Hi, folks.

I'm going to tell you all a true story. It's one that Bee-dubya can't tell you himself because he has buried the memory of it too deeply to talk about.

Several years ago there was a bimonthly Sunday afternoon Irish music session at an old house that belongs to the Pensacola Historical Society. The sessions usually attracted a fairly decent number of musicians and on this one particular Sunday afternoon there were a couple of fiddlers, a harpist, a tenor banjo player and three accordion players with Bee-dubya on guitar. The session started out just fine, but after a couple of hours people started leaving for one reason or another. Well, within a period of about thirty minutes, everybody had left except the three accordion players and Bee-dubya. It was then that the trouble began.

One of the accordion players pointed out a window and said, "What's that?" While Bee-dubya was looking out the window another one of the accordion players pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his accordion case and cuffed Bee-dubya to his chair. Bee-dubya looked on in horror as the three accordion players attached their drool and spittle cups to their instruments, buttoned up their shirts all the way to the collars, removed their contact lenses and put on horn-rimmed glasses with lenses as thick as coke bottle bottoms. Then they began to play "Blackthorn Stick" in G while Bee-dubya was forced to listen. "You must play!" they demanded. "We must have rhythm accompaniment! We are accordionists! We have no sense of timing! Play for your freedom!" So, Bee-dubya picked up his Martin and attempted to back up the three of them even though they were each playing in a slightly different variation of totally out-of-time. When Bee-dubya would follow one of them he'd get thrown off because the other two were playing off in some alternate universe where the accented notes on jigs fall on the second and sixth beats.

Finally, it got toward dusk and the accordion players had to go home before their mothers started worrying about them. They removed their drool cups, unbuttoned their shirt collars, put their contacts back in and became doctors, lawyers and accountants again. They uncuffed Bee-dubya from his chair, said their goodbyes, got in their BMW's and headed for home. Poor Bee-dubya couldn't move for about an hour, but he finally was able to make it to his truck and headed toward home.

It was while driving home that Bee-dubya remembered the stories he had heard told by the caretaker at the old house where the session had been held. It was widely believed that the house was haunted and that the ghost of a little girl could sometimes be seen standing among the azalea bushes. Bee-dubya became convinced that the only explanation for the transformation he had seen take place among the three accordion players was some kind of demonic possession or other supernatural phenomenon. Bee-dubya refused to go back to the session after that and it soon fell apart due to lack of a decent rhythm section.

This is a true story and if I'm lyin' I'm dyin'.

Mrs. Bee