wasn't going to take the chance to piss him off.  I could do one stupid joke and with my luck, have that be the hot-button issue that drives him off the wall every day.  Finally, he let me in, and I'm thinking I never went through so much trouble just to re-enter my country of citizenship.  What must it be like for the Jews trying to escape the wrath of Hitler during the early days of World War II?  Thank God they have a rich tradition of storytelling and a good natural sense of humor or they never would have made it.

"Hey Juden!  Vere are you going?"

"Vas, I'm just going over dere, not for long, just to look, I von't touch, I'll be back in a minute.  I'm just goink for a quick nosh, and I'm taking my vife and everytink I own, just for fun.  Dot's a beautiful jacket, vat is dat, a condor?  Dot's a tough bird, tastes like chicken, though.  I know a good deli dot meks a good condor soup, very goot, not kosher, but who's to know?  If God's not asking, I'm not telling!"

"O.K., go, just shut up already!"

So I got to Saginaw, Michigan around 2 in the morning, and I happened to have a free night's stay certificate from Motel 6 as a make-good for the problem I had in Fredericksburg, Virginia a few weeks ago, and I got a room, and just as I was settled in and ready to go to sleep, I realized that this was the Motel 6 that a comic, Polish Thunder, got robbed at after a gig.  I double checked the deadbolt on the door and slept just fine.

The drive on Friday was a bear.  I made my way up to the Mackinac Bridge, and that's when the fun began.  It was three hours up to the bridge, and then easily five hours across the U.P., through woods and pine trees and forests and even though the roads were dry, the speed limit was 55 mph most of the way and it just seemed to take forever.  I got to the hotel around 6 PM and checked in with the radio guys from the WOLF 97.7 FM to let them know I was in town, and they told me the show was at 9 PM rather than 8.  I treated myself to a 45-minute nap and then showered and shaved for the big show.

Headliner "Chili" Challis and I carpooled to the gig, which was 20 minutes away and even though we both had directions, they were different and inconsistent, and it was only through the fact that you can only drive so far before you hit water up here that wefound our way.  Our mc, Tim, was very funny and set the show up well.  I had a good show, and then Chili absolutely killed, even though it was a pretty small crowd, maybe around 40 people or fewer.  Tonight should really be good, I'm looking forward to it.

Tomorrow's my daughter's third birthday, and I'm probably not going to get home in time to enjoy much of it.  I've got the daylight savings time thing pitching the clocks forward an hour, so I'm behind the 8-ball before I even go to sleep.  Then there's the small matter of the 14 hours it's going to take to get home, and if I'm well-rested enough to get up early, I might make it home before 10 PM.  Maybe Pam will save me some cake.  I talked to Harmony on the phone today and she's getting so big and talkative and confident and I just love her so much that it's going to hurt not to be there to sing Happy Birthday, but hopefully I'll be in cell signal range (the U.P. is not know for their concentration of cell phone towers) so I can sing along.  Then I'll sing "Cats in the Cradle" in the car and cry for ten minutes.

But this is the life I signed up for, worked half my life for, and now I have it.  Lessons learned, father.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY

P.S.  I don't usually tip my hand and mention where I get the song titles that I use to head my blogs with, I prefer to let the reader figure them out, but the inclusion of the song title "Party" by Boston is an homage to lead singer Brad Delp, who I just learned passed away.  The double meaning of "Party" is also for my daughter, Harmony, who is having her third birthday party tomorrow.  Thank you again for reading my journal, and party on.