Sometimes It Helps to Be Lucky

I used to go to the Bluegrass Festival in Winfield, KS for about 20 years. It offered the most comfortable and familiar collection of people and songs for me and met my annual vacation needs. I flitted about and didn't sleep and probably consumed and sang too much. It was sorta that place where everybody knew my name.

 

This one year I went I had this really big African-ish purse thing that I carried everywhere, I remember that I could fit a really small baby or medium sized dog in there. It was awesome.

I also had one green bic lighter.

(And, that is usually how I rolled into the Pecan Grove. If I'd done it all legally, I'd have thrown down a couple bones and had a tent and coolers and whatnot. But - I almost never had the money so I tended to just casually stroll into the event and trade stuff for sustenance.)

For the duration of my 10-day stay, I took that purse everywhere and left it sitting around a lot.

I remember lots of times somebody would say "Hey! I've got a green bic lighter! Who's IS this?"

The answer was always that it was mine, just throw it in my bag.

It seemed like this happened often, but when you don't sleep much - a lot gets lost in the translation.

When I finally picked the bag up to head home, it seemed like it weighed a ton, but a lot had happened so I didn't think much about it.

After I slept for a couple days, I dumped that bag to clean it out.

There were 37 green bic lighters in there.

Yep. 37.

For real.