I spent two days with a bunch of great kids in Hutchinson, Kansas as we prepared my new work for string orchestra "Showdown." See my YouTube channel if you want to listen to it. The kids played well, and even though some of them were there for purely social reasons, I think they all got something out the experience (if nothing else, they learned that I am, in fact, one weird dude)! Some of the kids really got into the performance and one even brought my dog, George, a bow tie to wear during the concert. George, by the way, was very flattered and looked quite dapper in the tie!
Principal Bassist, Dalton B. & Our Very Own GEORGE!
The concert went well, everyone was happy, and my girlfriend and I loaded George up in the car for the four hour trip home to Kansas City. This is where the magical journey begins. Because, lo and behold, an hour into the trip, we ran into a UNICORN! OK, it wasn't a unicorn at first, I'll admit. It was a deer. A very, very big deer! It ran out of the pitch black darkness of rural Kansas and crossed just in front of an ongoing car and right into our path. My girlfriend managed some amazing maneuvers, and we clipped poor ol' Bambi just in front of me in the passenger seat, shattering the front right fender. She skillfully got the car to the shoulder and we quickly took inventory of our situation. George was wearing his seatbelt, and was now sitting on the floor of the backseat looking at me like "Hey, what're you guys doing up there?!" My girlfriend and I were both pretty flustered, but were no worse for wear physically. I decided to survey the damage while she called the insurance company and the state police.
I managed to pry the passenger side door open just enough for me to shimmy out. The deer's impact had forced the front right wheel well into the passenger door so it was dang-near impossible to pop it open. By the time I reached the front of the car, all of the radiator fluid was gone. So was the right headlight and the bumper. And, after the very nice state trooper and county deputy showed up, I discovered that the car wasn't the only thing missing stuff.
"Big boy," the deputy said as he held aloft one of the deer's antlers. It had about five or six smaller branches on it. "No kidding," I thought to myself, "you should've seen the size of it's butt as it passed before my eyes!" So, there it was, Bambi was no longer King of the Forest, he was now Mortie, the unicorn. I felt bad, but then I thought about my girlfriend's car. The bad feelings stopped immediately. It was going to be at least four of five thousand dollars to repair the car, and she had just bought it two months earlier.
I gave the state trooper our information while my girlfriend finished up with the insurance company. The insurance folks called us a tow truck and offered to get us a cab, on our dime, of course. "You do realize that we're exactly in the middle of nowhere, right?" my girlfriend told the nice lady at GEICO. "Oh, yes, I see that now," I heard the disembodied voice say. "Sorry." Yeah, sorry, but we're not paying $800 for a cab ride to KC!
Sorry, indeed. For we were truly in the middle of nowhere. It was dark, it was getting colder by the minute, and we not only didn't have a way home, the nearest rental car place was 80 miles away in any direction, and they weren't likely to be on duty on a Saturday evening at 10:30. We were in deep trouble.
Then the tow truck appeared. The nice, albeit socially awkward, man with the Carhartt jacket and handlebar mustache, offered to take us to a nearby town and the only hotel within a 50 mile radius. Immediately, visions of the Bates Motel from the movie Psycho began to dance in my mind. "It can't be that bad," I told myself. Fifteen minutes later, after a very quick ride in the warm tow truck, I realized that yes, indeed, it could be that bad. The only thing this place had on the Bates Motel was that it was brick. Other than that, short of Anthony Perkins in a wig, it was a dead ringer (pun intended).
As the tow truck driver helped us get our things out of the car, he offered us his cell number and business card. "What's your name?" we asked. "Merlin," he said.
And there you have it. In the pitch black Kansas night, after an evening creating beautiful music, a unicorn managed to disrupt our journey home, only to be rescued by the one and only Merlin.
Looking back on it now, safe from the comfort of home, we can laugh. But I don't think we'll be forgetting that long, cold night in that very scary hotel anytime soon.
Long story short, we were rescued by my girlfriend's children the following morning. We hadn't been hacked to death in the shower (not that we would've gotten INTO that shower) and we were happy to get George back home after a 16-hour delay. And I think George was pretty happy, too.
We're still waiting to hear about the car and whether or not it will be totaled.
And we're still chuckling about our "unicorn" and our hero, Merlin.
Life's too strange to make this stuff up.
Stay safe, my friends!
Jeffrey
