Our New Harmony Trip

copied, edited and otherwise tinkered with from the road journal, June 2-4 2000

L to R: Maribel, Melanie, Harry and Tennille at the end of the evening

For more pictures, check out the Photo Album or just keep scrollin'. :)

June 2 2000
11:07 PM

We left Onaway at 2:40 AM on June 1. It was foggy and rainy at first but after the sun rose it got bright and hot! The plan was we would share the driving but Tennille was still recovering from her cold and actually had been awake for a long time, so I was able to drive the whole way, 14 hours straight, getting lost only once near Lansing but otherwise making good time. We finally arrived in Evansville around 3:30 PM (4:30 PM actually, we crossed the time zone and gained an hour) and got into our Motel 6 room, 116. We called the desk and found out Maribel was only two doors down from us! We called her and had a great first meeting, hugs and all, and all went out for dinner. We went over the bridge to Kentucky (just to say we'd been there) turned around, and went to the mall where I bought one of those metal finger claw ring things from one of those gothic shops (wicked cool); a present for Mom; and Maribel bought us dinner at Long John Silvers.

The plan is now to get up at 9 and head out to New Harmony and just drive around looking for the festival. We don't know where it is, what time it's being performed, all we know is Harry and Dawn are in a musical called Steeplechase, a Midsummer Nights Dream- type story set in turn-of-the-century Coney Island, and it ends June 4.

I want to give Harry this e-mail that I got from his nephew in Germany. I wish I could think of some really good interview type questions, but all I can think of are dippy Tiger Beat questions. I'd like to ask him about Sleepwalkers and what he thinks of Cats being closed. I know I have more questions but I can't think of them. I've been running on adrenaline for 21 hours and I'm just now starting to feel sleepy!

I'm so excited because this is the first trip I've ever taken "alone"; first time I've ever chased a celeb I like. Maribel worries he won't be there but I think he will, just because he tried looking us up in New York. I really think if he's in this state, we will meet him this weekend. Plus if he IS still here... he's only 30 miles away from us as I write. :)

June 3 2000
2:25 AM

Oh God Oh God Oh God!!! :D

Today we got up at 9 and dressed in our best (and least smothering, boy it's hot) clothes and drove to New Harmony, 30 miles west. It was a beautiful sunny cloudless day. The closer we got the more cornfields and stuff we saw. We were playing Crazy For You on the tape deck and it was hard to believe that this huge Broadway star was doing anything in such an out of the way place.

We went through town once and found the visitors center in the Atheneum, a large elaborate white building that looks like all the sinister science buildings in all those cloning movies from the 70s. They told us the Project was at the Barn Abbey, which was a pretty place at the end of a curvy gravel road. We pulled into this place, there were lots of cars in the lot but no one around. The door of the "barn" was standing open so we peeked in and we could see a room where people were rehearsing, and we could hear the singing but we didn't want to disturb them, and there was no one to ask for information about whether this was the Project, if Harry was around, whatever, so after waiting a bit (and hearing a voice that sounded an awful lot like Harry's) we left, deciding to come back for what we thought was their next break, 3:23, as written on the door to the room.

We went into town and had lunch at a small diner, where we were waited on by a woman who looked exactly like Large Marge in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. We looked around in the antique shops and had ice cream at a very cute 50's themed soda fountain, Aunt Sallie's. The sky clouded over briefly and thunder grumbled a few times but it passed over and the sun came back out, bright and hot. We went back to the Atheneum because none of the shops had New Harmony postcards, and after we bought some we didn't quite know what to do. It was 2:30 now and we were trying to decide whether to check the Barn again or go look for this labyrinth hedge we'd heard about, and we decided to go to the Barn. We drove back down the little gravel road and this time found the barn completely deserted. It was very eerie -- cars all there, the place wide open, but nobody in the rehearsal room or on the grounds at all.

