The River Landing

Ten Essential Songs (One Man’s Opinion)

 

 

Music has been a continual focus and backdrop in my life ever since those first accordion lessons back in the mid-1960s and the acquisition of a hand-sized transistor radio (as opposed to a radio with vacuum tubes).  Of the many songs I’ve heard and enjoyed over the years, some have extra special meanings, each capable of bringing back specific memories or feelings from a certain time period or an experience, much like smells can accurately conjure up recollections in the smallest details; I’ll envision scenes and can sometimes recall what my thoughts were, my worries, frustrations, and what brought joy, inspiration, or sadness.  So I thought it would be interesting to create an annotated list of these songs.  But realizing that listing hundreds of songs and explanations of why each is important to me would be impractical and probably boring, I decided to whittle the list down to ten, for no other reason than humans have ten fingers. 

        The list would consist of only songs that I have considered essential, but essential only for myself, as someone else would probably develop a completely different list.  They would not necessarily be the best I have ever heard, just the ten that I would never want to do without.  Or, if I had music playing at my funeral, these would be the ten songs playing in the background (although, I might make an exception to the limit of ten and add Rock of Ages and Amazing Grace).  Each song would have to fit several criteria:  strong ties to personal meanings or experiences, compelling story and/or emotion, clear mental images, instrumentation, overall sound, and tune.  I tried to weigh all of these factors in deciding which songs to include.  In doing so, I had to leave off some truly great music. 

        But this necessarily begs the question of why anyone, other than my wife Julie, would care about any of this?  If I were famous or influential, there would likely be widespread interest in the minutia of my life.  And yet, I still have likes, dislikes, and opinions.  So for what it’s worth, I made the list anyway, even if it matters to no one else.  The songs are not listed in order of importance (such as the best being first), but rather, they are listed in terms of where they fit into the chronology of my life, from the high school years in the 1970s up through recent times.

 

Ten Essential Songs

Sunday Morning Coming Down (Kris Kristofferson).  This song brings me back to my high school years, to a time when I first truly latched onto the type of music that moved me.  And it was the lyrics that did it.  Although certain songs, like The Weight by The Band, stood out for years, it was when I discovered artists like Kris Kristofferson and paid closer attention to Johnny Cash’s music that I really began to relate to the music in a personal way.  Kristofferson’s lines about waking up on a Sunday morning, fumbling through his closet for the cleanest dirty shirt, and then stumbling down the stairs for a walk alone through a city park appealed to my sense of being an outsider.  In high school, I never belonged to a popular clique, didn’t attend sporting events, didn’t belong to clubs or the band, and had few close friends.  I was also drawn to songs with more mature themes than the average teenager probably would have been, although it would be years before I would try a beer for breakfast, let alone having a second beer for dessert.  (Link to YouTube Sunday Morning Coming Down)

Big River (Johnny Cash).  This is definitely not a kid’s type of song.  It’s about a man trying to track down his wayward girlfriend along the Mississippi River.  The song is full of river scenes that made me want to be just about any place other than in high school, especially not in a gym class surrounded by a bunch of kids yelling and throwing a ball around.  One friend of mine kind of liked Johnny Cash, but other than that friend, my new musical tastes set me apart.  When music was a topic of discussion with other high schoolers, names like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Aerosmith were bandied about with pride, but mentioning Johnny Cash as a favorite never came up…except by me, and that was usually followed by some strange looks and sometimes laughter.  I saw musical preference as just a simple matter of what sounds good to the particular individual and what strikes a chord because of personal meanings.  But in high school, the music you listened to took on much more importance; it was a kind of status symbol to some, and it had to be the same as what was popular with others.  I could never see their point.  (Link to YouTube Big River)

Boots of Spanish Leather (Bob Dylan).  Part of my sadness in high school and the reason why the mood of songs like Sunday Morning Coming Down appealed to me was the lack of a girlfriend and the real feeling that it could never happen.  Being easily intimidated by the opposite sex and then turning into a bumbling, stammering fool while asking for a date didn’t help.

