Wild Jams & Warm Showers

Day 6 - May 27

Some aspects of this Folk Festival are comfortably familiar, much as they’ve always been. But here’s one that’s really different. The cold showers by the Kerrtry Store -- the showers that are featured in the title of my book, and appear as background setting or lead character in several chapters -- exist no more.

They’ve been replaced by a new building, located more or less where the camp known as Peckerwood Island used to be. The new shower shed has hot water and concrete floors. The women’s side is divided into two halves; each with a vanity sink and two shower heads. There are dressing areas with benches and rows of hooks on the wall. We also have a sort of anteroom where some gals dry and fix their hair.

The dressing area is open to the sky, like it was in the old shower shed. I like that. But the divided room doesn’t foster quite the same sense of community we had when we were all in one big space together. And hot water? More comfortable, I’ll admit, but it just isn’t the same. Here are some excerpts from the book:

First night ever at the Kerrville Folk Festival
... when I said I wanted to take a few minutes and try the shower behind the Kerrtry Store, he decided I was too compulsive for his taste.
“Those showers are cold, I mean really cold,” he said. “You take one in the heat of the day, not at two in the morning. Believe me, you don’t want to go in there!”
I did. It had been a hot, sweaty afternoon. Night breezes had cooled the air, but I still felt grungy and out of gas. The cold shower took my breath away, but I emerged refreshed, renewed, and definitely wide awake. I’d been tired before; now, I felt as if I could keep going for hours.

Ten years later (or thereabouts)
The act requires some courage. Once inside the roofless shed, you must bare your body in the presence of friends, strangers, rivals, maybe even your ex-husbland’s current wife. Then you step up to one of the overhead nozzles that protrude from the inside wall and, by your own hand, loose the cascade of icy water that will bare your soul. When it hits, you’ll stop fretting over your tan lines, your hysterectomy scar, or the comparative size of your hips and beasts. You’ll speak the name of whatever god you believe in -- perhaps in a whisper, perhaps in a shout -- as you focus on getting your business done and getting out.

I should mention that the new shower shed has one cold-water spigot on the left side, where an old-fashioned Kerrvert can get an ice-cold shower if she really wants one.

Do I use it? Heck, no! Well ... maybe once or twice, on a 105-degree afternoon.