So now we were sitting on the grass, not knowing what to do next, wandering around this beautiful walk with a fish pond and a wooden bridge and lots of trees -- beautiful scene, but all we could think of was, what the heck are we doing here? After some moping Maribel said, "There's another building up the path, let's see if the two are connected." So we went up there and it turned out to be a hotel. I said, "If Harry is here, if he's staying anywhere, that might be the place." But it was deserted too. We walked in a lobby and it was very dark and no people around. We skulked down the halls for a while and finally found the real lobby out front. I was like, "What are we going to ask?" Maribel goes "What else?! Ask them if they have a Groener here!" I'm like, "Yeah, right, they're really going to tell us!" But we walked in and I walked up to the desk and said to the two girls, "Um, this is a dumb question, but do you have a Mr. Groener staying here?" I fully expected them to say they couldn't give that out, but the girl said, "Oh, yeah, Harry, he's downstairs -- are you the fans??" Gasp. The fans, as in The fans....they'd been waiting for us. I said "Yes we are," and she said, "Well the Project's down the stairs." So we piled down there and found a basement rec room-like area, also eerie and dark and deserted. We did, however, find four cast lists taped to a wall, and there it was: Steeplechase, with Harry Groener as Angelo. Now at least we had typed proof. But where was everybody?

This woman walked in the room and said, "Are you here to see Harry?" We sure were. "Well, the play's in it's last act, it's intermission, would you like to see the rest of it?" Yes please! So we went up a set of stone steps and were brought across the yard to a small auditorium that looked for all the world like my church back home. A young blond woman came up and introduced herself as Claire, the project coordinator whom I'd talked to several times on the phone. She filed us into the auditorium and sat us down and we searched the crowd (lots of people in there). All at once I saw Harry up at the front, sitting on the far end of the stage in a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt and a red baseball cap! He was just sitting there in front of a music stand, getting ready for the next scene, and Maribel and I clutched hands, whispering and giggling like girls in our seats, all 3 of us were thrilled to death!

The second act started. The play is set on Coney Island, so Harry's character had a Long Island accent (and sounding not unlike Judd Hirsch). His character was in love with one of the women and had given her a charmed hot dog, and another guy was trying to win the same girl, so he wanted a charmed dog too and ended up going to a gypsy witch (also played by Harry, with a high squawky voice, which was a hoot). About halfway through Harry had this great funny song about bras and he broke into that wicked grin of his, it was great!

The play ended and we all gave a standing ovation. (3 of us more than the others.) Claire asked us if we enjoyed it, which of course we did, and then she told us this was the last showing. Darn. We'd been under the impression it was ending tomorrow, so if we'd been even a little bit later we'd have missed the whole thing. Maribel was kind of upset but I was like, "Come on!! He's right over there!" Harry was up front hugging the rest of the cast, sans hat.

As we nervously made our way up Claire said something to him and he suddenly went, "Oh my God! Where are they?" real excited like. I reached him first and shook his hand, and I wish I could remember how his hand felt but I was too busy just staring at him. He looked great! He went to Maribel and I said, "Hug her first, she's been waiting longest" and then he hugged Tennille. He seemed really pleased to see us, and I asked, "Can I get a hug?" and he's like, "Absolutely," and gave me the biggest hug I've ever had. My cheek was kind of against his neck, it was great. He said something along the lines of "How are you?" and all I could think to say back was, "I drove fourteen hours for this." Still hugging, this whole time. He finally let go and was like, "Fourteen hours?!" and we talked about that a while.

