Me and Joe Strummer

I often have dreams about Joe Strummer...this is one I had a year ago today.

So, Joe and his 13 year old daughter, Barbara — who looked just like the Eliza Dushku character in James Cameron’s True Lies — were renting a cottage on my cousin’s property in Santa Rosa. He had a white pick-up truck...I think it was a Dodge.

We were all planning on driving to Lake Winnebago for the weekend (this is place my family vacationed in every summer). Joe’s truck was parked next to my Civic out in front of the cottage — and it looked like someone dinged one of his headlights, so he was asking me if I knew who hit his car. I didn’t know. We were trying to decide who was going to drive to the lake.

I was living in the attic of my cousin’s house and apparently I was spending a lot of time with Joe and his kid.

So, it’s the night before we’re supposed to leave for Lake Winnebago. My cousin Patsy has made this amazing dinner — and the huge dining room table is set for like 20 people. I’m trying to get people seated — and I put Meredith next to someone (can’t remember who) and I save three seats next to her — for me, Joe and Barbara — so that we can all sit by Meredith.

So Patsy comes in with this platter full of what looks like beef medallions in a rich sauce — it looks delicious. And she’s like, “the platter’s really heavy!” So I help her set it down on the table, some of the juice spills onto the white tablecloth. And she tells me to get everyone to the dinner table so that we can eat.

I go upstairs to what turns into my Godparent’s house in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. I yell, “dinner’s ready!” and I start walking back down the stairs. I hear another cousin, who’s in one of the bedrooms, start to say something, but I just keep on walking. I then go outside, into the woods, and walk toward the cottage. For some reason, I put on my purple bicycle helmet.

When I get to the cottage, Joe’s having a punk-rock party. There’s a couple of guys out front. One of them is pretty drunk and he has spikey platinum hair. He’s like, “do you like my ring?” And he shows me this gold ring that he wearing on his right hand. It’s not round like a regular ring, it’s octagonal, gold, and has these green stones on each flat edge. The guy standing next to him says something about it, and the platinum guy says something about it being a ring that ancient people wore or something like that. And I’m thinking about how stupid I must look with this purple helmet on my head.

The guys tell me that Joe made dinner for the people at the party — scrambled eggs and rice!

So I figured that Joe won’t be joining us for dinner and I walk back through the woods wondering if scrambled eggs and rice is a typical English dinner :)

And I wake up with the song Tommy Gun in my head...