Saturday was a busy day in Snoqualmie and North Bend. I think I forgot how many visitors the depots and the trains can bring to the Valley on a sunny day, until I drove through downtown Snoqualmie Saturday and saw the sidewalks stuffed with strollers, kids eating ice cream cones and parents watchful of traffic.

The crowd surprised me a little in Snoqualmie, since it was so early in the season. I was prepared, though, for the crowd that evening in North Bend at the fifth annual Jazz Walk.

At least I thought I was. The lines out the door were just part of the deal in putting on a huge music event in a town with only a few large venues. The wait for seats or to get served was the price to pay for being in the same place that a bunch of other people wanted to be in.

Seemed like everyone I talked to felt the same way, too. People waited patiently, gave clear directions to Jazz Walkers, chatted with each other in line, said thank you to their servers and didn’t get too annoyed with me for bumping into them with my camera bag. It was fun.

Then there was this guy who kind of stopped the music. He was outraged (I only wish he were speechless) that he was made to wait to get into a venue and he had to tell the world about it.

It was, for me, the perfect moment, maybe the only time in my life I’d be completely in the right if I did utter the cheesy line from those cowboy movies, “he ain’t from around here!”

Well, I’m embarrassed to admit that I did say something like that, and no, he wasn’t from around here. Obviously. If he were, he would have just waited to get in and maybe started talking, with his indoor voice, to some of the other people in line, or he would have gone to another venue – there were 20 of them, after all.

Instead, he ranted, and that made me respond in kind. I didn’t accomplish anything more with my comment than he did with his: I just drew a line to separate us, and we already have plenty of those.

As funny as it was to get to actually say the words, in context, and know they were true, I wish instead, I had acted like I’m from around here.