I showed him the e-mail from his nephew and he seemed very interested. He thanked me and I said, "What color are your eyes?" (I had this weird dream about a year ago in which I asked him that and he said they were purple, even though in the dream they looked silver.) This time he said, "Oh, they're kinda green" and they were, too, a very nice jadey green; Maribel and I had been of the opinion they were blue. The main reason I asked was because they looked like they were changing color in that last scene in Graduation Day 2, and I was trying to tell him that, but I don't recall what he said back....still distracted by his eyes, I guess. :)

Harry then wanted to introduce us to his wife Dawn (we'd been sitting there during the play trying to guess which of the actresses was her) so he went to get her. He came back with this sweet sugar haired lady and introduced us all. I asked, "How's your knee?" and she assured me it was much better. At this point the crew was packing up the chairs and we were all kind of in the way, so we moved out into the hall. Maribel introduced herself to Dawn and Dawn was like, "You're Maribel?!" and they were hugging and shrieking like old friends! Then a guy came out of the auditorium and told us we had to keep it down, so Harry said, "Let's go down here," and led us into a lobby, a different lobby with a skylight.

He sat down on the edge of a desk and we all talked for a while. I told him about being converted by Sleepwalkers ("My favorite," said Dawn) and I was trying rather clumsily to tell him just why I thought it was great, though I've never really been able to pin down why I love it, I just do. I told him I'd been watching celebrities my whole life and he was the first one I'd ever tried to contact, first one I'd ever come out to see before, and he seemed pleased by that and said thank you and I was like, "No, thank YOU." He explained that the New Harmony project was kind of a springboard for new plays, sort of a test ground for a play that wants to get to Broadway, the way a film will have a test screening before it comes out. They had actually only performed the play twice during the entire two week period. What we were seeing was the very first formative stages of getting a play made, where they flesh out the parts and rewrite scenes and dialogue, and it isn't really the kind of thing you show to the public. We had kind of figured that out, and I remembered reading about the process in Jim's article, but had forgotten. So we really didn't have any business being there, but Harry and Dawn seemed honestly happy to see us, and in fact all the actors and project people were extremely nice to us party-crashers the whole time. :)

Dawn told us that Harry was going to have to go back to Buffalo after this, where he'd been for a month beforehand, to reshoot some scenes for Manna From Heaven because the film company had overexposed the film. (Turned out later he didn't have to go, the company decided to see if they could fix it in editing.) Harry then kindly posed for pictures with us, and when Maribel's turn came she went, "Two heads taller!" I told him, "You're taller than everybody! You're taller than Martin Sheen!" and I told him how everybody on the Buffy newsgroup freaked when he was on West Wing, going, "The Mayor's going for the Cabinet!!" and he kind of laughed at that.

Harry asked us what we were doing the rest of the evening and said there was another play at 8 that night, a rock opera, and asked if we were going to attend. I ventured, "Um, are you?" and he said yes, so we agreed to meet back there at 8 after a dinner. They were gathering up their umbrellas (from the not-quite-thunderstorm earlier) and we were just like, "We get to see him again!!" Harry and Dawn kindly bid us goodbye, saying see you later, and left, and we girls were just standing there cackling like mad in the lobby for a while.

There was a nice restaurant right inside the hotel, and Harry had suggested we eat there, but we didn't know how much money that would run into. So we left the hotel and ran down the path and back to our car, shrieking and laughing the whole way. I had to gas up so we went to this station we'd come through that morning. The station just happened to have deli food and a nice eating area, so we ended up eating there. I had a chicken sandwich and only ate about half, I was so excited. Didn't really eat much this week.... :)

Maribel's videocamera battery was going out, and we really wanted to change, we were sticky and hot from walking so much and all the excitement. So we sped back the 30 miles to Evansville and went back to the Motel 6 and changed clothes, worried what to wear to such a huge event. We loaded up our cameras, made ourselves pretty, and zoomed back to New Harmony again.

The sun was starting to set, but we knew where we were going this time and it was so much more fun than it had been that morning. We drove back to the hotel and passed a horse and buggy going down the street before we parked. We walked into the same lobby we'd talked to Harry in, and found ourselves half an hour early. So we parked ourselves on a big ploofy comfy couch and waited, gushing over our good luck. The desk he'd been sitting on was right across from us and we're like, "That's where he was sitting!!"