          At any rate, after hearing Bob Dylan’s song Watching the River Flow in 1971, I became an instant Dylan follower, and I soon became familiar with most of his music.  Some of his lyrics were and still are difficult to follow (for example, Desolation Row), but Boots of Spanish Leather really tugged at my heart for its story of a lost love sailing away across the ocean, unlikely to return for a long time, and the reluctant acceptance of that fact.  I may not have had a girlfriend to lose, but over the high school years there were several females, the objects of my pathetic infatuations, who ignored me completely (to clarify, however, a girl once actually did notice me walking down the sidewalk when she yelled out her open window, “Hey Tommy, you walk like a deadbeat”—mentioned here just to keep the record straight).  So I imagined that unrequited love, which I had a lot of experience with, and being dumped must have felt about the same, which is why Boots of Spanish Leather resonated.  Nanci Griffith’s version of this song is the best.  (Link to YouTube Boots of Spanish Leather)

Paradise (John Prine).  I wrote about this song at length in a recent blog post called “Paradise over the Years.” Here is a link to that post:  Paradise over the Years.  (Link to YouTube Paradise)

Homecoming (Tom T. Hall).   I was born in Buffalo, New York, and lived there just past the toddler stage when my parents divorced.   My mother, brother, and I then moved to Chicago to live with my maternal grandparents.  Although dad soon followed us to Chicago, my parents never reconciled.  Seeing dad was then referred to as a “visitation,” only on Sunday, from eleven o’clock in the morning until precisely five-thirty in the afternoon.  This pattern was by decree until I turned eighteen, but continued well into my early twenties, until I left home for college.  After that, I saw my dad less often.  When I moved further away from Chicago, visits were down to about twice a year.  At the time, I never thought about the sacrifices he went through because of the divorce or that he left a good job, his hometown, and his close family network in Buffalo so that he could be near his sons (my mother has always painted a highly negative picture of him, which continues to the present day, even though he died in 2009).  Soon I became pre-occupied with my own life, and never much considered his struggles or went too far out of my way to see him more often.  My view was that offspring move out and away; parents stay behind; and all go on about their lives, demanding little from each other.  Tom T. Hall’s song Homecoming is right on target as it illustrates a son’s regret—in the end, however, easily pushed aside—at being neglectful of his aging father.  (Link to YouTube Homecoming)

The Orchard (Kevin Evans).   A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about my longtime fascination with Irish folk music.  Here is a link to that post:  The Highlands.  (Link to YouTube The Orchard)

Oh, Abraham (John Gorka).  Well before Julie and I were married, she introduced me to the music of John Gorka, encouraging me to listen to his CD, The Company You Keep.  It’s an overall excellent album, but the song Oh, Abraham stands out.  It is a serious, complex song, but also has some of Gorka’s unique humor here and there.  In my interpretation, the song is a commentary on our society: its inequities, the growing partisan divide in our country, and the question of whether or not the original dream of the country’s founders has been lost.  The song reminds me of a well-crafted literary essay, of the type that invokes deep thought; may be a bit difficult to truly define; and at the same time, is relevant in a variety of situations.  And, with every listen, it makes me think of Julie.   (Link to YouTube Oh, Abraham)

Long Way (Antje Duvekot).  Antje Duvekot is another Julie-inspired addition to my music library.  Early in our marriage, I was frequently listening to the Irish folk band, Solas, which I had only just discovered.  On their live album, Reunion:  A Decade of Solas, Duvekot joined the band on stage when they played one of her songs.  Julie picked out Antje Duvekot’s voice from the crowded stage and encouraged me to listen more closely; she was simply drawn to Duvekot’s voice and stage presence, but it was also a good song (Reasonland), with abstract lyrics reminiscent of Dylan.  The following year, we attended Duvekot’s concert at Macomb’s Tri States Public Radio station, where I first heard Long Way.  Later, while listening to John Gorka’s Oh, Abraham, I picked up on what I thought was a connection to Long Way; and then I remembered that at the radio concert, Duvekot mentioned her admiration for John Gorka.  So there might be a connection.  Both songs mention Jack Kerouac, and both are about traveling around the country—although Oh, Abraham is less about that.  Long Way is essentially about the freedom of the road and being young without serious responsibilities.  The song speaks directly to the wanderlust that I felt so strongly when I was younger, and so it makes me feel young again.  (Link to YouTube Long Way)

