I have been going camping at a folk festival in Texas for the past several years. This year, I decided to bring my wife along. I’d like to say she got a rude awakening, but that would be a mis-statement, because she got no sleep to wake up from. I tried to warn her.

She is used to camping in state parks, where they are anal about keeping the campgrounds quiet after dark. There, if you’re out walking at night, and you step on a twig, the noise thus created will cause the guy in the fifth wheel across the road to call the park ranger on you for disturbing his viewing of the World War II battle scene he’s watching by satellite on the Hitler-y Channel.

The experience of camping at a folk festival is quite the opposite. This is because you are camping out with musicians, which are known to be a nocturnal species. Here I think they will evict you from the campground if you are too quiet at night. The guitars here play until, and sometimes past, sunup.

We pitched our tent where I usually do, near a place called “The Crossroads”. The Crossroads is ground zero for the all-night song circles, because it is under a big street lamp. Itattracts musicians the same way it does moths.

I understand the situation at the folk festival, and I somewhat like camping at the Crossroads, as the music and laughter lulls me to sleep after a hard night of drinking at Camp Tequila Mockingbird. There, I play guitar until the tequila makes me forget where my fingers are; then it’s off to be serenaded to sleep- not too difficult in my condition.

One one particular evening during this festival, however, my wife had apparently gone too light on the tequila. As we retired to out tent at some hour that begins with an “f”, the music from the Crossroads Gang was a bit too much for her.

“Go out and tell them to stop playing; it’s late!” she complained.

“No, actually it’s early,” I replied. “It all depends on how you look at it.”

Now I knew full well that trying to get these musicians to stop playing would be about as effective as waling up to a pack of hungry lions who are feasting on their latest kill and tell them to stop eating. However, for the sake of preserving my marriage, I went anyway.

The result was as I expected. After returning to the tent, I noticed a subtle shift in the repertiore at the crossroads from Simon and Garfunkel to Guns ‘N Roses. Oh, well, at least I did my duty for the good of the marriage.

The moral of the story is, if you want to sleep while camping at a folk festival, either drink a lot of tequila at night, or take a nap in the afternoon, if the Texas sun will let you.