Adrian, Texas

I've been taking advantage of my newfound downtime to sort through and organize the contents of the attic, AKA my office.  I've been finding lots of semi-forgotten treasures and yesterday i turned up a copy of my pal Tim White's self-published magazine, which brought back a lot of memories.

About 15 years ago I took a road trip (no, not in a Crosley) from Sacramento to Georgia.  My rock n roll band had been asked to play a festival in Atlanta, and even though they offered a backline (shared amplifiers and drums), I got it stuck in my head that we HAD to use our own equipment.  Since the other three guys in the band thought I was nuts, it was up to me to drive all the gear there if I wanted to use it.  I figured out how to fit the guitar and bass amps, two boxes of records and tshirts and a 1964 drum kit in the cheapest economy rental car and still have space for three people.  My buddy Mark signed on as co-driver, and we really worked on my pal Tim White to come along too.  Trouble was, he had to work.

Then, right before we left, Tim broke up with his longtime girlfriend.  Much drama.  The prospect of moping around town while his two best buddies were cavorting across the country was too much.  He called his boss, told him he was taking two weeks off - starting the next day - and that he understood if he didn't have a job when he got back.  His boss told him to call when he got back.

A few years later Tim asked me to do an article for the magazine (we called 'em 'fanzines' then) that he'd started.  He'd been raised in Ohio and had become fascinated with the history of the west once he moved to California.  Tim is obsessed with ghost towns, country music and wide open spaces, and his unique take on the 'mythos' of The West was the subject of the 'zine.  I gave it a lot of thought and decided to do a comic strip about our road trip.  The art is really sloppy and the lettering is illegible in spots, but the story captures that moment as I remembered it - and I've often wondered whatever happened to those abandoned sports cars in Adrian, Texas.

This was published in the third issue of Western Lore Magazine, which I think came out at the end of 1999.  Click on the pages to see them bigger. 

 PS:  Tim's boss let him keep his job, but he quit on his first day back.