B. B. King for Christmas

For a Christmas present this year, Julie presented me tickets for the B.B. King concert at the Route 66 Casino, three days after Christmas day. I have never been so excited for a concert and without a doubt it was the best present I had ever received. I love his music like my dad did Louis Armstrong.

We got to the night and Julie got directions off of that paragon of accuracy, MapQuest. It said in essence, go west on I-40 to exit 149, get off, go across the interstate and continue west to the casino on the frontage road. Never mind the fact that we saw a sign that said the casino was at exit 140, we blindly followed the instructions and indeed there was a frontage road. However, instead of a 4 mile jaunt to the casino, the frontage road was more like ten miles long. It first became a two lane dirt road with some warnings about the prison nearby. Then it petered down into a one lane dirt track that dead ended, plunging into the Rio Puerco, chasm!

Another driver had evidently used the same tool and was lost with us. He said, “There is an, ‘underpass,’ back up the road about a half mile…” We decided to give that a try and so we headed back. The underpass, turned out to be a large concrete culvert that did indeed allow our passage and lo, and behold on the other side we found Route 66. We managed to get to the concert to hear B.B. King’s amazing orchestra for a couple of songs and then he came out.

The concert was amazing and I could not get over the sounds that came for that 82 year old man! He had to sit but he is the consummate showman. I am grateful to have heard him even at this stage of life. I am even more grateful that we did not wind up at the bottom of the Rio Puerco…