8
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Commentary...
Adventures of a professional vagabond
By Reecy Pontiff
Correspondent
Right now I should
be playing Annie Oakley
in the Rocky Mountains,
or a bawdy wench in a
Renaissance village 4 but
instead of planning a future
of the past, the pandemic has
presently plunked me down
in Sisters.
I9m a professional vaga-
bond who migrates between
Jeep tours in Colorado and
working on the Renaissance
faire circuit in the eternal
project that is my vintage
Airstream. COVID has
clipped my wings.
I was born with wander-
lust. At 18 I scored a pho-
tojournalism gig at a local
paper in the D.C. area, but
the next year my itchy feet
demanded a move to a min-
iscule flat in Edinburgh,
Scotland for six months with
a friend I9d made on the bur-
geoning internet. I flew home
on September 26, 2001, an
eerie time for international
travel.
After a stint back in
Virginia as a bumbling
apprentice mechanic, I
enrolled in a B.A. program
at a university in Australia
4 some kids go to college
on the opposite coast; I opted
for the opposite hemisphere.
In our rural city, I was one of
the weirdest weirdos around.
I worked for a skydiving
company and edited the uni-
versity newspaper. 2.5 years
later I left with the same two
suitcases I9d brought, plus
one degree and a short-lived
marriage.
Upon returning to the
States I moved to L.A.,
where I couch-surfed and
found a job scanning head-
shots for an extras casting
agency. I upgraded to recep-
tionist/catch-all at a tiny non-
fiction production company
whose biggest claim-to-fame
was <Buns of Steel= in the
990s.
Thanks to some persis-
tent networking I became
assistant to the co-executive
producer of Jimmy Kimmel
Live, a welcoming work
environment blissfully free of
the usual Hollywood scream-
ing. Yes, I met Jimmy and
some other celebrities. Ask
me sometimes about being
handler for Elliot Gould,
Jason Alexander and Danny
Devito. Later I worked as
an historical researcher for
History and Discovery chan-
nel shows.
In 2008 the economy
bombed and the TV jobs
dried up. Four months,
60 applications, and zero
job offers later I decided
I9d rather tend bar in New
Orleans than La-La Land. I
sold everything that wouldn9t
fit in my sedan and rode
away from the Sunset.
I lucked into a dank base-
ment room at an artists9 flop-
house in a crumbling ante-
bellum mansion next to the
I-10 overpass. It took me a
nail-bitten month to find a
job in the French Quarter
at a microscopic absinthe
bar nestled next to St. Louis
Cathedral.
New Orleans became one
of my artistic homes. Gigs
emceeing and performing
smutty songs in the blossom-
ing neo-burlesque scene fell
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into my lap with regularity.
I recorded my first album,
<The Fabulous Sideshow
Apocalypse= and promptly
switched from guitar to uku-
lele, still my professional
weapon of choice. Under the
sponsorship of a local bicy-
cle tour company I wrote the
first bike tour of the Lower
Ninth Ward. The seasonal
nature of my work allowed
me to spend a summer play-
ing music on the streets of
Berlin, Germany.
Back in New Orleans,
our downstairs neighbor was
murdered while we enter-
tained guests. Soon after I
fled the city.
A long and rambling
road trip led me to Montana,
where I shacked up with a
narcissistic mountain man on
his beautiful off-grid home-
stead for seven months. The
emotional pain was almost
as concentrated as the list of
skills this city girl acquired
there: shooting, gardening,
butchering, canning, tractor
operation. The off-roading
experience would become
a profession when I moved
to Colorado Springs for the
next few years and found a
job giving Jeep tours gussied
up like a vintage cowgirl.
After Tetrising all of my
belongings into a car for
so long I began to ponder
trailer life. I hunted for vin-
tage campers until a fellow
vagabond offered to sell me
her beat-up but liveable 1976
Airstream Argosy.
I found myself in
Phoenix, Arizona, where
their Renaissance festival
was about to begin. I was
offered work selling art for
a printmaker who specializes
in forgeries of Albrech Dürer
pieces and this would have
been my third season work-
ing for her across the coun-
try. I9ve also put up my own
stage act of original bawdy
tunes on the circuit as well.
Last summer I returned to the
Rocky Mountains to profes-
sionally hoot it up in a Jeep.
My annual schedule was
solidifying and I9d hoped to
repeat it in 2020.
I first heard about a virus
decimating Wuhan, China,
from a shabby hotel room
in Zimbabwe during a five-
week odyssey through south-
ern Africa. Fifteen days later
I scurried down the East
Coast to play two weekends
of smutty songs at a faire
near Miami, then swung
through New Orleans for
Mardi Gras on the way to
the next festival near Austin,
Texas.
It wasn9t until that faire
was shut down by the county
after our third weekend that
I realized the severity of the
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COVID crisis. I returned
to Virginia and podded up
with some select friends
and family for a couple of
months until I saw that my
livelihoods were likely on
hold through at least the end
of the year. I was offered a
housesitting gig in Sisters
by the mother of a former
New Orleans housemate and
seized the opportunity.
My time here in Sisters
has been productive, if a bit
lonesome. I spend my days
maintaining and improv-
ing the trailer, walking the
Peterson Ridge Trail with
the dog, learning the piano
and, as of recently, writing
the occasional piece for The
Nugget. Though I understand
how fortunate I am, I wonder
when I can get back on the
road and get back to work.
For now I9ll wear a mask,
hope for smoke-free skies
and cross my fingers for the
health of the world.
Reecy Pontiff can be
seen and heard at www.
reecypontiff.com.
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