{"id":17584,"date":"2013-03-23T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.com\/?p=17584"},"modified":"2013-03-23T12:00:09","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T12:00:09","slug":"jack-blanchard-and-the-thing-about-lost-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/23\/jack-blanchard-and-the-thing-about-lost-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Blanchard And The Thing About Lost Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n

LOST TIME.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
\n

High on the mountain curves of The Blue Ridge Parkway both of our left rear dual wheel tires blew out with a shotgun blast.Our big motor home lurched and swayed,and our equipment trailer tried to pull us over the cliff.A Seven-Up bottle had ripped the tires apart,and I fought the heaving monster to the shoulder of the two-lane road,where it shivered and died.Dead silence.<\/p>\n

Misty and I were in shock.Our traveling companion, Pat Patrick, showed no emotion.As usual.We couldn\u2019t raise any help on our CB radio,and nobody had cell phones then.It was early gray winter and\u00a0the bare trees were black lace against the sky.We were stranded in a Currier and Ives Christmas card.Pat said calmly: \u201cI can fix it.\u201dI thought I deserved a good panic first but he left the bus and got the tools from the trunk.<\/p>\n

We followed, still in a daze.He assessed the situation,examined the guilty pop bottle as evidence,and then he slid under the crippled dinosaur.Misty said, \u201cYou really shouldn\u2019t be under there.\u201dPat said, \u201cHand me the jack, please.\u201dThe jack looked small and wobbly, as Pat pumped it up.There was a little glaze of ice on the asphalt.The jack slipped and the big rig dropped to within a half-inch of his face.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t blink or utter a sound.He scraped off a patch of ice and tried again.When we were moving down the road a few minutes later,I looked over at him and said, \u201cThanks, Pat!\u201d>From the co-pilot seat he looked ahead through the windshield and said,\u201cNo problem.\u201dPat Patrick and I were friends for a while,but, being me, I wanted to be friends for life.Being Pat, he was basically a loner.He was a former Green Beret and an intellectual with strong opinions.<\/p>\n

I made him laugh a lot with my smart alec\u00a0comments,and I liked that he got the jokes,but we also got into philosophical debates,followed by quiet spells,while each of us thought the other just didn\u2019t get it.I\u2019m never nervous on stage,but I\u2019m always a mess just before going on.Pat and I would play chess right up to the minute they called me.He always won, but it stopped my pre-stage fright. We were sort of three-piece family…Misty, Pat, and me,and like a family we occasionally did something that hurt or annoyed another.<\/p>\n

Misty lets you know loud and clear when you\u2019re out of line,my style is to sting back with quiet words,but Pat never reacted at all.All these years later I realize he was letting it build up inside.When the negativity reached a certain level he just faded out of our life.He was the guy who carried our heavy sound equipment,scared reluctant show promoters into handing over our money,and shared adventures with us all over America,but we never knew where he lived.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t believe in having a telephone because they were \u201can invasion of privacy\u201d.He used pay phones.I missed having Pat around and tried to find him for a long time.I finally heard that he owned a little antique store called \u201cThe Rusty Duck\u201d.I went to see him and at first we didn\u2019t recognize each other.I looked pretty much the same, but Pat had\u00a0a stroke.He was shaky and white haired.We traded cordial small talk for a few minutes,and held back decades of words.Recently I heard that Pat Patrick had died.I keep thinking about the years of friendship we lost and wondering why.<\/p>\n

Jack Blanchard<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2012.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan…<\/div>\n
Home page: http:\/\/jackandmisty.com<\/div>\n
CD Baby: http:\/\/cdbaby.com\/cd\/jackmisty<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0nashvilleshowcase@comcast.net<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOST TIME. High on the mountain curves of The Blue Ridge Parkway both of our left rear dual wheel tires blew out with a shotgun blast.Our big motor home lurched and swayed,and our equipment trailer tried to pull us over the cliff.A Seven-Up bottle had ripped the tires apart,and I fought the heaving monster to the shoulder of the two-lane road,where it shivered and died.Dead silence. Misty and I were in shock.Our traveling companion, Pat Patrick, showed no emotion.As usual.We couldn\u2019t raise any help on our CB radio,and nobody had<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}