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 28-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
I am in a songwriting project with someone I respect. It’s a secret. I mean, he didn’t tell me to keep it a secret. Maybe he’s telling people. I don’t know. For me, it’s a secret.
Hey Name,
No idea how this will fit with the music. This probably isn’t how song lyrics usually arrive on your desk, but let’s see how it goes. It will become shorter in the next stage of singing/editing.
A Public Apology to the Ladies of the Bakery
This comes from visiting my parents on Sunday; they live about an hour out of town. They are very old, but they have all their marbles. My dad and I, we have a tradition of going to the grocery store to buy a BBQ chicken for dinner. My mom makes a salad and heats up three rolls.
So I’m at the grocery store with my dad, and I see a big table of nice-looking pumpkin pies, $2.88 each. I ask my dad if he thinks we should get one.
He says, “Your mom likes pumpkin pie.” But I know she doesn’t like things to happen that she isn’t expecting, things she can’t control. I decide to take a chance on the pie. Her reaction was basically negative.
“Who’s going to cut it?” she says with quite a lot more concern than the situation warrants. The subtext being: This pie is a problem for me on a level that I don’t understand, but I am going to allow it to manifest in the form of making it seem like someone else has done something wrong.
“I’ll cut it,” I say. She’s 92. He’s 87.
We’re eating the pie—we all like it. My dad mentions something about it probably coming from Saskatchewan on the back of truck. To which I respond, “I think they made it there, in-store. I think it said that on the $2.88 sign.”
“I have shopped there for over 20 years,” my dad says. “But I don’t think I’ve given the ladies of the bakery enough credit. I think I owe the ladies of the bakery a public apology.”
To be continued.
