The Clearwater

Saturday. Day two of my busiest summer weekend. I pushed Roland (bambambambambam) down the wooded, splintery dock of Arrowhead Park and boarded a beautiful boat called the Clearwater. Setting up on the top deck behind the smoke stack (I guess that is what you would call it) I performed to a group of 80 people, young and old, celebrating a Bar mitzvah...of all things...Luckily my folk music went over well. The jewish rabbi loved it! And he and I exchanged some good "I once had a gig here" stories. I got the call only a few hours before to change my boarding location from the Old Forge dock to the Arrowhead dock in Inlet an had no idea I was playing a Bar mitzvah...which is a good thing, I guess, not knowing squat about Jewish culture much less their music. Don't they break wine glasses and stomp around in the broken glass? Or am I thinking about My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I don't know. I'm still in a state of total exhaustion. A lovely gig indeed playing as the Clearwater proudly chugged up and down the Fourth Lake of the Fulton Lake chain. My mind wandered back to times gone by. Woman and children in their long petticoated skirts and flowered bonnets standing lakeside outside woolen tents and men smoking pipes leaning against trees. Logger's, ice cutters and indian's. The Great Adirondack Camps mostly now burned down from a time so exciting and prosperous when people figured out that coming to the mountains was good for not only their bodies but also their simple sweet souls. Works for me.