Grateful Blog: Day 71: When I was 19 I bought a ‘Mexican’ style blanket in a parking lot inHampton,Virginia. Springtime inVirginiaand the night’s get cold. We were on a 6 day run of Grateful Dead shows coinciding with a non-existent Spring Break that we skipped out of classes for anyways. Warm days on the beach. Dancing in the Coliseum aisles at night. Then many hours reveling in the Bacchanalian parking lot festival that was a Grateful Dead show. Sometimes it was better than the show itself. And sometimes it’s bloody cold inVirginiain springtime. I bought the cheap blanket for $10 if I recall.
4 years later I was living in Seattle,WA. The other side of the country. Dragged that blanket with me. In fact all I brought with me was an interview suit, a handful of Grateful Dead bootleg cassette tapes and that blanket. Don’t know why. Maybe good memories. One night I went to sleep while I was writing poetry and stories in bed. Hmmm…turns out I’ve been doing that for longer than I’d imagined. Writing by candlelight and keeping myself warm on a secondhand mattress underneath that cheap blanket.
Somewhere in the night I woke up. On fire.Me.The sheets. The bed. I’d fallen asleep. The candle had burned down. Flipped over I guess. I woke up, parts of me dangerously singed and the bed in full tilt blaze. I’m not sure exactly what transpired next but what I recall best was leaping out of bed, grabbing that blanket and smothering the flames, on me and the bed. Put the whole thing out, smoke alarm still blazing. Smelled like hell. My roommate was asleep on the couch in the living room but he kept saying out load: ‘Dan, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you to cook the burgers slow instead of cooking them fast and burning them’. He never woke up. Bizarre…
Earlier tonight I was sitting in one of my favorite chairs, and oldMissionstyle rocker in the den, just relaxing for a few minutes before Sunday was no more. There’s a lot of windows in the den and I got a chill sitting there. I reached back and pulled a blanket off the back of the rocker and it was that cheap, worn, stained and yeah, singed Mexican blanket that’s kept me warm on more than one occasion and helped saved my life on another. I’m Grateful for that and for one of life’s little reminders that sometimes it gets cold in springtime…
