Red, White, and Blues

We went to Waterfront Park this evening to see the band, Little Feat, at the Portland Blues Festival, which has been going on all this July 4th weekend. What fun! The people watching was awesome.

At the fresh Mexican stand were a pair of women with spiked black hair, tank dresses, and black boots. Not matching outfits, they just had the same Goth uniform. They were both dappled in bright tattoos – along their arms, on their shoulders and legs. They looked shocking, but colorful. I always wonder what’s in a person’s mind when they get a tattoo. “Hmmm, I could decorate myself by wearing rings and bracelets and scarves I can switch out every day, or I could let someone stick pins in me and have permanent dye injected beneath my skin that will go with me to the grave. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.”

There were plenty of time-warped hippies who continue to be locked in the 60’s. What’s interesting, though, is that there were no fat people in the 60’s. Really, if you watch the Woodstock documentaries or movies made during then, it is very rare to see anyone overweight. How they stayed skinny I don’t know because everyone back then was also smoking pot, and pot makes you hungry (as in the munchies), or so I’ve been told. I remember spending as much time as I could at all-you-can-eat buffets sloshing down hush puppies with cheap beer, and I was skinny as a rail.

The male hippies I saw today had the requisite stringy ponytails, but they also sported potbellies. The female hippies had hips that made circus tents out of their crinkly skirts. These women were dancing around with their long, grey-streaked hair forming frizzy waves down their peasant shirts. One thing is for certain – these are not the same clothes they wore back then. They’ve purchased them new and added a few sizes. My friend and I were mesmerized watching them. If they could have fast-forwarded from back then and seen that the only rd thing that changed about them over the decades was the addition of layers of additional sizes, I wonder if they would have thought, “Hmmm, when I grow up I want to look exactly like I do now except much larger and very old.”

I should be one to talk. I have eaten enough to stuff a horse in the last couple of days. I made brownies and sampled several to make sure they were good enough to share at the potluck, I scarfed down a magnificent bean dip and snarled at others who came close to it with a corn chip. And tonight my stomach is howling from having WAY too much hummus.

Some of the other sights we were treated to at the festival were young people wearing headbands with pink feathers sticking up. I saw one woman in short shorts, a tank top, and pink spike heels. She was walking along the sidewalk like her feet were killing her, and I know she had to be freezing because I had on long pants, a long sleeved shirt and a jacket. I wondered what her story was. Did she hope to attract some new beau in that garb? Did she have new shoes and couldn’t wait to wear them so decided to walk along the waterfront promenade and then was too cold to take the bone crushing things off to walk back to her car barefoot? Was she from Siberia and, compared to there, our 66 degrees with a cool breeze off the water seemed balmy to her?

We will never know, because even though I wanted to, I didn’t go up to her and say, “What the hell are you thinking?”

Thus brings to a close a very nice 3-day weekend spent doing things I very much enjoyed. Except for going to Sears and trying to find a refrigerator that will fit in the space we have for it. Our current refrigerator of 15 years was one of the biggest models available when we got it, but the new ones are even bigger, so I’m going to have to spend many hours researching to find one that will fit. Other than that, it was a great 4th of July, and makes me thankful to be an American because we get to celebrate July 4th. So thanks, founding fathers, for picking a good time of year to declare independence. We’re all proud of you.