There's a Vortex in Brimfield

I am now certain Brimfield and a surrounding radius of 300 miles is in a powerful vortex. Crazy stuff keeps happening here and the story I'm about to tell you absolutely proves it.

I'm down to the last 2 hours of the 12 hour drive and all of a sudden, the van loses engine power, I barely make it to the median as the cars are barreling through a construction zone with no shoulders. I've just had this thing tuned up to the tune of $850. A quick look under the hood reveals nothing easy like a loose wire. They send out the big tow truck and the drivers eyes get big when he sees the strain on the winch, "you got something heavy in there." Yeah, and I gotta sell it like tomorrow. It's Sunday, there's nothing doing. I gotta roll with it.

I buy the nice tow driver dinner at McDonalds and listen sympathetically to his oral surgery pain, the bipolar girlfriend who hasn't moved out yet and the leg that got crushed in a farm accident 30 years ago. He finds a penny in the parking lot and gives it to me for luck. My vans gonna be serviced at 8am when they open, I'll be set up and drinking a cocktail by tomorrow night.

Back in Brimfield my gal pal has found a nice man on match.com to buy her dinner, true story, but he's wearing a lounge lizard neckline and his hair is slicked back. She thanks him and fortified with a few cocktails, my happy pal heads back to the tents to find our drinking buddies.

The driver drops me off at a Ramada Hotel near the airport in Oriskany, New York. I am in the middle of nowhere, at a hotel with 3 people in it. It's the perfect setting for a remake of The Shining. I take a walk and find the main road. The tiny brick control tower at the airport is from the 50's. There are construction vehicles and piles of sand all around it. No planes are flying in or out of here.

The party in Brimfield just keeps getting better. My pal is having the kind of day that you never want to end. She heads back to the hotel bar for a night cap and it's full of fun people. She meets a darling 28 yr-old man, he says he's a professional Vegas gambler, they hit off.

It's pitch black here at the airport hotel and deathly quiet. I've managed to forget reading material and borrow a cheesy romance novel from the Shelly Duval understudy at the front desk. It's about a marine who finds a picture of a pretty girl in the Kuwait desert and believes it's a good luck charm. When he comes home, he walks across the country to find the girl who saved his life. I break for some vending machine food. No sign of Jack Nicholson, but I know where the main road is and I've got running shoes, Shelly Duval is on her own.

There's a lucky charm all right and and my gal pal has it. Though she' has a hangover and only three hours of sleep, love has prevailed. The lucky charm worked for the marine too, the evil ex-husband is vanquished and the marine finds true love with the pretty girl.

So far all my lucky penny got me through was the night in Oriskany, It's noon and I am still waiting to hear what's wrong with my van. I'm holding onto my penny and patience, now if I they could only get my van running…