I had been at full tilt in Maryland.
My time had been divided between writing news stories for this paper, and my mom, who was rehabbing in Chesapeake Woods after a week-long critical-care-unit stint at Dorchester General Hospital in Cambridge, Md.
The day I ceased writing, I went to Harper's Laundry in Hurlock to wash my mother's clothes. It was a wet, overcast day. The laundromat was empty, a good thing because I used two-thirds of the machines. Four hours and $70 later, the laundry was folded and stacked in baskets.
As I drove to my mother's apartment in Hurlock Meadows, I planned my dinner: roasted turkey on Italian bread and a can of Progresso soup. Afterward, I planned to visit my mom. Maybe, braid her hair.
While I was sitting in the parking lot, I noticed several calls on my BlackBerry. Miraculously, I had secured a ticket at the Avalon Theatre in Easton to hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band that night. It was 6 p.m. The show was at 8 p.m. OMG!
Hurriedly, I carried my mother's laundry into her apartment and zipped to Cambridge, about 20 minutes away. I put my mother's clothes away and asked her about her OT- and PT-filled day. Thirty minutes before the concert, I drove from Cambridge to find last-minute parking in Easton.
As I crossed the Choptank River between Dorchester and Talbot counties, I tried to remember when I first heard the Dixieland sound of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It certainly was not in New Orleans. Though my ex-real "Pensacola: Wings of Gold" husband almost drove me and our infant daughter there for Mardi Gras '82.
It was not a good idea. The heat and stare downs with Alabama good old boys was a little too much, so he turned our black Jeep CJ7 around and headed to our Gulf Beach Highway home.
Ironically, the band's Dixieland jazz is frozen for me in a painting my daughter, Nikki, purchased at an '06 auction to benefit the Furnace Town Living Heritage Museum near Snow Hill, where my daughter's grandmother, Bonnie, was raised on the Cubler family farm.
Nikki paid $500 for the 1980 painting by Winkie McElwee. A yellow note, taped to the wire hanger, states: "Original oil by street artist Willer McElwee in 1980 of Preservation Hall, the heart of jazz in New Orleans ... Ron and Mary Jane Brittingham."
"I had to have it," Nikki said. "When we went to Vermont and we saw the works of that black artist Bill Traylor. He died in poverty. This artist could have had a similar fate. I think about your dad and how we don't have any of his work. This guy was bidding against me. In the end, it was this doctor, and he wanted to put in his office."
For my daughter, it was about reclaiming a bit of black culture.
"I didn't want it to be outside again," Nikki said. "I wanted it to be inside. I had to get it. It was down to him and me, and his wife whispered in his ear to stop. His face turned red, and I knew I had it."
But she only had $401 in her checking account.
"I said, 'Oh my God, I have to stop,'" Nikki said. "Bonnie saw my face. She said, 'Don't worry about it. If you really like it, I will let you borrow the money.' And, she did, which is really big for Bonnie because she doesn't let anyone borrow anything. She's kind of a miser."
The painting ate up one of my daughter's first State-of-Maryland paychecks.
So when I saw an event listing for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in Attraction Magazine, I had to go.
This is a spoiler, but I will frame the concert stub and give it to my daughter, so she can hang it with her McElwee painting, someday, in her own home.
Email Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
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