Firefly (Edward David Anderson).  I came upon this song during the pandemic year of 2020.  Julie and I were in the process of selling our country home in Mason County and moving to the small western Illinois town of Macomb.  Upon learning the names of the prospective buyers, Kim and Ed Anderson, we naturally looked them up on Facebook.  We saw that Ed was a well-established, working musician with several CDs, YouTube videos, and an extensive touring resume as a solo performer and with a band called Backyard Tire Fire.  I liked the idea of our old house being occupied by another musician (Ed calls it his “new old house”).  In his song Firefly, I recognized several parallels to my own life during my early twenties:  being directionless; not yet meeting the one special woman that would be my wife and feeling hopeless on that topic; and making my own way, not bending to convention or to what others were telling me I should do.  I could have really used this song back in 1977, when I was depressed, going nowhere, and working at a dirty paper warehouse.  (Link to YouTube Firefly)

Pachelbel’s Canon in D (Johann Pachelbel).  This tune stands apart from all the others on the list because it is an instrumental.  So its meaning to me is purely from the circumstances surrounding it rather than a personal connection that could be made by anyone relating to lyrics.  When Julie handed me a list of songs to put together as a playlist for my stepdaughter Kate’s wedding in 2019, Pachelbel’s Canon was on the list.  But being only familiar with the tune and not its name, I did not recognize it as a song that I knew until playing the mp3 download as a test.  I also didn’t realize that it is well known and very popular at weddings.  In the world of classical music, I am still fairly ignorant.  So I try not to embarrass Julie, like the time we attended the Illinois Symphony, and I said, loud enough for others to hear, “Do they really need this guy waving his arms all over the place?” referring to the conductor.  “I mean, all the musicians have the music in front of them, and they’ve all probably practiced it hundreds of times.”  A woman sitting to Julie’s left leaned forward, and she and Julie gave me “a look.”  I pretty much remained quiet for the rest of the evening.  (Link to YouTube Pachelbel's Canon in D)

 

        So, will this list of ten essential songs change as time goes on?  Probably, as long as I decide to restrict the list to ten.  I’m always searching for new music, and one day there might be a song that makes such a strong personal connection that I’ll have to bump one of the current ten off the list.  But I guess it really doesn’t matter.

 

Wheelbarrow Blues

 

“Now as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see, this world is such a great and funny place to be.”— from the song I Ain’t Got No Home by Woody Guthrie

Roosevelt's wheelbarrow army, 1937 (Downloaded from the Internet, courtesy National Archives)

 

The morning was hot and muggy, not much good for doing anything out of doors.  And yet, I uncharacteristically found myself moving some wood mulch with a wheelbarrow, and it reminded me of a man and some incidents that happened about a quarter century ago.

        At the time, I was living in a tiny rental house along the Illinois River, just north of Havana.  My retired landlords, Lawrence and Doreen, lived in a rather spacious home and property, across a narrow sandy lane.  Lawrence frequently hired a local laborer, Bill, from down the road to do yard work and maintenance on both of our homes; often I would see Bill making multiple trips back and forth between the properties with a wheelbarrow, his face stoic and unreadable.  Bill was in his mid-60s, slow and low talking, Great Depression lean, and tough as iron. He always wore long-sleeve work shirts rolled up to his elbow and a dirty John Deere cap that seemed just a bit too large for his wiry build.  He was a hard worker, but, sometimes it looked to me as if he stretched the work out just a little too much.  Lawrence, a highly educated engineer who designed and ran foundries, must have known this, but he wanted to help Bill out by giving him work.  “Five dollars an hour,” Bill used to groan in a voice seasoned with years of hard farm laborer work with little chance of financial gain or movement up the social ladder.  With few savings, an unhealthy wife, and still supporting a pajama-boy son—who couldn’t seem to find let alone hold a job—Bill was glad to earn whatever extra cash that he could.

