I don’t travel as much as I used to- but once upon a time, I was gone every week. I travelled so much i felt like I lived in hotels.

Once in a while, though, I got a chance to get out of the plant where i was working to do something other than work. In Baton Rouge, a lot of years ago, one of the locals offered to take me to a “fish boil”. We rode in his battered LandCruiser off to a spot way the hell out of town, I had brief visions of Ned Beatty and toothless hilbillies- but not the case.

We parked the Cruiser in fairly thick brush, then walked a couple miles to a clearing.

there was a pavillion with an iron roof. There were a handful of men under the pavillion playing zydeco music on acordions. Cajun women with big tits and round backsides wearing big dresses danced with brown skinned men wearing jeans and teeshirts. Big iron pots of fish and mudbugs boiled over skid-lumber fires. Galvanized horsetroughs held ice and sweet tea in hundreds of gallons. Cases of Herbsaint sat on stumps.

Never one to just jump into anything, I sat back and watched as others danced and sang and drank. After I’d eaten some bugs and fish, and drunk some herbsaint, I got dragged off to the pavillion by a woman whose every word I didn’t understand. I danced like a fucktard, and I did it all night long. It was hot and I sweated, and I drank iced tea and ate bugs and danced some more. the women all laughed at me, ans did some of the men, and I had a most marvelous time. Finally, at the end of the evening I gave up, sat back against one of the pavillion posts, drained. One of the women came and plopped her plump behind on my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck, and planted a big wet boozy kiss on me, and went back to dancing

I woke up next to the pavillion on the ground, a chicken pecking around my head. I felt fine. A womans fully clothed arm was draped over my back, and an accordion player, still hanging on to his squeezebox, was using my left calf as a pillow.

Those days, I would do anything, take any chance. Sometimes, like this, it paid off. Sometimes I got my ass kicked because I got liquored up and mouthed off to the wrong guy. Now, I live more safely, but I miss those adventures.