Last Thursday Darleen and I went to see Alan Jackson, in concert, at the Worcester Centrum Center, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester holds a special place in my heart for being one of the coolest dingy cities around. It's a shady place, confusing to drive through, and yet it seems to be a good place to stop for a break on long trips, and there's a neat little short cut you can take through it -- I-290 plows right through Worcester, shaving SECONDS off a trip that would otherwise go from I-495 straight to I-90, also known as the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Years ago, Darleen bought me tickets to see Amy Grant in concert at the Worcester Centrum. Amy Grant is my favorite Christian/pop singer; I like both her early work and her later work, and catching her during the House of Love tour was a great thrill.

Well, last week we got to see Alan Jackson, a favorite of both Darleen's and mine. We spent an outrageous amount of money for the privilege to park our car two blocks away, and we filed in with the crazy number of other people all flocking to the Centrum. We weren't even out of the car when people selling Alan Jackson T-shirts approached us, displaying the fronts, then the backs. We passed several more people, each selling a different Alan Jackson T-shirt. These guys are great. It's harder to find the exact shirt you want, but they charge ten dollars, whereas the same shirt inside the building runs thirty.

So we filed in, and we couldn't resist spending $3.75 for a spoonful of ice cream, and in due time LeAnn Womack came out to open. First impression: she's short. I didn't realize how many songs of hers I knew, and I think I'll be picking some of her CDs up in due time.

Fifty minutes later, intermission. Thirty minutes later, Alan Jackson came out. First impression: he's tall.

The game of the evening was to see if we could escape the concert without him singing "Crazy 'Bout a Mercury," a song I actually sort of like but which inexplicably drives Darleen nuts. When we play an Alan Jackson CD in the car, and that song comes up, there's a mad rush to skip the track before too much of it plays.

The other trick of the evening was for me to get a chance to pass a message on to Mr. Jackson. Mousie gave me specific instructions: "Tell Alan Jackson for me that there ain't no cure for the summertime blues." All right, I said. I'll be sure to do that. Of course, we sort of had seats a bit far back for him to hear me unless I really yelled, and the annoying thing was that so many other people were there, too. And the other thing was -- now I don't mean to slight the man in any way -- Alan Jackson himself never let anybody else get a word in edgewise! He got up on stage, and he just sang song after song, one right after another.

So we sat back and were pleasantly surprised that he focused more on his best songs rather than his newest songs. "I'm in love with you baby, and I don't even know your name," he started with, followed by, "I'll buy ya tall, tall trees and all the waters in the seas; I'm a fool fool fool for you." And inevitably we got to, "She's gone country...yeah, she's gone country...Massachusetts' gone country...the whole world gone country," and I suspect the lyrics were altered somewhat just for that performance. And there was "Chasin' that neon rainbow...livin' that honky-tonk dream. All I ever wanted...was to pick this guit-ar and sing. Just tryin' t' be somebody. Just wanna be heard and seen. Chasin' that neon rai-ainbow...livin' that honky-tonk dream." And "a good ol' boy and a pretty little girl...start all over in this little bitty world...a little bitty plan and a little bitty dream...it's all part of the little bitty scheme." And "Dubya, dubya, dubya dot mem-or-ies...I'll be waitin' patiently...."

And just when I was thinking I'd better find a way to pass along Mousie's message, it turned out he already knew that. Even had a song about it.

No "Mercury" yet. Well it was pushing the 90 minute mark, and Alan Jackson started singing "Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee, it gets hotter than a hoochee coochee. We laid rubber on the Georgia asphalt. Got a little crazy but we never got caught. Down by the river on a Friday night, pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight. Talkin' 'bout cars and dreamin' 'bout women. Never had a plan, just a-livin' for the minute. Yeah way down yonder on the Chattahoochee, never knew how much those muddy waters meant to me, but I learned how to swim, and I learned who I was. Lot about living, and a little 'bout love." And I figured, ok, this is a great song to end on. I bet he does. And he did.

And there was great applause and wild screaming and flailing and hooting, and Alan Jackson came out to sing an encore. "Crazy 'Bout a Mercury." Ah, well. Leen rolled her eyes and sang along anyway.

So we filtered out of the Centrum into what turned out to be a precipitatious night. There was a bit of sleet as we came in, but more of it now that we were heading out. It made the roads slippery, but the trees were gorgeous: completely white, even on the undersides of the branches. Anyway, we were swept along with the mob and ran into more shirt people. "TEN BUCKS. TEN BUCKS. TEN BUCKS ON THE SHIRTS. TEN BUCKS. TEN BUCKS. TEN BUCKS ON THE SHIRTS." We bought a shirt, but we were confused about how much they cost.

So we walked for the two blocks or so, and we're still finding guys selling shirts. There were guys in our parking lot two blocks away selling shirts. We got in the car and waited in line to get out. As you can imagine it was quite some time before we could even move the car very much. The roads can only take so many exiting concert goers at once.

So we're sitting in the car, in line, waiting to leave the parking area, and the wipers are on because the sleet is coming down in the dark of night. The only people still out walking around are shirt guys, shielding their faces as they walk up and down the line of cars, proudly displaying both the fronts AND the backs of their wares. Perhaps you had to be there, but Leen and I found the image hilarious.

Tune in next time for another exciting episode!