The Glam Life

a day on the road-- from an old Blake Babies tour diary

March 3, 1990, 3:00 am

We’re at a guy’s house, just back from the club. On the highway today we got stuck in two traffic jams. One near Jacksonville, Florida for about an hour, hardly moving, because of construction on I-95. It made me think that I really like where I come from and I really don’t mind the (New England) cold because you can bundle up with clothes and blankets but in the heat there’s no natural escape. The sun can burn you up and it was so hot sitting there in the van with no AC in the traffic jam in the sun.

There are so many bad drivers on the highways down here. I beeped loudly at a car that pulled in front of me without notice and when I passed I felt bad (for honking) because it was an old man.

Today we got on the road at about 11:00. At the second traffic jam near Darien, Georgia, I felt a little jolt and then a scraping noise. I thought I had a flat so I pulled over into the breakdown lane. John got out and looked then stuck his head back in and said, “The whole bottom of the van just fell out.” I didn’t know what to think. Actually it was just the exhaust system/pipe that had fallen off.

John and I got under the van and tried to put it back but it wouldn’t stay. There were horrible little flea-like gnats buzzing all around our heads and going up our noses and in our ears out there. So John and Freda started walking down the highway to find a service station and I got into the van to escape the tiny flying monsters. I used the precious time to lie down in the back and close my eyes. I fell half asleep and soon John and Freda returned with the news that a tow truck was coming soon. I lay down for about another fifteen minutes until the truck came and brought us to the service station. They got to work on it and we were all starving and we had to eat at Dairy Queen as it was the only place around. I had a fish sandwich. Yeah, it was fried but it wasn’t bad and it filled me up.

We hung around for a couple more hours until the van was fixed. We gave the mechanic $135 for the work and the towing so we had about $60 cash left. We hit the highway hoping to make it to Columbia (South Carolina) for our show. We set out at 8:00 pm. Columbia was 220 miles away.

We got there at about 11:30 and the second band was still playing so we loaded in and went and got some food ‘cause we were hungry again, wicked hungry. Then we played. It was pretty fun though kinda sloppy. Met a few nice people (like the guy we’re staying with tonight). Got $200 from the club so we have some cash again. We owe a lot of people money—Lawton, John’s mother for calling card calls, Neil Miller for t-shirts. We owe me about $100 that I spent getting us to Chicago from Boston at the beginning of the tour.

The van is running a lot better now that the guy in Darien fixed the fallen exhaust system. It doesn’t choke when I accelerate from standing position anymore—it’s pretty smooth, like a normal automatic vehicle ought to run. I wonder how long it’ll last. What’ll be the next problem? I’m not worried about it; I’m just curious.*

I’m tired, gonna go to sleep.

*I am being an unreliable narrator here. Maybe I was having an uncharacteristically good/stable mental day when I wrote this—or maybe I was just zonked-out tired, writing at 3:00 am— because most of the time I was completely insane about the van and honestly believed it to be possessed by Satan. It was old and not in great shape and would make strange noises and movements which made it seem (to me) like the van was sometimes operating (and thinking) independently (of the driver). The bottom falling out would’ve sent me over the edge into an adrenaline-pumping hysterical panic on a normal day. For the entirety of the tour I would not let John or Freda or anyone else ever drive because no one else understood that the van wanted to kill us all and that there was a constant battle of wills going on between the driver (me) and the van. I had to protect the passengers. No one else knew how to handle it and would lose the battle and be forced (by Satan/the van’s evil spirit) to drive the van over a cliff or into oncoming traffic or something equally horrible.