Finally the people in the room began moving into the hall and we got up and followed. Halfway there we caught Harry and Dawn coming out of the dining room, and Harry was wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans. Here we were freaking over what to wear and he was just like, whatever! Hee hee! Almost the first thing he said to us was "Where'd you eat?" Tennille thought he said "What did you eat" and said chicken, and I didn't really think it'd sound good saying we ate in a gas station so I'm like, "Uhhh, yeah, chicken...."

We went into the auditorium again, and Harry said, "Go on, sit anywhere." The only place with 3 seats together was in the back, so we sat there while Harry and Dawn nabbed spots up front. He was on the aisle and I was too so we had a great view of his back for the show, plus a few times he got up on his chair and was snapping pictures of the cast. Then he turned around, looked for us, waved and grinned and snapped a picture of us! (He'd done that before, actually; after Steeplechase he'd snapped pics of the audience and I know we're in them, because both Tennille and I had a clear view of his camera, so he's going to have two pictures of us gals in his deck when he gets home....)

The rock opera was called The Gingerbread House and it turned out to be really, really good. It was kind of a comedy variant on Hansel and Gretel, with a dysfunctional family getting turned into animals and old people by a wicked witchy stepmother. (I heard the word "witch" and I'm like, "Ooooohh!") Plus all the music had electric guitars....cool. At one point one of the characters, a stoner hippie type dude, got changed into a cockroach and the actor played the cockroach with a sock puppet on his hand, and it was hilarious! (The puppet, we were told later, won first prize in a contest among the children at the festival that afternoon.) The actors didn't have any props or even costumes (besides the sock puppet), just their lines and a music stand and it looked much like actors voicing over Disney films, except these guys were interacting with each other and going through the whole story. It was really interesting to watch when you realized that these people were still sort of fleshing out this play, and it was really rather lucky that we got to see this, we were watching this creative process happening. Plus we could see Harry the whole time and all through the musical parts, during the really rock-out numbers he was totally getting into the music, clapping his hands and bobbing his head and moving his feet, (and it was at that point I noticed he was wearing sandals and barefoot!!)

At intermission we girls stayed in our seats and were gushing over how good the play was when I looked up and Harry was towering over me, grinning. (Boy he's tall.) "How's the show?" he asked, and we all told him we were enjoying it. I was staring straight up at him going, "I'd like to interview you sometime, if it's not too much trouble," and he's gazing down, saying, "Sure, we can work something out." I think I complimented his sandals. :) Then intermission was over and we watched the rest of the play.

After the show ended, the cast was hugging and talking like before. Harry came up to us and said, "There's a get-together at the Red Geranium, it's a patio a few doors down, would you like to come?" Of course we would! So he said they'd meet us there, and Maribel, Tennille and I walked with the crowd down the street (it was dark by this time, and just comfortably warm) between lampposts and picket fences to a small walk that went down into a darkened patio that was lit only by a few candles spread out on Parisian tables. It was very nice and dark and spooky, like Halloween, and almost the minute we walked in a lady put a glass of champagne in my hand. Just like that, here you go. (I don't drink much and I still can't get over the fact that I can do it legally now.) It was so dark that you couldn't see that well, and there was a table full of hors d'oeuvers and stuff but you literally couldn't tell what any of it was! I identified goldfish crackers and some banana nut things and loaded up a plate, then found the table where Tennille and Maribel were sitting. We sat there for a while, just going, "Can you believe our luck?!" It was like crashing a rich estate party, like getting invited to the cool table in the cafeteria, any second we kept expecting to be thrown out. I got up to get some more banana things and halfway to the table I saw Harry coming toward me in the dark. Yay!! We went back to the table and I told him, "There's banana things over there," and he said, "Yeah, I'll have to get some," as he sat down with us.

For the next two hours we sat there talking, sipping champagne, munching crackers, in the dark, by candlelight. He talked about Sleepwalkers, how the Smiling Man was going to be in the show more and start going into the other characters' dreams, and how cool it would have been because unlike the other dreams, that were confined to one person, he would be jumping from dream to dream and mind to mind and you'd never know where he'd be. But the show was cancelled. "The bogeyman," I said, and he was like, "Yeah!" with a grin.

