Nurse the Hate: The Incident of The Leaf Pile

One of my associates, The Enabler, recently responded to the annoying social media game of “I’ve seen 10 of these bands, one is a lie” game with his own post.  He wrote “Here are 10 Cowslinger shows I attended, one of which is a lie”.  I am certain that my associate’s legal team advised him to insert the caveat “one is a lie” as each one of these stories was filled with illegal or at the least behavior with extremely poor judgement attached.  It was a rather eye opening experience to see these accounts recapped with unflinching honesty stacked one on top of the other.  Why some sort of authority figure didn’t stop us, or at least attempt to stop us is rather bewildering.  We had absolutely no regard for rules of any kind.  This is a policy that has only become reinforced with age and experience.

I had forgotten about one of these stories.  The Enabler’s recap read as follows; “Charleston, IL. Venue is the Dungeon, party at Gram and Kit’s follows. Ike Turner’s Bitch opens for Cowslingers. Great show! My attorney has advised me not to reveal most of the events or people’s names from the time of the opening song to the last moments of the party. However, at one moment I needed clarity from the party so a walked outside and sat on a curb facing the south. Soon after I was joined by Greg. I noticed across the street there appeared to be people wearing goat head masks and long robes. Realizing this could be a misinterpretation of reality I asked Greg if he could confirm. He too needed reassurance on what he was witnessing and for a brief moment we both felt secure and safe in our shared reality. However, the evening was to take a dire turn as Krusty appeared, looking across the street and suggested bottlerockets as a diversion. Reluctantly we concurred, only to regret our decision once the poorly aimed fireworks started the Satanists’ leaf pile on fire.”

As I recall it was an autumn evening.  Things had started to get very bizarre in the party.  I remember Krusty attempted to look nonchalant while in the kitchen and decided to lean his hand down on the counter.  He had greatly misjudged the distance between his standing position and the counter and had ended up extended almost in a 45 degree angle.  He could have torn muscles in his torso he was so far stretched out.  He was then stuck trying to pretend that he meant to do this.  As visiting rock royalty, one does not want to look like a buffoon after all.  Unfortunately for Krusty, both Bobby and I saw him do this from across the room.  It has been well over a decade since this incident, and Bobby and I will still do the “Krusty lean” whenever possible.

I walked outside in an effort to “keep it all together” as might be said in an old Dragnet episode.  There I found The Enabler seated on the curb.  I sat down as we discussed how odd things had turned when he brought to my attention the goings on in the house across the street.  As God is my witness, we saw three people walk by the window.  Each one of them were in a variation of a goat’s head mask with flowing robes.  Skin was visible as the robes were being worn in an open style.  I can certainly understand The Enabler wanting to confirm what he saw as one does not expect to see some sort of Satanist swinger party in a small bungalow in Charleston Illinois.  That being said, if someone were to say to me “Hey, outside of Chicago, where in Illinois should I go to attend a satanic swinger’s party?” my answer would be “Charleston Illinois”.  (And I mean that as a compliment)

When Krusty walked outside to see us squinting at the Satanists, he was maybe more unnerved than we were.  His suggestion of shooting fireworks in their direction as a diversion made a great deal of sense at the time.  Clearly for us to avoid being seized and then tied up as some terrible human sacrifice as these people had an orgy in our blood was a bad scenario.  A series of large explosions in their area would allow us to calmly walk back into the party without any chance of being forced into servitude.  In retrospect, we could have just walked back inside instead of sending these shoddily made Mexican fireworks their way.  We should not have been surprised when the one rocket plunged into a pile of leaves next to their home and started that fire.  We were though.  We had just gotten too caught up in the enthusiasm of Krusty’s plan. 

One would think that we would have done the responsible thing and put the fire out.  We didn’t.  We ran.  It was like being 14 again.  Well, like being 14 if you had a van with out of state plates parked in front of the crime scene and needed to eventually go back and get it.  There were some police sent to look for us as squad cars tore up and down the neighborhood roads.  We had to keep jumping behind hedges.  I don’t know if the Satanists had to explain their situation in detail to the police when they notified them that two cowboys had set their yard on fire.  “Hello?  Police?  Yes, I am here at my home just about ready to have intercourse with five or so people when some cowboys set our leaves on fire.  I had to put my goat’s head mask down and put the damn fire out!”

Eventually we got tired of walking around and went back to the party.  The owner of the house, Graham, was in a Mexican wrestling mask hunched over in the kitchen eating beans out of a pot.  The music was really loud.  Some guy was passed out in a chair.  The lights were off over at the Satanists place.  Yeah, it was a good show.