Dunbar & A Dirty Dixie Bell

I really love my life ....

....  and as weird as it gets ... and trust me .... it can get weird .... I love it with my whole being.

But like everybody else in the world ....  there is stress and I vent.  Not a a lot of venting ... only when the tea kettle that is my brain starts to whistle with steam ... but still .... I vent.   I have some incredibly understanding friends that have known me most of my life that are kind enough to listen patiently, nod or shake their heads approvingly or disapprovingly, figuratively pat me on my rump and send me on my way with a better understanding of my problem.

There is one friend in particular that has been in my life for going on 27 years.  She is that one friend that knows every calcified, brittle skeleton in my closet intimately ..... has gone on this long strange trip that is my life .... walked by my side every step of the way .... and still loves me anyway.

She deserves a plaque in the World Champion Hall of Fame of Friendship .... a ticker tape parade and a Nobel prize all rolled into one.

Funny thing is .... I intensely disliked her upon our initial meeting.

Here's that story:

When I was a kid ... about 17 years old ... a lot of us "wayward" kids would hang out at a little oasis off of River Road.  It was an escape from our lives, from reality and most importantly from our parents.  It was John Dunbar's house. This was a beautiful, historical turn of the century mansion tucked away high on a hill surrounded by numerous park-like, treed acreage.  John, essentially, had his own wing of the house that acted as our "clubhouse".

  Those of you who were lucky enough to be a part of that magical time back in the mid-80's at Dunbar's pad know exactly what I'm talking about.  To say that it was a decadent, den of inequity would not necessarily be a huge stretch .... but it was infinitely more than that.  It was an informal club of like minded kids that would casually meet for laughs, story telling and various types of illegalities that I refuse to go into at this time as it may incriminate me and about two dozen seemingly upstanding Louisvillians.

Entry into this self-contained world was without a doubt exclusive.  There was only two ways to gain admittance into this rogue club .... by request of the proprieter himself or .... like me .... if you were deemed "cool" and lucky enough to be brought into the fold by a current member.

John Dunbar was quite a character unto himself.  He was a lover of music with an old, mischievous soul.  He was a belly laugher extraordinaire, an other worldly philosopher for his young years and a true gentleman.  He was the king of his domain and we were his court.

In order to enter the Dunbar home ... you first had to gain entry from the dreaded guard .... his mother.  The first and most traditional course of entry was a method that I lovingly called the "Eddie Haskell" .... essentially you would ring the doorbell and when his mother answered the door you overly complimented her, her garden or implied that she had lost weight and you instantly received a kind invitation to climb the stairway to heaven.  Or .... the less traditional and spy vs. spy method .... or what I  called "The Ronnie Panther Method" .... which was essentially scaling the wall of the house ninja style and climbing in the second story window.  I, of course, chose the "Eddie Haskell" method.

Once inside the fortress walls and up the stairs to the second floor sanctum ... you were surprised to find a modestly and mostly  brown plaid decorated area which was akin to a fraternity living room.  Behind the living room was Dunbar's bedroom ... of which I have no idea what it looked like because .... NO ... I never went in there, thank you very much.

After school, on weekends and lazy summer days ... we kids would pop in and out throughout the afternoon and evenings whiling away our time doing nothing more than figuring out more clever and inventive ways to get in to trouble.

On the aforementioned historical afternoon, as I was sitting on the couch with a few choice malcontents, I heard some high pitched girly-girl giggling wafting up the stairwell.  My inner 'bitch detector' immediately clicked a high level warning in my brain and I was preparing myself for a tiny, blonde goofball to flittily invade the room.  What entered that doorway was nothing more than miraculous because it was completely contrary to what my intuition and expectations were prepared for.

Like some slow-motion, bad teen movie .... SHE breezed into my world.  She was somewhat tall and her curves were entirely misrepresentative of her age.  She had thick,  dark, velvety hair that was so tall and teased that it defied the laws of physics. She was wearing a crisp, white, cotton spaghetti strap sundress.   Her laugh and smile were as big as the state of Texas and as I glared at her impossibly chocolate brown eyes she gleefully made her way to the couch and with a hand flourish, plopped down next to me.

I attempted to ignore her while she dug through her giant pink, patent leather purse.  I, of course, gave the other jokesters in the room a few good eye rolls for maximum perturbed effect ... and then she spoke.

"Got a light?" she asked in a lilting, dixie bell voice.  I stared at her annoyingly as she held a Marlboro Light 100 cigarette between her long, perfectly manicured hot pink fingernails.

