Tuesday, November 26, 2019

A PECULIAR TALENT - Jack Blanchard's Column November 26, 2019







A PECULIAR TALENT

One of my strange abilities is this:
I can stand or sit for long periods giving no indication of being alive.
It's sort of a self-imposed coma.
I seem to use it when I'm thinking or bored.

When I was a department store Santa Claus
I tried not to cough or blink when anybody was around.
I knew they thought I was a life size Santa doll.
One lady had been browsing through the candy and toys at my feet.
When I moved a little she froze and stared at me for a long moment,
and then went back to looking at the toys.
I coughed and she did a fright dance.

Another time, in another department store,
I was waiting at the bottom of an escalator
for Misty to return from shopping upstairs.
I was bored, and drifted into one of my catatonic states.

I was wearing jeans, cowboy boots and hat, a denim shirt,
and a leather vest that was made for me at an Indian reservation,
on one of our western tours.

A lady was looking at some dresses on my right,
and happened to glance in my direction.
She casually came over and examined me.
I knew what was up and came back to reality, but I was afraid to move.

She reached out and felt the leather of my vest between her thumb and fingers.
I guess my eyes moved in response to her familiarity.
She seemed to go into shock and levitated a few inches straight up.
She put her hand over her heart like Fred Sanford having the big one,
and said, "Oh, my God! You're alive! I'm SO sorry!"
I smiled and said, "No problem."

I was beginning to enjoy these weird episodes.
Is that sick or what?
So, if you happen to come to my funeral, do me a favor...
Poke me a couple of times just to make sure.

Jack Blanchard

Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan
Home Page: http://www.jackandmisty.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackandmisty
Billboard Duet of the Year, Grammy and CMA Finalists

© Jack Blanchard, 2019





Monday, November 18, 2019

THE CHRISTMAS TOWN Jack Blanchard's Column November 18, 2019





THE  CHRISTMAS TOWN

It was the day before Christmas.
We were road tired and traveling westward through Illinois or Iowa...
on our way to another show somewhere.
We tried to cheer each other up,
and said we'd celebrate our Christmas at a later date.

The countryside looked like a Christmas card
through the windshield of our motor home.
Fine dusty snow was starting to whirl around.
and the Interstate Highway was just about deserted.

It began snowing harder.
We needed a place to pull in for the night,
but we hadn't seen anything open for miles.
We started to get worried.

It was getting dark,
and the wind was blowing the snow into drifts.
We pulled off at the next exit,
but there was no sign of life except for an old barn.
There was a wooden sign over the door,
and Christmas lights were on inside.
It turned out to be a little store
with a few groceries, and some antiques for sale in the back.

The owner took us to a little room where they kept boots and snow shovels.
That's where we plugged in our electric line.
Misty made a good deal...
One night, two dollars.

I dragged our small artificial Christmas tree out of the trunk.
She had it trimmed and lit in about ten minutes.

We'd been on a long hard tour
and we didn't have any presents for each other,
so we looked around at the antiques and things in the store.
We picked out a few gifts,
but we didn't have any way to gift wrap them.

Two or three at a time people from the town came into the store,
stomping the snow off their shoes
and saying "Merry Christmas" to each other.
They were smiling and friendly
and offered to take our gifts back to their homes and wrap them for us.
When they came back a while later our presents looked beautiful.

They brought along some cookies and eggnog,
and we had a little party with these unusual strangers.
We wanted to cancel all our future bookings and live here.

In the morning we woke up to snow covered cornfields
and a sparkling forest of winter trees.
An old rusty plow and a wagon
were half buried in the snow outside our window..
It was a perfect Christmas.

We don't even know the name of the town,
or which state it's in.
And we haven't been able to find it on any map.

We just think of it as our Christmas Town.
Maybe it's in the twilight zone.


Jack Blanchard

Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan
Home Page: http://www.jackandmisty.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackandmisty
Billboard Duet of the Year, Grammy and CMA Finalists 


© Jack Blanchard, 2019.