        Bill worked consistently and did what he was told.  In fact, he did exactly what he was told, even when the orders might send him in the wrong direction; so Lawrence had to be careful in his instructions.  Once, Lawrence purchased several sapling trees that he directed Bill to plant alongside of my rental house.  “They go in here, here, and here,” Lawrence hastily and absent-mindedly indicated with a shovel, making slight depressions in the ground.  Would I have taken the initiative and measured an even distance between the holes and set them in a straight line before digging?  Or would I have done what Bill did and plant each tree exactly where Lawrence’s shovel arbitrarily touched the ground, even though they were not evenly spaced or in a straight line?  I’m not really sure.

        When Lawrence returned later in the day to check on Bill’s work, he nearly shouted, “Why did you plant them in a crooked line and so close together?!”  Bill, ever defiant, replied, “You said ‘Here, here, and here,’ God damn, and that’s what I did.”  “What can I say,” Lawrence replied, “you’re right, but dig them up and re-plant them evenly and in a straight line.”

        Another memorable incident from another day, related to me by Doreen at some point well after the fact, occurred when Lawrence instructed Bill simply to, “Burn those leaves,” most of which had been blown by the wind nearby another small house that Lawrence owned just beyond my backyard.  After hearing the story, I surmised that Bill probably thought it would be easier to add leaves to the existing pile and burn the pile in place, rather than raking everything into a new pile.  Fair enough.  Except once the fire began, the flames quickly grew, spread, and began moving ever closer toward the house.  Unsure of what to do, Bill responded to the situation by running in a panic for Lawrence, who was in his home, probably relaxing with a book or watching the news.  Bill’s loud banging on Lawrence’s front door, though, certainly must have gotten his attention without delay.  “We got trouble!” shouted Bill.  And the two old guys moved as quickly as they could, ultimately controlling the fire before it reached the house.

        There is no way to know what words were exchanged between the two after that scenario, but I would not be surprised if Bill blamed the near catastrophe on Lawrence for not first telling him to move the leaves away from the house.   Bill was notorious for blaming Lawrence’s instructions when situations went awry.  And he and Lawrence would sometimes argue back and forth about the proper way to carry out a task.  On the occasion when Lawrence’s way was found not to be the best way, I would imagine that Bill felt more than a little self-satisfaction.  But maybe my interpretation is simply projecting my own early notions of boss-worker relations onto a person who never came even close to such thoughts.  I’ll never know.  Over the years, though, I have known quite a few men going through life with a chip on the shoulder, with an unmistakable “us” (working man) against “them” (management) attitude.  And Bill fit that mold fairly well.

        I know the attitude well because that was the world from which I came.  It was learned behavior, and where I learned it was at a paper factory, only my second job after just two years out of high school.  A major part of my work was watching large sheets of paper (several feet in length and width) gently fly off a noisy conveyor belt and pile up on a platform that could be lowered or raised.  When the pile of paper accumulated to just high enough, I would push a little button to lower the platform a few inches, thus allowing room for more paper to pile up.  If I became distracted and forgot to lower the platform, the paper would build up until it jammed, and the entire operation would have to be shut down temporarily until all of the crunched-up paper was removed.  So pushing that little button was an important job, even though I guess I knew that a dog probably could have been trained to do it and actually stay focused on the task—unless an uneaten biscuit lay within smelling distance.  Still, I felt to be pretty far down the warehouse social hierarchy.  Only the box packers in the mailroom were lower, or so it seemed to me.  When a “white shirt and tie” from the office entered our warehouse domain, I felt low down and that they considered themselves better than me.  We in the warehouse used to joke about them being afraid of a little dirt and hard work.  When someone in the office made a mistake, we were quick to say:  “Of course, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, them and their college degrees.”  On a daily basis for two years, then, I was schooled in us-against-them thinking.  (At the same time, no one ever said that any one of us could not aspire to more.)

        Bill may have resented me in a similar way.  Lawrence and Doreen, though over thirty years older, quickly became my closest friends.  They frequently invited me over for drinks, meals, and their own family get-togethers, where I met many of the extended relatives.  Bill rarely if ever crossed their threshold.  And at least a part of his work was directed toward my house and property; while I, as the renter, was never expected to do much related to maintenance.  I also worked for the state of Illinois, and had all of the usual holidays off, plus plenty of vacation and personal time off.  One of my favorite activities was sitting under the shade of a large hickory tree in the yard watching birds and reading a book for hours on end, probably with a glass of ice water or a beer within easy reach.  Many times, while reading, I would see Bill working, plodding along; and sometimes I would hear him muttering “God damn” under his breath.  If he looked in my direction, I’d usually wave, but without getting much recognition in return.  Sometimes body language says it all.

