When did this happen to me? When did all these bands start looking so OLD? I saw a picture of the KISS guys in full costume the other day and almost threw up on my shoetops. COVER THAT UP, please.

And why are some of these elderly guys still dating nineteen-year-old nymphets? Well, I guess we all know why, so the better question would be, why would a nineteen-year-old nymphet want to date some old man who wears shoelaces across his chest in public?

(It was only a bare male chest, but it looked old and stringy and should be covered up immediately!) (Covered, there’s still a little magic, but if nothing is left to the imagination, it’s just old.)

Ted Nugent is performing at the annual ABATE Boogie this year, along with Rare Earth, some other elderly rockers, and a few token young guys who think they know how to play an electric guitar. . . . . Oh, and some gal who sings country.

The motorcycles started to converge on the town a few days ago. They usually arrive in herds of two dozen or more; it’s really cool to see them heading down the highway.

Some of them look like the stereotypical Hell’s Angel, complete with bandannas, leather, and the mandatory 300-pound halter-wearing woman on the back of the bike. You know, the kind that makes you think of a giant ice-cream-cone when you come up on the bike from the rear?

But most of the ABATE bikers just look like what they really are: doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, mechanics, merchants, dentists, construction workers, etc, who love their bikes and look forward to the Boogie every year so they can hang out with other people who also love their bikes, their weekend, and vintage bands who used to be twenty years old and right on the cutting edge of the scene.

Then again, didn’t all of us used to be twenty years old and right on the cutting edge of. . . something?

Some of the locals look upon the bikers with fear, but when I look at them, I just see a humongous horde of friendly weekend bikers who look a lot like people I’ve known in my time, who’ve come together to raise some serious money for our schools and have a hellacious good time doing so.

That’s right. The whole purpose of the Boogie is to raise money for education. They do, too.

Here in southern Indiana, we like our bikers to be literate, generous, and funky. We are not disappointed.

Our restaurants and businesses welcome the bikers. I love to see them riding around town in groups of a hundred or more. They smile, and they wave, and they’re obviously full of piss, vinegar, sincerity, and fun.

And while there are many conservative bun-hair types here who lock their doors in fear of these people who look “scary and different,” and who wonder quite loudly “what these people are REALLY here for,” I don’t see any large conventions of Methodists or Mormons or Pentecostals or Baptists or Nazarenes or Presbytarians or Episcopalians or Seventh Day Adventists or Catholics or School Board Members coming together from hundreds of miles around for the express purpose of raising money for our schools. Nope, nary a one.

I’m not going to tell you why I loves me some biker types, but it started in college with the first of my three dead boyfriends.

Well, they weren’t dead THEN. . . .