Zen Dixie
  • Home
    • About >
      • Contact Form
      • About Jas Faulkner
      • A (Sort of) Brief History of Zen Dixie
      • Legalese and All That Jas
  • Emily Dickinson Is Sick Of Your Shit
    • Plague Life >
      • We Closed The Door Behind Us
      • We Do Shakespeare With Tin Cans and String
      • We Get A New Tenant And Keep The Kid
      • We Go Into Quarantine
      • We Lose Our Patience
    • An Open Letter To Marcus' Mom
    • Are Doctors Getting Paychecks From Big Pharma?
    • Everyone Should Feel Safe
    • Guns 'n' Scrunchies
    • I'll Take My Stand
    • Ray Chased The Rain Away
    • Smile For The Tennessee DMV
    • WWJD? Probably Not Create An MLM
    • Your Third Grader Does Not Need A Sports Bra
    • We Need A Witness
    • When God Wants Your Attention
  • Arty Stuff
    • My Marker Rant
  • Belle Lettres & Mylar
    • Books >
      • Book Reviews >
        • Danny's Doodles
        • Review: The Life of Lou Reed: Notes from the Velvet Underground
    • Links For Bookish Folk
    • Reading Life/Writing Life >
      • Our libraries as expressions of who we were, who we are, and what we wish for the future.
    • Watch This! >
      • Coming 2 America
      • Watching Star Wars >
        • Watching Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
        • Watching Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
      • TCCO: The Grand Tour
  • The Front Page Blog

Down The Rabbit Hole
September 14, 1978

Picture
      Aside from a few angry phone calls about the Godless English people who kept "talking, talking, talking" and the playlists, things went well for a first week. Kelly managed to maintain a light hand with the rules and her panic that this might be more than she was ready to handle was beginning to subside.

     As of today, they'd been on the air a week. Officially, that full week should have clocked  two days from now. She felt for Cal, who arrived at Berry Field early afternoon the previous Thursday.  He was met by a bouncy, wired, and almost frenetically loquacious Sean. 

                                                                       *****

     "Come on, my brother!  Come on! Come on! We've got no time to waste." Sean paused and looked at his watch. "We've got a little under an hour before P.M. drive time or, or, yes, I think that's what they call it. P.M. drive time or afternoon drive time or somesuch. There's no real traffic here, at least not like right in London, but- Why are you standing there?"

     "I just got off the plane."

     Cal looked for baggage claim or for someone who could direct him to baggage claim. There was no one at the terminal desk and it didn't look like anyone actually worked there. Maybe there was no baggage claim. Maybe he'd fallen into a cultural and temporal wormhole. If that was true, all he could do was follow the large, hairy, rabbitty thing that kept talking at him.

     "Cal, Callum, mate, we have to go."

     "We don't go live until tomorrow. Have I missed something?"

     Maybe this was a dream and he was still flying over the Atlantic. That was probably it. He shouldn't even feel the six hours he'd gained? Lost?  He was feeling a quarter past nine in the evening and yet what he saw was bright afternoon light. He'd had dreams like this before. When he was younger, he'd wake up on Saturday thinking he was late for school or that he'd only dreamed doing his homework and would have to try to get it done between classes or that he'd forgotten to wear trousers that day.

     So now he was in... Nashville? There was a sign that said welcome to Music City, USA. That was presumably Nashville. He'd ridden in what felt like an upholstered tin can for hours and now he was being talked at by Rabbit, no, Robert, no, Sean. So this is what time travel felt like. He desperately wanted a shower and a nap. He scrabbled for words to say to Sean.

     "Rabbit, aren't you supposed to be white and wearing a waistcoat?"

     Sean gaped at him for a moment.

     "You're delirious, aren't you? Over a little puddle jump? Are you really going to be a girl about this?"

     Cal was starting to feel irritable. "It was a transatlantic flight.  Does Kelly know I'm doing afternoon drive today? Does Kelly know we're live as soon as we get to the station? What does Kelly know?"

     "Of course! Yes! Yes. No. Sort of. I bumped us up a little early."

     Cal felt that same cold-water shock he always felt when Sean did something he shouldn't have and then continued on as if everything was as it should be and of course... of course... Of COURSE! It was always of course he and everyone else was in agreement what whatever had occurred to him that he'd acted upon.  Of course.

                                                                            *****

     Kelly listened as Cal told him about his first day between songs, announcements, the weather, the traffic, and everything else he was doing.
 
      "I'm glad you met us at the door." Cal walked down the track as the next one began and clicked on the mic. "You're listening to Rock 103, WKDF Nashville. That was 'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane, and now were going to dig our way into this Deep Tracks Thursday with  Aerosmith's 'Toys in the Attic.'"  He clicked off the mic and turned the feed back up. 

     "I should have known," Kelly said, "I just happened to be there doing paperwork  and smoothing things over. It was classic Sean."

     "And yet we are still on the air."

      "Yes we are." Kelly raised her mug of coffee and tapped Cal's mug of tea. "Here's to staying alive for another week."








Header Photo by Franz Von Duns  via Wikimedia Commons. You can find more of his photography here.

Return to No Static At All Home
Copyright 2007 - 2021
Legal stuff to make you very sleepy (binaural beats not included.)

All original content on this blog is the property of the blog owner and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and cannot be stored on any retrieval system, reproduced, reposted, displayed, modified or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise without written permission of the copyright owner except as noted below. A brief excerpt of content may be quoted as long as a link is provided back to the source page on this blog and this blog owner is noted as author or source. DISCLAIMER This is a personal website for the owner of Zen Dixie. The content within it is intended for personal use. The views and opinions within this blog represent the owner. It does not represent the opinions and views of other people, institutions, or organizations the owner may be affiliated with individually or as a group unless stated explicitly.

And furthermore...
Zen Dixie is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Jas Faulkner. Any attempts to conduct business or procure money, credentials and other perks, or publish using this name by anyone other than the owner of this site, domain, and trademark will be dealt with swiftly and to the full extent that legal intervention allows.

Unless otherwise stated, the material published within this website and/or linked to this website is copyright of Zen Dixie and/or Jas Faulkner. No part may be reproduced in whole or in part without the specific written permission of Jas Faulkner (sole proprietor of Zen Dixie) first hand and obtained.