Carolyn Wonderland: Miss Understood

In 1994 my brother and I were on a giant month long road trip. We saw all three coasts, both sets of big mountains and 4 time zones in just under 10,000 miles. We camped at Wind Caves National Park for four days to take in Mt. Rushmore and Hike the surrounding areas. We left towards Devil's Tower about 100 miles west. It was August, and we had had hell finding a Camp Site because of the Sturgis Harley Rally going on near Rapid City. Seeing a phallanx of a thousand Harleys coming at you down a rural highway makes you think that perhaps all the white trash in the world have decided to conquer South Dakota and take it for their own kingdom.

I had three feet of hair and wore five earrings at the time so everybody kept asking me if I was "here for Sturgis?" The fact that we had been living in a tent and hiking added extra facial hair and funk to my uniform. As we headed out of state towards the National Monument of Devil's tower in Wyoming, the dreaded orange signs of road construction filled an otherwise flawless afternoon. I sucked down the last of a fatty of Mexico's finest when a sign read "PREPARE TO STOP. FOLLOW LEAD CAR." A 20ish flagman soon filled the highway and he stood next to a sedan. I pulled up behind and rolled down the window. A darkly tanned faced peared in behind a pair of raybans and from under a hardhat that matched his saftey orange vest.

"How ya doing," he said in perfect western trailer-park-ese. "Ya gotta wait for the Lead Car to come back, only one lane open."
"How long will that be," my brother asked from shotgun.
"About 2 hours. He he he he.....naw only about 5 minutes dude. You boys here for Sturgis?"
"Naw," I said "just tourists headed for Devil's Tower, we were camped near Mt. Rushmore."
"Dude, you gotta go to Sturgis. I was there last night. Man they got Whiskey, and Drugs, and naked bitches and live music. Here, check this out."

He reached into his back pocket and produced a newspaper of only about 12 pages.

"This here is the band I saw last night. They were awesome."

His finger indicated the back page of the paper, which had the entire line up of bands for the festival. He stopped it under the name Carolyn Wonderland.

I was 1200 miles from my nightclub in Houston, yet here was one of the musicians that played for me starring back from pages held by a local Jethro. The bikers had come to conquer, and they had selected a queen.

Rich Hornbuckle