By Neal Wooten
Everyone in Fort Payne is excited that Alabama is putting on another June Jam. Reminiscence of the old days, Randy and Teddy will once again take to the stage to entertain the hometown crowd with their rockabilly vibes. Anyone who has lived here long enough and is old enough has their favorite memories of the June Jam.
But something dawned on me. This will be the first ever June Jam that won’t take place in a dry city. No matter where I was living, I always came home for the June Jam. A couple of years, I even worked there, once selling tickets and once as a cooler checker. I don’t think “cooler checker” will pad your resume seeing as how that job doesn’t exist hardly anywhere else.
Talk about a depressing job. Many of the out-of-towners had never been to Fort Payne, never been to an outdoor concert sans alcohol, and never heard of a dry county. To see their eyes as their inventory was confiscated was sobering (no pun intended). Even when I went to college at Auburn, which is only 2 ½ hours away, they had never heard of one either. When I told people I came from a dry county, they usually asked, “What, y’all don’t get rain?”
I have been on both sides of that fence. I remember one year, I was determined to sneak a little refreshment in. I pulled a Radio Flyer wagon with a cooler and snacks. Inside the cooler were two 2-liter Mountain Dews. Or were there? It was really a concoction made with lemonade and limeade that just happened to have the same color as Mountain Dew. But the bumpy ride had caused it to foam at the top.
The checker, an older guy, noticed that, opened one of the bottles, and sniffed it. He sniffed again… and again. Shrugging, he replaced the lid and waved us on. A friend who was with me said, “I can’t believe he let you in with that.” We heard a laugh and turned around. There was the cooler checker holding out a bag of chips that had fallen off the wagon (no pun intended).
What made the June Jam so special wasn’t the food, or the merchandise, or even the music, although that was incredible. And it certainly wasn’t the port-a-potties or the sunburn that lasted for weeks. What made the June Jam so special was that it was ours. It put Fort Payne on the map for the best reason of all. And the boys in the band, they were ours. They were our hopes. They were our dreams. They were our pride.
See you at June Jam 2023.