"Cats is closing September 10," I said.

He looked pleased. "Really? September now?"

"Yeah, they pushed it back." He just looked so pleased. "Are you going?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, but he looked like he was glad to hear it. We talked about Cats a little bit, he said he had fun playing that role. I asked him about the pinky ring he always wears and he showed it to us. He told a great story about how his mother, before her marriage, during World War II had been in love with a German soldier, and he had given her this ring (gold, a dark green stone with little viens of red through it) and had gone to war and never come back. Harry's mother had held onto the ring and then given it to Harry when he was 15, warning him to take care of it. Unfortunately, he lost it. Then years later he found a ring that was almost exactly like the real one, same veined stone, everything alike except the real ring had had a break in the band. He had bought it and worn it ever since, and he seemed kind of pleased that we noticed. He said he tries to to wear it in every show he does on purpose, if it fits in with the character, and of course, his wedding ring. I told him I thought it was so cool that he and Dawn had been married for over 20 years, and he said that it was great, that it had gone by too fast, and if he could hit rewind and do it all over again he would. (We were watching them together throughout the evening and they were so cute, like honeymooners! We got some incredibly cute pictures of them, but I don't think putting them on the site would be appropriate; family thing, y'know. :) I told Harry I don't know anybody else who's been married so long (sad but true) and he said he knew quite a few couples who had been married a long time, but they never had children. Aha. :) We were talking about different decades and different time eras and he mused that there was going to be so much stuff in the next millenium, that we were in for a lot of interesting things, and he asked us how old we were and Tennille told him 24, and he gave her this incredibly sweet grin and went, "Now, see, Dawn and I have known each other for your whole life! I have shirts older than you!" It was so cute the way he said it, I can't even get it across. We were all laughing.

It had been extremely hot all day, hovering in the 90's, and now at night it was better but the wind was starting to pick up a little and trying to blow out the patio candles. Harry cupped his hands around our table's candle and talked about growing up in San Francisco during the 60's, and how colorful and beautiful the Haight-Ashbury district was at that time. People were painting and dyeing everything in sight, and he said you used to be able to hitchike anywhere without worrying about psychos; he used to hitchike to school and meet the most interesting people. But then the drug culture started getting worse and worse, and people were getting mugged and raped, and it wasn't safe anymore. Maribel was the only one of us girls who remembered the 60s, so she and Harry talked about that a while. I would veer between listening to the conversation and just staring at Harry's face in the candlelight; sometimes he looked like Smiley, and sometimes he looked like the Mayor, and it was just so strange to see this face I'd been seeing on TV every day for the past two years, right across the table. He was very relaxed and easy to talk to, like hanging out with your favorite teacher or someone. Very nice. :) (I bet he was probably wondering why the heck this chick kept staring at him, though....lol!)

At this time Maribel pulled out a few things she wanted Harry to sign; her George playbill, her Crazy For You CD, and her If Love Were All CD. Tennille pulled out some paper at the last minute. Halfway through signing it Harry looked at it and went, "This is your....!"

"Birth certificate." Tennille shrugged, smiling. "Well, I'm never going to get rid of it, so..."

Harry just laughed. He signed "Happy Birthday even though it's not". I asked him what the weirdest thing he ever had to sign was and he said mostly t-shirts and people's arms, but he'd never signed a birth certificate before. "See, now he'll remember you!" I told Tennille.

We talked for a little while about the fanfic I'd written about the Mayor. He had said in the lobby earlier how much he and Dawn enjoyed it, and I told I was hoping to get into college this year, and he encouraged me on that, said to keep at writing and someday the right person would see it at the right time. He said a lot of it was luck, of course, like the way he and Dawn had gotten Steeplechase, a guy they knew had just happened to call and offer it to them. I had been hearing the same thing from teachers and so on for years, but coming from Harry of course it was different. :) Not only because of him, but because since the internet is instant publication, it's true, a lot more people can see your work quicker. This year has taught me a lot.

