A Patient but Persistent Spring

When Spring finally comes, it often announces its arrival as we play at the Oak Center in Lake City, Minnesota. Driving along the highway from Minneapolis, I look over to see a slight greening of the rolling prairie. Here the hills are bare and the trees start hugging the limestone bottoms. It's the beginning of the great inland sea of grass that stretches to the Rockies. A buffalo herd is standing near a round bale in a field, feeding. The trees are still barren, not even a bud yet, as we are pretty far north.

It's hard to believe a stubborn, sticking snow came down the night before and Winter kept his grip until pushed back by a patient but persistent Spring. The melt off has choked the streams and the Zumbro River is high and gnawing at her banks. A couple more miles and there, on the curve of the road, sits the old mercantile where we will play tonight. An air generator twirls above it, easily moving in the strong north wind blowing from Saskatchewan. Under scurrying gray clouds, Brian and I pull alongside the building. The walls are peeling, the gray wood peeking out here and there as if the paint itself is being slowly melted away. We take out our cases and head up the wide steps to the second floor. The old basset hound slowly rises off his haunches near the wood burning stove and ambles toward us. He decides that we need to be announced and lets out a sound like a geriatric Chewbacca. Three woofs later and he's satisfied that we're announced. He ambles back to the wood stove and goes to sleep.

Brian and I have been playing every spring for almost a decade now at the Oak Center. Usually we're the last show of the season, which actually means the last show before the farmers get out planting their fields. As we open our cases, Steve, the owner of the mercantile and surrounding organic farm, emerges from his apartment after taking a late afternoon nap. He's a bit stooped from years of hard work but still has a warm smile. We all give each other a hug. There's an unspoken acknowledgment that we're together to witness another turning of the seasons.

Downstairs, a couple of young volunteers are at work in the mercantile. Like something that was kept in a pickle jar from the 1890's, there's a preserved feeling of yesteryear. The glass cases, the high tin ceilings, the worn pine floors. A closer look shows a variety of goods right from the 21st century: CDs, cards, books on peace and current events intermingling with oil lamps and farming implements. On the walls the decades unfold, from old buffalo skulls to 60's protest posters to the latest fliers for the next show.

Steve makes no bones about his liberal leanings. In fact, I think only a liberal-minded person could keep a place like the Oak Center going. It has an almost quixotic air about it as I set up my bass and smell the venison stew cooking on the wood-fired stove downstairs. The belief that the world can change if we do our part. That we can stay connected to the earth. That we can learn to live within our means and without the sprays, dyes, distillates and fertilizers that will soon be applied to the surrounding cornfields. Each year we return and it seems as if we are still in the grasp of Winter waiting for that patient but persistent Spring that eventually will come.

The audience arrives and they too are old friends, people coming slowly up the steep, worn steps to the second floor. Some come a bit slower than they had the year before, but they make it to the top and we sit around for a bit, catching up on each others' lives. A popcorn machine starts popping away and under the gleam of oil lamps there's a simple offering of deviled eggs and other homegrown and homemade food and desserts. They rest on mismatched platters and baskets upon a solid wooden table. Everyone nibbles at the food, talks a bit, and spends a bit of time with each other until Steve walks up on stage. The folks head off to claim their auditorium-style wooden seats. Brian and I head to the "green room," a tiny closet-like space to the left of the stage.

Steve starts talking to the audience. It's leaning a bit past center for most folks, but these are Minnesotans, used to such talk and even if they don't agree, they are too polite to raise an eyebrow. Steve winds things up, introduces us and we start playing.

The room becomes one living creature. The pine floor and walls reverberate with our music and the audience softly stomp their feet in time to the songs, sending out shoots of energy that twine around every note coming back at them. We take a light-hearted approach to our Midwest storms by singing "Twister in A Trailer Park." Everyone is in on the joke. The jigs and reels catch fire as the evening quickly rolls by.

I feel that here, in this second-story, worn down mercantile, a ritual as worthy as any sacred rite happens. We share stories, we pass the evening reaffirming to each other that all is still well, that we can still continue along with our aches and pains. Life doesn't have to be too serious after all. I feel that this evening marks the beginning of Spring for me personally, even if the wind outside is still cold.

We finish the night by playing a couple encores, ending with "Muintir Na Sidhe," the Fairy Folk. As I pack my guitar into its case, I glance up at the wood stage wall. On it are hundreds of names from hundreds of performers who have played over the years. I wonder how their evenings went. I wonder if next year, the buds will be out a bit earlier and will Winter be sent back up North before May arrives? Will we all be able to be back here, waiting to reach out and be embraced by a patient but persistent Spring?

~Marty