        His attitude toward me became clear one day when he and Doreen were talking in her yard, trying to determine how her flowerbed had been flattened the previous night.  “Who would do such a thing?” Doreen asked in exasperation.  “I know who done it,” Bill said, and confidently pointed directly at me.  “It was him! I seen him.”  Bill was right, of course, and he didn’t hesitate to rat on me.  The previous evening I was in my canoe on the Illinois River, and I remembered seeing Bill near the riverbank as I paddled past his house on my way to a tavern up the river for a six-pack of beer.  I returned well after dark on a moonless night; then, following a path up the river bluff along the edge of Lawrence and Doreen’s property, while pulling my canoe behind me, I slipped and fell right into her flower bed.  Because it was so dark, I had no idea of the consequences of that fall...until Bill’s ignominious accusation.  Of course, I was immediately highly apologetic, as I explained myself away.  As for Doreen, her anger melted into a smile and laughter, which probably infuriated Bill.

        After I purchased my first home and moved away from Lawrence and Doreen, we continued to maintain our friendship.  In this way, I was to learn of Bill’s death from cancer only a few years after my departure.  So he must have had a special suffering that he kept inside all the time I knew him, never saying a word.  And only a few years later, Lawrence left this world, followed shortly by Doreen.  And I am left to ponder the meanings, which I am reminded of every time I need to use a wheelbarrow.

[Postscript:  This last time with a wheelbarrow, a blister began to develop on my thumb, and I thought, What’s next, a callous?   How long before I could no longer claim to have hands as soft as a baby’s bottom?  If Bill were still around, I doubt that he would feel sorry.]

An early evening in June on the Illinois River

 

 

Author's Note:  Names of individuals were changed to protect anonymity. 

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Paradise over the Years

One of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar back in the late 1990s was John Prine’s Paradise.  It was easy to learn because I knew the words so well after listening to the song hundreds of times over the years and because it has only three chords.  Paradise tells the story of a small Kentucky town, along the Green River, that was moved so the land could be strip-mined for coal.  The song has been one of my favorites for a long time, and when I’m playing it, I lose myself to the past.

 

Green River, Kentucky, 1977

        I first heard Paradise in the mid-1970s at a Tom T. Hall concert at the Grundy County Fair.  Still in high school at the time, a few friends and I made the 50-mile trip one summer evening from Cicero to Morris after hearing about the concert on our local country music station.  At that time, Grundy County was very rural; the Chicago area’s sprawling suburbs were still many miles away.  And so, as we sat on the outside bleachers waiting for the concert to begin, we looked upon farm country that stretched nearly unbroken in every direction; it may have been the first time I had ever seen the sun set over the actual horizon.

        I remember the concert starting late, which created some frustration within the audience; and when Hall finally appeared, he seemed rather uninterested in playing, as if he simply wanted to be relaxing at home with a drink.  On the second or third song of the show, he played Paradise, and he became much more alive and focused.  I don’t recall that he mentioned who wrote the song; so I thought that either he was the author or that it was an old traditional bluegrass tune.  For the rest of the concert, Hall returned to his somewhat distracted state, and we left the fairgrounds a bit disappointed. 

        Three or four years later I was at a co-worker’s basement apartment drinking beer and talking about music.  When I mentioned that I liked Bob Dylan, he replied that I needed to hear John Prine, who, he said, sounded a bit like Dylan with a southern accent.  He then put John Prine’s first album on the turn table; and listening with an open mind, I immediately liked what I heard:  “Blow up your TV, throw away your paper, go to the country, build you a home.…”  Then Paradise came on, and I instantly recognized the song from the Tom T. Hall concert.  I found out then that Prine was the author of Paradise.  And I made up my mind at that moment to pick up some John Prine albums.

