Traveling Medicine Show

This morning's dream.

I'm sitting at a table in a group of tables on a dirt road. I'm playing a game. There's someone across the table holding up a board. On the board are pegs with numbers printed on them. I pick a peg off the board and the gamer pulls out a page and reads off of it. It's like a fortune and a riddle and I respond to each bit of cryptic business by making fun of it all. I start getting laughs from people sitting at other tables. Soon there's a big crowd around me and I'm putting on a show for them.

While this is going on someone has set up a tent around us. It's like a small circus tent. Bruce Lewis is there and he interrupts the game to get me to help set up the show. I grab an armload of wood and metal beams piled next to me at the table and snap them together into a stage. I'm not even finished with it as people start moving tables and chairs around the stage. A few people come up and help me assemble the rest of the stage while more help Bruce set up a table on the stage.

I pull myself onto the stage, then I wonder if I'm suppose to be up there. What if I'm not allowed on stage? Then Bruce tells me to bring him a large canvas folded up on the corner of the stage. I pick it up and I find that it's not canvas, it's red velvet. Bruce grabs a corner of the velvet and pulls it over the table on the stage. The edges of the velvet have a fancy gold tassel trim and in the center there's a large gold embroidery sign that says, "Medicine Show"

I turn around to look at the crowd, there's a few hundred people laughing and enjoying themselves. More people are coming into the tent in the back and looking for seats. So I start my spiel. "Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the WILD WEST MAGIC LANTERN SHOW..." I start talking louder, there's a train passing by the tent and it's drowning me out. Then I realize it's not a train, it's my alarm clock. It's time to wake up.

I wonder where the heck that train was going.