We talked about the website. He said he really had been meaning to get a computer, had been shopping around for one, but then their car, an Acura they'd had for about 9 years, klunked out and they'd had to buy a new car instead. I told him if he didn't want to fool with a big computer, if he just wanted to start small, he might look into getting a Web TV (which is what Tennille and I started out on) and he said that was interesting, he'd look into it. He and Dawn were so impressed that Maribel and I had only met the day before and had only e-mailed each other this past year. He said he thought the internet was wonderful in that respect, how people from all over the world could write each other, though he acknowledged the dangerous aspect of it towards kids. He said he'd be the last to deny artists their freedom but there were some things out there that kids ought to be shielded from. I was going to ask him what he thought of the Napster arguement, but I forgot.

The wind was getting cooler and it felt like rain was coming. I had serious goosebumps but none of us wanted to leave. I'm sure Harry must have been getting tired but he hung in there, every time he talked about leaving he would get onto something else and talk for a while longer. He kept pouring ice water into his champagne ("Too sweet," he explained. "Real champagne is drier." It was my first champagne ever so I wouldn't have known either way; it all tastes like cough medicine to me. It occurs to me just now, as I write this, that I took some of his ice water to water mine down so I wouldn't get too buzzed. I even realized it at the time, I was like, "Oh, I took some of your water," and he was like, "Go right ahead," but it only just hit me now that I had some of Harry's ice water....oh my God.... :D

Wow....ahem, so where was I. Oh, he also talked about his upcoming movies. He and Dawn were going to the Ghost of a Chance premiere, the Scott Bakula film, after New Harmony. In the film Scott plays a has been actor who drops out of sight and is presumed dead, and Hollywood decides to make a film about his life. He comes out of hiding and tells his agent (Harry) that he wants the part of himself, and it's pretty much about Scott trying to get this role of himself. Harry was talking about Scott doing a Southern accent, and doing an accent himself while he told it, which was pretty funny. Maribel asked if he ever watches himself and he said he didn't generally like to, he did when he had to put together clips for casting directors to look at, kind of like a video resume, but he didn't really like watching his own stuff. He told us the Lincoln Center in New York City has videos of him in Crazy For You and If Love Were All, which perked Maribel right up, as I'd never seen CFY and neither of us got to see ILWA. We'll definately be going there if we ever get to New York....

Oh, at one point we were talking about driving, and I told him that my mom and I had driven to Virginia to visit my sister two years ago and he said, "Where in Virginia?" I told him near Harrisonburg and he went, "My wife's from the Shenandoah Valley!" I told him my sister lives near the Blue Ridge Skyline Drive, right in that area! I couldn't believe it!

Back to the movies. He told us about his next project, a play called The Good Doctor, and about Manna From Heaven, the film he did with Shirley Jones. In that one he and Faye Grant play dance studio owners but the film isn't just about them, although he said he and Faye did have a dance scene at the end. That got Maribel reminsicing about how great he was in CFY and how I should see him dance, and I told him I'd only seen him dance in Cupid, which I loved. He said it was great fun to get to dance around in the streets of Chicago, and that for the office scenes they'd rented the floor in this building and turned it into an office with huge windows and a beautiful river view, and it had been great to spend the day dancing around this office with this great view.

At this point Dawn came over and sat down with us, she'd been talking to the other cast members while we'd been talking. I asked them if they liked any rock or metal music at all, and Harry said he liked some, not much but Dawn liked to watch MTV sometimes. She told us she enjoyed the Pumpkins and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dishwalla. Tennille loves the Peppers and I love the Pumpkins so we thought that was pretty cool. Harry and Dawn also told a story about how they'd been in Puerto Rico (Maribel's home) during the filming of Amistad and toward the end of the shoot one of the local reporters had come up to them and told them they won the tan contest. It was a joke because all the cast and crew had gotten tans except them, in Harry's words, "the two whitest people on the island." Harry and Dawn thought this was terribly funny but Maribel was aghast, going, "Oh my God, I know who that reporter is, I'm so sorry!" and apologized profusely for the entire island of Puerto Rico. Later M told me she was going to let that reporter have it when she got home, she was so embarrassed. LOL!

