Time is always tight when heading into New York after work on a Friday (especially if it's after the Lizard the night before).
No reason to get excited, take the 684 to the Cross County for one exit to the Bronx River Parkway and we were conquistadors crossing the Triborough; Pizzaro discovering the Amazon, or thinking he had as we paddled upstream on the Bruckner and on down the BQE like the Orinoco flow. There are no mosquitoes or Anacondas in Green Point, but try and get a taxi down there in that warehouse district, forget it.
  Well we weren't really explorers but we discovered a whole new (albeit tiny) new world called the Brooklyn Rod and Gun Club. But ssh don't tell no one. The serve only rye, Pabst or Tecate and thank you no to the Malbec with the colorful label. That's it. Upstairs you might play some poker in the loft, looking down on the scene all along the watchtower. You can buy a membership and the wind begins to howl. The other band (The Buddy Hollers) took to our little table like ducks to water which made a lot of sense. They had an accordian, mandolin and banjo; inviting Gillian Welch up and laying John Hardy down. They were setting the rye on the table, taking a sip between songs. Yes they got the idea pretty quick and it was over before you knew it, and who was hanging from the rafters? I don't know what this place is but, we started with Born Again and finished with Will the Circle Be Unbroken singing all together. It was corny like corn liquor is. That place was the damndest thing with shotgun shells on the sharp edges, and them playing only mint vinyl James Brown and Bo Diddley on the breaks. With maps and fishing poles on the walls, Wilbur take us home boy!
    That first night it was rods and rye and the second night the guns were in season for duck hunting days in Easton Maryland. We were at the Avalon theater, upstairs in the Stolz listening room where the sound is just about perfect and you can get all the bourbon you like, and even chocolate cake. Yes they treat us well and make us play a third set every time. Greasy Coat, It Makes No Difference, Yoshimi we don't mind.
   But then you have to wake up to paintings of ducks everywhere, beautifully rendered; camo as far as the eye can see; all the plastic geese you could want. This Waterfowl Weekend is in a landscape that strives to remain unchanged. The decoys shall be carved and the pointers shalll point. I swear you can't find a newspaper for blocks. Louis Armstrong was singing the Heebie Jeebies when we hit town and I wanted to know where do the crows go?
  So treated ourselves to a little New Jersey Turnpike north and cassoulet like good Yankees should. We played that night at a fading roadhouse on Third Avenue, eschewing the burritos and cracking the peanut shells on the floor. We laid down Barbed Wire and invited those in attendance to wade on in. Jets, Pats, George Jones and Prince; praise the lord and the moan of the old jukebox. Johnny Horton's voice perhaps making us feel more at home in Manhatten than usual. Is it the wisdom of the road that provides a positive answer to the somewhat philisophical question of where would you rather be driving than across Connecticut on a beautiful fall Monday morning. And for that moment we were the wild geese in flight, heading home.