End of an Era

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  Our minds are funny things.  I've been spending a disproportionate amount of time on eBay this morning.  I've got a bid on an impact wrench, and picked up a nice used MAC tools air ratchet for $23. Now that's a deal!

  I don't know about you, but when I have a choice between a big, real thing to think about, or a triviality, well, I always choose the little thing.  Gaa, I wish I'd stop doing that!  Maybe it's because it has the illusion that it would be easier to control.

  Today is a big day.  It's my last day working on Old Washington Road in Waldorf, MD.  If someday there was a group of people who decided to form the Josh Urban Historical Society, paid handsomely by my estate, of course,  their tours would surely start midway up on Old Washington Road.  They'd gather in the hot August sun, I'd imagine, their floppy hats no use against the ubiquitous asphalt that is Waldorf.  The guide, a sporting a vintage "Sup Comrade" shirt, would point to a dinky window where I studied guitar for years.  They'd move south, getting stuck in traffic that backed up at the slow light, and pull into the weedy parking lot of the now-abandoned teen hangout and strange combination of ministry and punk club called My Brother's Place.  Perhaps the little brass plaque would still hang by the door "Dress code enforced by management's discretion", incongruent with the teenage ghosts sporting tri-hawks, plaid, and fake leather.  "This is where Mr. Urban learned to mix sound, and was generally a grumpy teenager.  It took him years to realize that he hated working in the sound booth, as the crowd  had it's back to him."  Someone would inquire about the DC sounds of punk and go go, and the guide would realize he missed that aspect, masking it in a "I'm glad you asked" remark, mentioning that combined with the punk mixing at the club, there was the go go guitar stint in the gospel band, the funky sounds of the nation's capital graciously taught, along with certain handshakes so patiently instructed.

  Across the light, they'd shuffle, past the dubious TNT Fashions store, the same faded suits in the window for years, arriving at a hulking, dilapidated storefront that used to be a guitar shop.  "He put the Christmas decorations up one year, and a medivac helicopter landed in the parking lot, blowing the wreath off the front of the guitar shop" someone would point.  The porta-john trucks would still rattle out of the neighboring lot, and the daily coal train would shake the ground as it rumbled by the first tiny teaching studio wedged in the back of the music store, glass panes on the doors that bored colleagues would stand in front of and try to distract their fellow instructors in lessons.

  Finally, this imaginary group of my fabrication would arrive at The Treehouse, as it was called, the second studio, and first leap out on entrepreneurship...A nondescript office building across the street from a grocery store.  For almost ten years republicans, democrats, hippies and preachers would trudge up the stairs and sit next to the lava lamp to learn, teach, laugh, and cry.  "If it sounds good, it is good" was a motto.  Many struggled, many triumphed.  In guitar, too, but Life was the main focus.  There was a lot of learning, for everyone in the room.  One of the imaginary tourists leans in to put an ear to the drywall, seeing if she can hear the echo of the phrase "Any questions?" The cars would still roar up the road like they were stolen (and probably were), and just then, the daily coal train would announce with an ominous blast.  "I hear that train a comin', it's rollin' round the bend" someone would reference, and they'd all file out down the 13 steps of the stairs.

  So, I've also been shopping for impact wrenches on eBay, too.  I'm terribly excited to move my teaching studio to my garage and continue the fun...but I will miss Old Washington road, it's mad rush of suburbia masking the rich memories not only of an entire career, but the people who walked the path alongside me.  Thank you, Waldorf!  And Goodnight.