The Reverend Mosley's Evangelical Connection-Chapter two

Spring. Just saying it makes me feel giddy. There is a smell in spring air that lights up the blood, making it course a little stronger, a little quicker. The heavy jacket comes off and you feel naked outside without it on. There are still small patches of snow, clinging to life in the ditches, wads of decayed leaves are uncovered on the sidewalks and even the faint smell of a farmer's field thawing, that can carry miles on a spring breeze, can't dampen the enthusiasm of a sunny morning in April.
We were in Mosley's back yard where the bus was parked. It was a school bus he had picked up for next to nothing and where he was now inserted upside-down under the hood breathing a little life back into its filth encrusted engine. I had just arrived to find Gary and Rube handing Mosley the tools he needed as he shouted out for them, one by one. Mark came along right behind me and I caught a faint whiff of weed as he said hello.
Mosley jumped down from the front bumper and with a cackle of glee he ran up the stairs into the driver's seat of the decrepit bus. Amazingly the engine turned over and we all cheered and Gary reached into his ever present duffel bag and pulled out a six pack of Blue. We sat around the blue plastic picnic table while Mosley outlined the plans for us and then we went to work tearing out the seats of the bus.
Over the next two weeks we completely gutted it, lay plywood down on the floor, built a partition half way down and carpeted the front area. Mark's dad had supplied us with a half dozen old swivel chairs from the hotel he worked at for seating and with a ghetto blaster plugged into the cigarette lighter it was as road worthy as it was going to get.

After the successes of the last year, Mosley had come alive in a way he never thought possible. I guess he'd always had a dream of being a rock star but his parents had pushed him into the church and he had let it go until his teaching on the side gave him the idea of a lifetime. With three of his guitar students, a drummer he'd known for years and a reference from his wife's hairdresser about a certain dope smoking piano player, Mark that is, he had put together 'a little act', as he called it when he was preaching to his congregation. With close to thirty gigs under our belt and a leave of absence he was ready to spend the summer on the road in a bus we'd renovated into a home for us while we drove half way across the country with the Christian Concert Series, making stops in every town from Ottawa to Halifax and back. The fact that he was really the only Christian in the band didn't really matter much to Mosley; we kept our mouths shut and he did the talking. It would be fine.
With our leave date set for June 18 we were busy making final preparations when we hit a snag that put us all on our asses. Carrie announced she wasn't coming because she didn't have any 'personal space' on the bus. At first I had no idea what she was talking about because none of us had any personal space. To her though, it was a big deal.
Carrie had joined the band towards the end of last summer to help Mosley with the vocal chores, which she did wonderfully, but had turned out to be a bit of Prima Donna, not that I loved her any less for it. Eighteen is like that. Whenever we played a gig there was always a fuss about where she would change and "How come I don't get my own room?" complaints that I thought were just plain spoiled brat tactics. In retrospect I can see that my judgment was clouded by thoughts of sharing a changing room with her as I magnanimously offered to avert my eyes while she changed, if always a little too late. She had a point though. Not only did our new tour bus not have a bathroom, a thought none of us guys seemed to think was a big deal, but it had no partitions at all and it was pretty unlikely we were going to be able to get across the country without having to change clothes at least once.
Mosley, a good Christian man, came to her rescue by hammering together a little cubicle that we stuck in the back portion of the gear space so that if it was necessary she could have a little privacy. God bless him, but I would have quit right there if she'd actually refused to go with us. I didn't like the band that much and I cared for half the members even less. She was the only reason I'd stuck it out this long. She liked me too because, once we got know each other, she told me that she could talk to me, where as she couldn't with the other guys, especially Gary. With a few more years under my belt now I know I should have got off the bus right there, but in those days I didn't speak Woman and had no clue that she was telling me it was never gonna happen between us. We were friends, for Christ's sake. Love is deaf, dumb and stupid as well as blind.

There few things in my life that I remember with as much fondness as being on the road that summer, but the inconsistencies that are starting to rear their ugly little heads as I re-tell it you are a bit confusing to me. As I poke and prod my unreliable memory for the details of what happened next, it occurs to me that it wasn't as much fun as I remember. Well, I guess I'll let you be the judge.