This could have the title or subtitle of …

The Rifle, The Fishing Rod, and The Mic Stand

… but I digress.

I called this post “Seeing Into The Past” because it’s an addendum to my previous post, “Seeing Into The Future …“.  Something I meant to include in that last post is what happened on the way to the session.

Often enough, parking can be a pest in Coupeville.  The historic area — where Tom and I were — is not all that large, so the trick for many of us is to use the library parking lot.  I hopped out of my truck and started walking across the parking lot.  Under my arm I had some DVDs to drop off at the library, one of my mic stands, and a lunch-box sized utility case I use for my portable recording gear.

Not but a moment later a fellow called across the parking lot to me.  “Did-ya catch anything?”  I quickly cycled through the list of things I might have caught but couldn’t come up with anything.  I gave back a confused “… What?”, hoping to find out his intention.  “Did-ya catch any FISH?”  Then my mind went to “… When and where would I have caught any fish?!?” — quickly followed by “When was the last time I went fishing???”  And then it occurred to me what was going on.  I held up my tripod boom-mic horizontally and clarified to the man, “Microphone stand.”

Now that all was right in the world, I moved on to the library doors where I ran into Tom.  Later that day he was scheduled to present one of his various engaging topics, speaking on how Whidbey Island is changing from a financial perspective — he had just loaded in.

We said our hellos and started walking toward Meg’s Kingerfisher Bookstore to record the podcast.  Along the way I began telling him about the fishing-pole / mic-stand confusion that had just taken place in the parking long.  We shared a chuckle around this and then I told Tom some of my mic-stand-confusion history.

I commonly say that I half-grew-up on Whidbey Island.  This is the truncated way of expressing that I grew up in what used to be part of north Seattle; my family frequently visited my grandparents, and I was here so often I understood this as my other home*.  My last four abodes before moving full-time to Whidbey were apartments in Shoreline.  I play Highland bagpipes, and practicing my instrument in apartments in America tends to be IMPOSSIBLE!  My strategy was to check with local churches to see if I might use their space when it was otherwise unoccupied — in exchange I offered to perform for certain church services.  Two churches took me up on this and the relationship proved to be mutually beneficial.  In other words, I got practice space and they got a guy who called the cops on a few thieves.  Lovely, huh?  It’s one of myriad things I do not miss about living in Seattle.
(*Beyond that I’m not getting into the proprietary thing that exists here on the island about whos-who and whats-what with how long you have/n’t lived on the island and blah-blah-blah — I could be from far worse places, and let’s leave it at that.)

The recording equipment I use for making WOWI is gear I gathered for my existence as a musician.  One day, as I was walking to a church I used right on the Seattle / Shoreline city lines, I was stopped by a cop.  I was en route to the church with my pipe case and recording gear when he parked in their driveway and came toward me.  The long & short of it is that apparently some concerned citizen called the police about someone fitting my description walking around with a rifle.  Suffice to say, I think my mic stand is pretty decent quality but I am yet to learn what caliber it is.

In the Seattle-area apparently mic-stand = rifle.

On Whidbey Island … mic-stand = fishing pole.

Eh… I can live with that!

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Tom’s author page on Amazon

Don’s author page on Amazon