Oxford Plains 1988 — The Lobster Truck
July 2–3, 1988
Oxford Plains Speedway
Grateful Dead with Little FeatSome contamination events announce themselves dramatically.
Oxford was an interesting reality
Others arrive disguised as ordinary logistics.
A white chrysler k-car station wagon with an anomalous GD Moon sticker almost hidden on the right rear window.
A song.
A meal.
This one involved lobster.
We had already done the preceding shows — Saratoga and Rochester.
Oxford wasn’t originally some grand destination.
It was simply an opportunity to extend the road.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Enough for gas.
One more show.
One more drive.
One more temporary village.
And suddenly consensus reality begins loosening its grip.
I’m on the left, in white
By the time we reached Maine, more than 30,000 heads had converged on rural Oxford for what became one of the most legendary Grateful Dead weekends of the late 1980s. The speedway transformed into a sprawling temporary civilization — part campground, part shakedown economy, part autonomous experiment in collective improvisation.
Dust everywhere.
Cars.
Flags.
Tents.
Smoke.
Music leaking from every direction.
Improvised roads that only occasionally behaved like roads.
We parked in a section where trees had recently been bulldozed, leaving behind a raw open field bordering woods that were functioning simultaneously as bathroom, bedroom, sanctuary, and site of questionable decision-making.
The lot had become its own ecosystem.
People wandered.
People disappeared.
People reappeared.
Nobody seemed especially concerned with ownership of time.
We brought fireworks.
So did many others.
We got dusty.
Ate lot veg stir-fry.
At some point fences became theoretical and we got in free.
We slept in tents.
The whole thing felt like a temporary society somehow holding itself together through music, mutual tolerance, and low-grade chaos.
I was wearing all white. All white in an ocean of dusty chaos.
White pants.
White shirt.
White tee featuring a bouncing Tigger disrupting a black-and-white optical field.
Nobody was wearing anything remotely like that.
That might or mightn’t matter. Hard to know retrospectively.
Night One — July 2
The first show opened with Iko Iko, immediately setting the tone.
Highlights included:
Jack Straw
Row Jimmy
Brent’s massive Blow Away
Terrapin Station
a huge Morning Dew
Encore:
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
Perfect. Joyful. Loose. Mythic.
Day Two — Contamination Event
I’m sitting alone at the car.
No idea where anyone is.
Everyone has dispersed into the field.
Some were probably at those long communal pipe rigs with rows of faucets where people attempted to bathe and somehow emerged muddier than when they started.
I’m sitting there in the heat when I hear something.
Faint.
Then unmistakable.
Ice cream truck music.
No.
That can’t be right.
I listen.
It gets louder.
Closer.
Moving through this organic village.
Cars.
Dust.
Tents.
Flags.
People.
Improvised lanes.
Then I see it.
A truck.
Actually driving through camp.
Selling…
Steamed lobsters.
With drawn butter.
And lemons.
I remember thinking:
This cannot be possible.
Am I tripping?
This feels like full contamination.
And yet everything appears operational.
Orderly, even.
Oh, I’m in Maine. Maybe this is right. This is what happens here. Maine magic of some kind of which I am unaware.
I buy one.
Steamed lobster.
Drawn butter.
A pile of lemons.
No one I know is nearby.
No witness.
No friend to confirm consensus reality.
No one to pinch me or shake me awake from this reverie.
No one to say:
“Yeah man, that really is a lobster truck.”
Just me and this impossible crustacean. Water bug.
I eat.
Hey, it is real.
And glorious.
Absurdly better than the lot food I’d been living on.
I walk back to the muddy communal faucet to wash butter and lobster stink, that glorious lobster stink from my hands.
Still laughing.
Still unsure. But full.
And yes.
It happened. Pretty certain.
Night Two — July 3
Night two opened hot:
Hell in a Bucket
Sugaree
The second set delivered:
A dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago
Bird Song
Estimated Prophet
a beautiful Eyes of the World
Hey Jude reprise
encore: Not Fade Away
During Bird Song, an ultralight flew overhead.
Band members came and went by helicopter.
Reality continued refusing ordinary classification.
Oxford taught me something I understand better now.
Temporary worlds arise.
Dust becomes village.
Strangers become neighbors.
Improvised systems somehow function.
And sometimes a lobster truck appears in the middle of nowhere to remind you that reality was never as stable as you thought. Maybe it’s quantifiably better? More lemony anyway.
Most systems appear stable right up until they aren’t.
Life is now.
Enjoy it. Go. Do it. Do the thing.
There are no accidents.
Reality is alive, unstable, interconnected, chaotic and impossible to fully contain.
May all beings benefit.
~Nikki