Finally, at close to midnight the sky cleared, the stars came out, fireflies started appearing in the trees and the other cast members started coming over and saying goodbye. They had all been living together practically in commune for two weeks and they were all leaving for their next projects. Harry and Dawn were pretty popular, everyone kept coming up and telling them how great they were and how wonderful it was to work with them, coming over for hugs and smooches. We got up from the table and listened to the other actors talk about how great it was that they could have this kind of project out in Indiana, of all places, they wouldn't have been able to do that in New York or LA. It was like being at a family reunion -- with people you actually wanted to hang out with. Harry introduced us to, among other people, the guy who played Hippie Cockroach Man in The Gingerbread House, Howard Sherman. He and Harry had actually been friends for about as long as Harry and Dawn had been together, and it was kind of eerie because they hadn't seen each other in quite some time. (We had told Harry about how we had just missed the play by half an hour and would have missed it all if Maribel hadn't just decided to walk up the path, and Harry said that's how his meeting Dawn was, they just happened to go to Louisville at the same time. Lots of coincedences all around; Louisville isn't that far from New Harmony.) Howard's daughter was the one who had won the sock puppet designing contest, and he was talking about how they'd gone to Walmart at 2 in the morning for a glue gun and Harry started joking about how he'd bought Dawn one of those and she was glueing everything in the house for fun, plates and silverware and stuff... :)

Harry asked us how far away our car was, and we had parked about two blocks away and he said, "Let's all walk down, then." Howard came along too and we were walking down the dark warm street under the lampposts, listening to them talk about how the play went. At one point Howard said, "Where are we going?" and Harry said, "We're walking these ladies to their car," at which we all started cracking jokes about how scary and dangerous little New Harmony was. :)

We weren't that far away, and soon reached my car. I told Harry I bought it the week he sent me his picture and I was "driving him around" in my car. Tennille had really liked Howard's performance in the play so we all posed with him while Harry took our picture, and then we three girls got one last picture with Harry, taken by Howard.

Finally Harry looked at all of us and smiled and said, "Well, thanks for being so brave and coming out so far!" He gave Maribel a hug, and then Tennille, and lastly me. "Thank you so much," I told him. We were in front of a church and I was looking up at the steeple, oddly enough.

"You be careful going home now," he said.

"We will -- you be careful, all the traveling you guys do," I said as we pulled away.

He said, "Yeah, we'll be fine." We all said goodbye, and he and Howard walked off down the dark street. And we girls got into my car, giggling and shrieking like teenyboppers as we drove away. We drove back to Evansville and tried to find a Walmart open at that hour so we could develop our pictures, but didn't find one, and had to wait till the next day.

So there it is, pretty much the absolute coolest thing that has ever happened to me. There were things I forgot to ask, of course, I knew I would. I forgot to tell him about June 1st being Ascension Day on the Roman calendar. I completely forgot to tell him about the Union of Buffy Musical Supporters, and I wanted to ask what the hell he was eating in that scene in Graduation Day 1. And I forgot the queen of all Tiger Beat questions: what his favorite color was! :) But I think I remembered everything worth repeating. (M, T, if you can remember anything else, jump on in.) I will never get over how kind everyone was to us, even though we really had no right being there, everyone was friendly and nice and I think they thought it was kind of cute that Harry had crazy fans following him around. And Harry himself was a total sweetheart, and Dawn too, both really normal and easy to talk to. We had all been nervous about meeting him but he just made us all feel at home. That patio will be in my memory forever, I wanna go there when I die. :) I will never forget having my first champagne now, that's for sure!! Even if it was too sweet. :)

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