Tuesday, Sept. 21. Pittsburgh, PA. Helter Shelter.

On the way to Pittsburgh, we stopped at a gas station somewhere in eastern Ohio, where we met Bill, who had a pumpkin stand in the parking lot.

We ate some “Amish tomatoes” on the spot and checked out wallets, roses and pumpkins made of duct tape.

Bill’s daughter is the duct tape artist. I gave Bill a sticker; he said he’d put it on the back of his trailer. Gary gave him a roman candle. The gas station had deer heads mounted on the walls inside.

We liked Pittsburgh.

Here’s Bryan on a patio with rainbow umbrellas at an Italian place we stopped at for coffee and cheese pizza.

Before we could go to Helter Shelter, the house where we’d be playing, we had to find the guys who ran the place. We found them having a Miller High Life on a huge cistern on the Allegheny River.

After that we went to Helter Shelter.

We played with two members of a band called Critter

and a chipper junkgrass band called Wife Beater.

The guy who ran the place, Cody, was hospitable and down-to-earth. The Helter Shelter neighborhood is called Lawrenceville. “Lawrenceville,” he said. “The town of dishonorable discharges and disability mutants.” Bryan played this show, too. Nice people. I got a shirt from one of the bands. We might make a tape version of Jephthah’s Daughter.