Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 29-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Continued from November 9
The guy was pretty obviously from the church. He had a red shirt on under his jacket and the part of the shirt that showed appeared to be part of a cross. A white cross on a red shirt. Or maybe his shirt said “bite me'” on two lines and I could only see the “t.”
He asked me my name, told me his and looked at my chicken-greasy hands as if to instigate a handshake. I ignored this semi-gesture and kept eating, thinking he looked like a Swiss Army knife. An industrious multi-tasking fellow with that red shirt and a white cross. He told me several churches from the valley came in four times a year to host the event. He told me the dates in terms of which holiday they fell near. “The first Sunday after Father’s Day,” he said, as I waited for the god-talk to begin. Nothing so far and I was approaching the halfway mark on the chicken.
He said, “You wouldn’t believe how hard we prayed for a break in the rain so we could set up.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, nodding, pushing larger and larger pieces of chicken into my mouth.
To be continued
“I Went Away For A While,” from Janis Zeppelin (Smarten UP! 2003) (download):
