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Mike W. Bryant
Staff columnist
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Well, the hunger was getting unbearable.
And that's how it came to be Sunday mid-afternoon, with one corn dog left in the freezer, that myself and members from the rockabilly group the Raygun Cowboys set out in search of sustenance. The band was in town for the Folk on the Rocks spring dance, and were having a mighty good time for the most part, but now the beer was gone and so was the food.
I had $3.46 in my pocket - not enough to endure the apocalypse gripping the city. There was no ATM service and debit cards were no good. Store clerks were surly and unsympathetic. Even Wal-mart was in crisis, and we all know that if you can't go into Wal-mart and use your bank card to buy dog food and Cheetos, the end must be near. It was quite apparent that our digital economy was in collapse and only the strong and resourceful would survive.
I felt it was therefore necessary to load the guys and my trusty power auger into the truck and head down the winter road to fetch some burbot for supper. I also brought my rifle since I still haven't used up my caribou tags.
Jon Christopherson, the band's guitarist and lead singer, was up to the challenge. A Metis from Cold Lake, Alta., he figured a little sprucing up on animal skinning and such was all he needed to do to regain some of his ancestors' traditional resourcefulness.
Drummer Derek Thieson was not so sure.
"I really can't see you chasing down a deer or something," Thieson told the portly band leader.
"Well, my brother does it," the dejected band leader replied.
"I'm sure he would show me how to do it. It can't be that hard. We still got guns."
Thieson thought he would be the most successful out of his group because he is a brick layer by trade and he could always build himself a little stone hovel to live in should technology fail and drive us back into the stone age. Nate Connolly, the group's trombone player, mumbled something about looking forward to donning viking gear in the event of an apocalypse so he could head out to "pillage."
In any event, I was mighty pleased to have these particular boys along on this piscatory quest for food. It's a well-established fact that rockabilly musicians have a deeply-rooted connection to fishin', going all the way back to Johnny Horton, the Texas honky tonk star who recorded such 1950s hits as Honky Tonk Man, Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor and The Electrified Donkey. I'm particularly fond of Shotgun Boogie, but that's a hard track to find.
Before he became a rockabilly star, ol' Johnny Horton was a big-time professional angler, and was fond of showing off all those giant alligator gar, mud puppies, and snake fish he caught down in the bayou. You'd never go hungry with a fella like that around as long as he had his fishin' pole with him.
I would hope if the end times do come, there would be a good crew of rockabilly musicians around to help me put some dinner on the table.
"I think (rockabilly) would be low on the priority scale," said a modest Christopherson. "Who knows? The world will always need entertainment."
And mud puppy wranglers too, I reckon.
By and by, word got out that bank machine service was restored in Yellowknife around 3 p.m. Sunday. Considering that it was very cold outside and the boys were only garbed in their cheetah-print stage outfits, it no longer seemed necessary to scrounge the land for vittles so we decided to head back into town to load up on corn dogs.
"Actually, I like corn dogs," Thieson confessed.
"Any meat on a stick is good," added Christopherson.
Well, that was good enough for me. I'll get some more burbot this weekend.
Cheers guys, may the future be ours.