        Not long after that evening, a couple of friends and I were again attending a Tom T. Hall concert, this time at a small venue on Chicago’s north side.  I don’t remember much about the concert except that Hall seemed even more distracted than the last time I saw him.  But to be fair to Hall, after the concert, our small group was bound for Chicago-style deep dish pizza, and that was about all I could think of for probably the last half of the show.  We couldn’t have left the concert hall fast enough for me. 

        But after the house lights finally came on, I noticed that sitting in the next row of seats, just in front of us, was none other than John Prine and Steve Goodman!  At the time, I was much less familiar with Steve Goodman, other than being able to recognize him as someone who had played with John Prine.  So I whispered to my friend Jeff, “Hey, that’s John Prine over there, and he was sitting in front of us during the whole concert.”  So Jeff boldly walked up to Prine and said, “Hey you’re John Prine.”  Prine smiled and replied, “Yeah, I am.”  Steve Goodman just smiled.

        I think of these little stories whenever I play Paradise, and I probably always will.

 

 

The Page Turning

Looking back along the road I've traveled, the miles can tell a million tales. – from Starlight on the Rails by Utah Phillips

August 2019

Across Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, near the top of a large dead tree, is an active bald eagle nest that I’ve kept track of since late February. I’ve enjoyed watching the nestling grow, but I worry on windy days when the tree seems to sway a bit much. It wasn’t so long ago that bald eagle nests were highly scarce in Illinois. So the recovery of this species to a healthy population is cause for optimism, quite appropriate for the spring season…especially spring 2019.
        For last summer I entered that phase of life known as “retirement.” The word evokes many emotions and expectations, undoubtedly different for every individual. For me, it is a time for rest and reflection, for pursuing new adventures with my wife, and for tried and true personal interests unhindered by work-a-day demands (no timekeeping).
        This is the first spring that I’ve had the time and wherewithal to observe seasonal changes in minute detail, from the shortest days of winter, buried in cold and ice. As the calendar advanced, I looked for those changes along the home trails, but sometimes beyond. The spring bird migration, for instance, is heralded in my mind with the first red-winged blackbird song, this year on February 19th. The first turkey vulture of the year is another sign (February 28th). But I’ve followed such changes in bird communities for many years. And even on my busiest of working days, I always took the time to glance around and listen for birds, though it might have only been moments while walking from the office to my parked vehicle.
        Changes in plant growth from day to day are much more subtle. In central Illinois, one might not think to search for the first spring flowering in February; but with a mild winter, that is when I’ll start closely looking at hazelnut shrubs. This year, I was able to watch their buds swell just slightly more each day, but with plenty of cold weather setbacks. Then as February passed, I became anxious; until on March 14th, several tiny, fully formed petals finally emerged. A similar story I could tell for all of the other plants along the home trails. Of course, I’ve watched all of these developments for many years, but never before with enough time.

                                            * * *
Always remember: The longer you live, the sooner you'll bloody-well die. – from Isn’t it Grand Boys - Traditional Irish Folk Song

