In various careers I have seen some weird stuff. I’ve raised everything from cabbages to children on the family farm. I’ve delivered offshore supplies into a war zone; I have occasionally written the truth in various publications.

I have impersonated Willie Nelson. I’ve met celebrities and didn’t ask for an autograph (except once and that was granted, compliments of Charlie Pride). After all nobody asked me for mine.

I’ve supervised fugitive recovery teams mowed lawns and watered flowers, trained horses and mistrained wives. I have literally “sung” for my supper, and sometimes got paid in federal reserve notes to boot.
I know the best restaurants to scrounge to meal at in the lower 48 states and two of them are in a small town in Panola County. If you have a fierce craving for steak or oysters or anything in between, Como is the place to go.

The last time I showed up at the Oyster Bar to pick and grin was Mrs. Barnes first opportunity to display her vocal skills before a live audience. If she was nervous about her debut it wasn’t apparent by her composure, at least until the one hour show we were booked for had stretched into 3 1/2 hours and shut down.

After we had loaded the sound equipment into the desecrated driver vehicle and the local constabulary showed up in force and surrounded us. We were parked next to the bank and the excuse the cops used for “probable cause: was that one of the speakers we were loading looks suspiciously like a bank vault.

After several phone calls involving four lawyers, two judges, three professionals, character witnesses (liars all), one representative from the Mississippi Attorney General’s office and a bank examiner whose sister-in-law was a professional amplifier appraiser, we were allowed to literally get out of the spotlight.

Many thanks to judges, lawyers and other crooks, and also to the Como PD, although they don’t know “Jack” about musicians or Peavy amps, they can spot a suspicious crew hangin’ around a bank (or a restaurant) in the wee hours of a morning. Everybody involved earned their pay check that night, except for the drug dealers who, I’ve been informed, saw no police cars.

The bootleggers were convinced that the local cops had been busted or shuffled by the border patrol or Homeland Security or FBI, tax collectors etc and they closed up shop and went home.

The show looked and sounded a lot worse than it was, thanks to one and all y’all.
A good night to all and to all a good night,

Ricky Harpole

(Contact Harpole at www.facebook.com/harpolive or www.colespointrecords.com)