PORT HADLOCK, Wash. — Rhythm is key in the golf swing, we hear, and it sure is for good blues musicians, but maybe not so much for appreciators of the art form, especially when they’re drunk, which means the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival on Saturday, its biggest performance night in multiple venues at which alcohol will be insisting to people how cool they still are, is certain to be the global epicenter of old white people dancing badly.
Here on the northern Olympic Peninsula in the Upper Northwest regions of Grey Goatee Nation, we Roadies will take our dancing in measured doses (i.e., none at all) and our blues will be complement to golf rounds on courses that are warmly accepting of a couple old(ish) guys dancing badly through 54 holes.
The crack Grey Goatee Research trolls, when nudged out of their summer torpor to look into the history and geography of the peninsular environs, came back with a reasonable question: “What’s all this shit about Egg & I?”
Well, why don’t you look into that and get back to me, I suggested, reasonably.
The bureau chief rang back, eventually, and spat some facts at me. “The Egg and I” was first a book, published in 1945, by Betty MacDonald, all about her adventures, humorous, we imagine, as a young wife on a chicken farm near Chimacum, Wash., about five minutes down the road from where I sit right now. Who knew? The book was later made into a movie with Fred MacMurray (!) and Claudette Colbert, but its most lasting legacy is the adoption by locals of the quaint phrasing, ampersands added, of the book’s title: The Dog & I (a groomer) and The Keg & I (a pub) are just two very clever examples.
Our own wandering research led us to Farm’s Reach Bakery in Chimacum, wherein the bacon on the fresh-made maple ‘n’ bacon bar was not, as it turned out, from Egg & I Pork down the road, which claims its Tamworth pigs are pasture-raised and hazelnut-fed on the original Egg and I Farm. We’re still going back to the bakery, maybe as early as tomorrow.
The Steve and I (hereinafter referred to as I & I) have established a beachhead at the Hadlock Motel, which has everything I & I need in a relocated Global HQ — beds, running water, a television set and — gee whiz — WiFi, which facilitates use of the portable publishing machine. Beats longhand all to hell. I & I might even call it WiFi & I.
The I-tinerary:
Friday, Aug. 3 — Port Ludlow Golf Course, Port Ludlow, Wash.
Saturday, Aug. 4 (morning)– Discovery Bay Golf Course, Port Townsend, Wash.
Saturday, Aug. 4 (evening) — Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend, Wash.
Sunday, Aug. 5 — Port Townsend Golf Club, Port Townsend, Wash.
Ok then, we will do this