I have got this great story about taking my mom to a Vince Gill concert, I believe it to be humorous anyway and have shared it with many family and friends and I have always gotten a laugh out of it. I wanted to share it with some true Vince Gill fans. I also wanted to show the lengths we go to for our moms to somehow show gratitude for all they do for us.A couple of years back, I kept asking my Mom what she wanted for Christmas and she would say "I don't know, just wait and I will think of something." Mother's day rolled around and I asked her what she wanted for Mother's day and she said "I just want go somewhere with you" (sometimes we go camping together, just the two of us). About a month went by and she goes "I would like to see Vince Gill in concert." So I go home and get on the computer to see when his next concert dates are. Sure enough he is on tour. The scheduled dates are mostly for northern states. We are in northern Alabama, and I was looking for something within a few hours driving distance. So I am looking for locations below the Mason Dixon line, and I see two. One is for someplace in Kentucky, and the other is in Jackson, Mississippi. So I am thinking that the one in Jackson is the ticket. We can drive down there, see the concert, stay overnight, and then take the Natchez Trace leisurely back to north Alabama, enjoying the scenery along the way. I discussed my plans with my Mom, and she gave me the go ahead. So I purchased the tickets from the Community college where the concert was being held. When the tickets arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later, I was pumped. I was not that big of a Vince Gill fan, but I was excited about doing this for my mom. I pulled out the notebook to start planning trip details, I opened up MS Streets and Trips to map out our route and to see how long it would take to drive it. I entered my starting and ending points, Joppa, AL and Jackson, MI and much to my surprise and dismay, I did not get routed to Jackson, Mississippi but instead to Jackson, Michigan (about an hour east of Detroit). How could I be such an idiot, MI is not Mississippi, it is Michigan. Then I just sat there, trying figure out what to do. My mom works thirds and if we left right when she got off of work, we still couldn't make it there in time for the concert. It's an eleven hour drive and MI is an hour ahead of us. I decided to eat the nonrefundable tickets and do something else with her. I tried to call and tell her about my mistake and what I had resolved to do, but she had worked the night before, was asleep, and therefore did not answer the phone. As I thought about it, I decided to take a look and see if there were any flights available that might work. Sure enough there was one out of Nashville that would just fit our timing needs and was not very expensive. I purchased the airline tickets and decided to keep it a surprise as my mom had never flown in a commercial airplane before. I also have a cousin that lives twenty minutes from the Detroit Airport, so I called him up and asked him if he wanted to meet us for dinner the night of the concert. Over the next couple of weeks I kept telling my mom that I had made this huge mistake, but I had it all worked out and that she needed to trust me.
The day of the concert it was time to leave, and she kept finding things she had to do before we could go. It was a two hour drive to Nashville and I didn't want to miss our flight, but she didn't know we had a flight to miss. Finally I got her in the car, and we were off. I turned north onto Highway 67, "where are you going", she asked. "To the interstate" was my reply. "Don't you need to go south.""Trust me Mom, just trust me." She didn't know where we were going until after we had boarded the plane. "Detroit!" she exclaimed. She wasn't too happy about it at first. She was kind of worried that my dad would be upset at her for going so far away. But I assured her that he knew where we were going and that he thought the whole thing was kind of funny. She relaxed after a little while. I had requested a window seat for her and she had here nose stuck to the window the whole flight. My cousin met us at the airport and we had dinner with him. We had to drive a hour east to the concert and was a little late for the opening act. Like a lot of colleges this one was in the middle of nowhere, outside of town. We had a little trouble finding it and once we found the college, we drove around campus looking for the Potter center. The college seemed empty; void of human activity until we drove around to the back side and voila, a parking lot full of cars. Yeah! Now to find a parking spot that was not a mile away. Did I mention we were late? The parking lot was full. Then I saw it, an open spot not too far from the entrance. It was a tight fit; both vehicles to the left and right were crowding MY parking spot. That is why it was open. My car, well it was a rental, what did I care. My mom had to get out of the car before I parked it. Finally, we were there and were assured by the seating assistant that we had not missed anything. The concert was great, one of the most enjoyable that I have ever been to. The show was held in a concert hall, not a big arena and the audience was smaller than I expected. Vince seemed to get on a personal level with the group. I loved how he interacted with the audience. I had never seen that before. Anyway we made it home without incident and we did travel back on the Natchez parkway. We just started on the Nashville end and went south. Now Vince is coming to my town (Huntsville) on Thursday, and we will be there and thankful that we just have to drive across town. Oh, and it was me who wanted to see him this time.
