Caleb Hawley

I believe I had the dumbest day of my life on Wednesday. And it happened to be in the company of one of the smartest persons I have ever met. My lack of common sense sure made for a great deal of humiliation.

We were in Knoxville, Tennessee – three or so hours from our next show in Atlanta. I decided to turn my car on a few hours before my left to charge some stuff… first mistake. It was time to hit the road, so we jumped in the car and turned the ignition. It gave a couple of “chug-chugs” but the battery was dead. OK, no big deal… we’ll get a jump from the smart man who had been hosting us. We connected the batteries, but when I went to start my car, the doors were locked… with the keys in the ignition… and my dog in the car. We called the locksmith. A toothless hillbilly pulled up in a truck about a half-hour later. He saw the guitars in the car, so he asked me if I knew “Any Skynyrd”. Then he informed me with his thick Tennessee accent that there were two things he loved in life: “Mewsic… mewsic and saix”.

It took a while, but he he got the doors unlocked. We would have to hurry, but we could still make it to our show in Atlanta. I hopped in the car, but it still would not start. I’ll leave out the details because it gets technical here, but my car has some weird alarm system that keeps it from starting. I guess people like to steal Subarus? Who knew. Anyway, the only way disable the car-stopping-alarm is by a remote. Sure enough, the remote was out of batteries. We were out of time… we needed to leave. The smart man told us he would figure it out, and we could take his car to Atlanta. That’s what we did.

And that my friends, was the dumbest day of my life.