"Me? ... uhhhh .... no."  

She then began talking and laughing incessantly about some vapid, unimportant topic and as she spoke I found her curiouser and curiouser .... I wanted so badly to find some blatant excuse to shrug her off as an empty headed, uninteresting interloper.  However, unknowingly, I began to cock my head slightly askew and proceeded to stare at her awkwardly for what seemed the longest time .... as if she was an odd, slightly out of focus Picasso painting ....  There was an interesting facet that I was missing and I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

The more I began to interact with her, the more clear the picture became in my mind.   As I sat there on that couch next to her .... a tiny, crooked, diabolical smile crept across my face as a very clear intuitive thought began to fill my head.  Behind that preppy, prissy, perfectly proportioned face....  I detected a a bit of a hell raiser.  It dawned on me in a split second that she was definitely one of us only cleverly cloaked.   She was donning the mask of a proper debutante, but was in reality .... a dirty dixie bell.  I found the dichotomy devilishly humorous and I was instantly hooked.

Despite delay, I introduced myself and, of course, got a giggle and a "that's not your real name is it?" response.  Then she told me her name and then I knew without a shred of doubt that we were, indeed, kindred spirits.

I knew this emphatically because I had heard a story a few weeks prior about an epic party in a well known hoity-toity, luxury, high-rise condo complex.  This event was one of those social soirees that historically go down in infamy and only get more grandiose as it is told and retold.   This Dirty Dixie Bell had just recently moved into town and formed an amazingly simple plan to throw a party to meet new friends.   She surreptitiously waited until her parents went out of town and then innocently told a few friends .... who told a few friends .... who told a few friends ... and so on.

 Before I'm sure she knew what was happening .... this luxury high rise condo complex was horrifyingly transformed into a down and dirty, colossal kegger.

 Her parent's home was, of course, thoroughly trashed .... but the coup de gras was when some beligerent moron, who was working with perhaps a dozen decent brain cells, decided that he was going to throw empty beer bottles from the 14th floor window.  Now, this would not have ended so terribly badly if the bottles had landed somewhat harmlessly in a grassy knoll.  Unfortunately, there was a deliciously more attractive bullseye that this clever, little simpleton was aiming for .... the pool.

It was relayed to me by more than one reliable source that once the party was thwarted by the powers that be ... she was found blubbering ... in her sassy, bubblegum pink party dress wading in the shallow end of the pool delicately picking up shards of beer glass with her bare hands.

Long story short .... her parents came home .... wigged out .... the condo complex charged her parents beaucoup dinero to drain the pool and properly clean it and the rest is ... as they say ... history.

As you can well imagine ... I had an immediate respect for her level of shenanigans and we became instantaneous, joined at the hip, best friends.

For the next 27+ years we laughed and cried our way through crazy adventures, boyfriends, colleges & life in general.  She has been my whipping post, my rock, my sister, my confidante, my soulmate .... my bon ami.

There is nothing in this world that I wouldn't do or give up for this ol' gal. We are still what I consider best buddies ... but of course as you get older and have children .... life always seems to get in the way.  I don't spend as much time with her as I'd like ... but ... I plan on living a long and if I have anything to do with it it .... luxurious and interesting life.   When the kids are grown and the world slows down a bit .... I plan on spending some good quality time with my Dirty Dixie Bell.

 We often joke and tease each other about growing old together.  I tell her that we will end up in South Florida living side by side in a retirement community .... she will still be perpetually fussing at me for gossiping and cussing .... and I will still be needling her about cutting loose and saying the 'eff word more often.  We joke about having a cabana boy named Javier that will be in the requisite banana hammocked uniform fetching our afternoon Pina Coladas.  I will take care of her, as I always have .... and she will make me roll with laughter ... which is her specialty.

I hold dear in my heart those memories of my youth at Dunbars Pad and all the countless characters that I met there.  Sadly, John Dunbar passed away at a tragically young age.  It gives me comfort though to think of him often when I hear a particularly loud, boisterous laugh.  I will forever think of him hanging out in heaven as a young cat ... pondering the great questions of the universe with the likes of Hendrix, Morrison, Garcia, Goethe and other notable literary and musical miscreants.

It only takes a moment to meet a lifetime friend .... someone who inspires you to be a better person, allows you to be your authentic self and unconditionally loves  ..... that ....  in a nutshell is .....

my Dirty Dixie Bell!