Coeur d’Alene Idaho

I am going to have to give up on getting everything in perfect chronological order. I am having trouble remembering everything as it happened. When we finished up at the Canterbury inn in Spokane we only had to travel a short Thirty miles to our next job in Coeur d’Alene Idaho. Back then Coeur d’Alene was a small town in northern Idaho right on the shore of a beautiful lake. Still is, but it isn’t small anymore. It has become a very popular vacation destination and a place lots of people have summer homes. We were booked into a place called Rathskellers. It was a very popular place with the young crowd. Big crowds every night and they had lots of energy. We liked it there except for one thing. They served pizza, matter of fact Pizza was a very big thing there. Now what’s wrong with Pizza you might ask? Nothing unless you are in the middle of a beautiful ballad and over the house speaker system you hear ” JOHNNY YOUR PIZZAS READY”. That was so annoying and it happened all night every night. Other than that it was a fun place to play. Holiday weekends are exceptionally busy there because the college students from British Columbia flock down there. It’s like spring break. They take over every hotel, motel in town and they really have a good time. We stayed in a small motel with individual cabins. It was on a hillside with a gorgeous front lawn that led down to the lake. During the day I got involved with a group of college kids staying in the same motel playing lawn darts. You know the game that was later outlawed? We would play for beer, I don’t even like beer. I was pretty good at the game and won lots of beer. The morning we left town I took all the beer I had won and left it on their front porch.

Again I can’t remember the time frame but somewhere about this time Gary and Ricki got tired of paying for hotel or motel rooms and bought a travel trailer. It was nice and worked out well for them. Well except for the time they left it to go on vacation and it ran out of propane and the water pipes froze and burst. I think that happened in Spokane but I’m not sure.

One time we were to be traveling on Easter Sunday. Shannon was small and we were needing to find a way to have an Easter egg hunt for her. We were to travel from Tri Cities Washington To Spokane Washington. I’m not sure whose idea it was but we made a plan for Gary and Ricki to leave a little before us and stop at a roadside park and hide the eggs. We would come in behind them and convince Shannon that the Easter bunny had hid her eggs there knowing she would be traveling. It worked out great. She was so excited that the Easter bunny had not forgotten her. It’s interesting how creative you can get when you are out on the road as we were. Gary and Ricki were great with her and to this day she still refers to them as Uncle Gary and Aunt Ricki. Those were fun times. That is still one of Shannon’s fondest memories.

About this same time I bought a Dodge van. It made traveling much better. More room for me to sleep and Shannon to play while Susan drove. Most every time we moved from place to place it was a Saturday night after work. As soon as we closed we loaded the equipment trailer then went to the Motel to load personal stuff pick up the wife and kids and away we would go. I always had a thing that I had to start off driving. I don’t know why just one of those Allenisms. I wouldn’t drive long then I would crawl in the back and go to sleep while Susan drove. I must say Susan and Shannon were good travelers. Susan had a packing system that was pretty neat. She used footlockers to pack staples from the kitchen, Shannon’s toys, underwear etc we had room in the van to hang our clothes from the closet. She would have everything ready and in a little less than an hour after I got home we could be on the road. On travel nights Gary would already have his travel trailer hooked up. He would ride to work with me and when he got home Ricki would be ready to go. Most of the time we wouldn’t have REAL long trips but sometime it was tough. We were almost always off on Sunday nights. So we would travel after work Saturday and wouldn’t have to open in the new place til Monday night. However one time we had to travel from Great Falls Montana to Richland Washington in one day. We closed in Great Falls on Sunday Night and opened in Richland Monday night. It was wintertime, we encountered some ice and snow along the way. We got into Richland about four o’clock in the afternoon Monday got the equipment set up went to the hotel got unloaded took a short nap and went to work. That was not fun but we were young.

Life on the road would sometimes get really old. Especially when you look around you and everything you own is packed in a Dodge van headed down the highway. You pass through a town and see beautiful homes with beautiful lawns and see people headed to church on Sunday morning and there you are headed to a motel Kitchenette somewhere in a new town where you know no one. But. You’re chasing a dream. A dream you’ve had since the first time you performed on stage. I have never one time been sorry I did it. Of course now looking back I wish I had gone to college but I would not trade the years I had on the road playing music for anything. The sights we saw, the fun we had, the people we met, I loved it all and if I had it to do over again I’d do it again.

Next time Montana. Big sky country