It has been said that life in general occurs in four phases, and at age 61, I’ve found that concept to resonate. The following is simply my interpretation. The first phase, of course, begins at infancy and continues to young adulthood, when everything is new, learning is effortless and swift, and time passes the slowest, with the future open ended. The transition to the second life phase is rather abrupt, at the arbitrary age of eighteen. Thereafter we are considered adults; from this point onward, life inevitably becomes more complicated. Time still plods along, and sometimes progress is slow. But it’s a time for fearlessness, adventure and taking risks, blending new experiences with old and new knowledge; taking wrongs paths, making mistakes; backing up and correcting course while hopefully making progress.
        As the second phase begins to show wear and adolescent ideas of fun begin to be not so amusing, one gradually enters the third and perhaps longest phase of life, middle and late-middle adulthood: a time of serious dedication, accomplishment, increasing responsibility, and means. Time begins to move noticeably faster, and this shocking reality is frequently a topic of conversation among contemporaries; ten years no longer seems to be such a long time. One may begin to look backward, hopefully with satisfaction, as much as forward, still with much anticipation.
        So when does the fourth phase begin? In my view, the fourth phase begins as abruptly as adulthood: with retirement from the working, wage-earning world. But that point does not necessarily equate with being elderly, especially for those retiring well before the usual age of sixty-five. An elderly individual, however, certainly is within the final life phase, working or not. Knowing it is the final phase, some attempt to delay entry, but time eventually wins out, and drags everyone through. The fourth life phase is for taking stock; one tends to look backward more often simply because there are more years behind than in front. Time gallops along, and that is usually a source of sadness. One likely has acquired a certain degree of wisdom and skills, such as playing a musical instrument, that can sweeten these years, even though younger generations will probably be dismissive—just as it has always been. Living in the moment provides security; the future is contemplated with an optimism that comes with being in control, but it is also viewed with increasing trepidation.
        It is in this frame of mind that I opened our three-season Quiver Lake cabin in early April. But where I once unlocked the cabin with open-armed enthusiasm as soon as winter weather was barely over, I have begun to approach the event with a certain degree of apprehension. Why? There was the year when turning on the water pump blew out the connectors on the old toilet; the year water pressure in the old toilet pulled the tank’s worn rubber stopper into its drain, and allowed water to run continuously (we purchased a new toilet); the year I delayed shutting down the cabin for the winter, so the pipes froze and all had to be replaced; the year the water pump malfunctioned and had to be replaced; the year we finally discovered the leaking roof, but not before dripping water ruined a piece of artwork (we re-roofed the cabin); the year the kitchen faucet leaked from a crack created by a tiny residue of water not drained in the fall; the year the new roof began leaking (“That’s not possible!”); the year of the carpenter ant invasion; and the year the new siding let rain in through the wall at every nail, as if the siding were not even there. What will it be this year, I thought, just before I flipped the power switch to the water pump? At first, air in the pipes caused an uneven flow of water, which gave me a scare. So I shut everything down, and then re-started the system. After a little coughing, it worked! But then I saw the leaking kitchen sink sprayer. Again, a small residue of water left behind over the winter had frozen and cracked the housing. But that was easily replaced without calling a plumber. And with good health so far, I let my guard down and was ready to enjoy a new season at the cabin.
        As my wife and I plan ahead for the coming years, there are days when anything seems possible: European trips, Alaska, northern Canada, New England, driving a rented RV across the country, Florida manatees, a new home in a culturally diverse university town, gardening, beekeeping, a published novel.
        Are we running out of time? Of course, but the passage of time is not constant, as life and Einstein have shown; time can be slowed. By watching plants grow, tracking cloud formations across the sky as they imperceptibly change shape, listening to wind in the trees, watching hawks soar on rising air thermals, and taking afternoon naps, time can be seized and then slowed down. At the Quiver Lake cabin, I will give this idea further thought, perhaps while watching a pair of bald eagles raise the next generation. In the end, time will remain the master, but not without at least some opposition.

 

                                              * * *
Oh, I don’t know how I got this old, how the winter got so cold, now the morning’s turning gold, and I should stop my dreaming. – from Mind to Think, by John Gorka

Although the middle of July might seem early to expect the start of the fall bird migration, indicators abound, even in the unyielding summer heat and humidity. The pattern repeats yearly; it is something to be counted upon. So when I looked down the country road west of home, I was gladdened to see a small group of bank swallows perching on the telephone wires. They had left their breeding colonies along some stream or hillside and were beginning to stage for their upcoming flights to South American overwintering territories. At the same time, it was a slightly bittersweet moment, because the sight of those swallows also meant the first year of my retirement was over.
        One year before, I stood at the same location, viewing the same scene with swallows on the wires, pondering how the rest of my life might unfold, still somewhat in shock at having arrived at that point. In this phase of life, the discovery of one more year passing provides little comfort. But my attention was quickly diverted from a path toward darker thoughts by a singing blue grosbeak and calling dickcissels; from the timber I heard a yellow-billed cuckoo, two excited red-headed woodpeckers, and an eastern towhee. It was still the middle of summer after all; I had just walked through the backyard prairie, where blooming partridge pea, gray-headed coneflower, and Monarda dominated the view. And this scene anticipated the next stage in the seasonal progression: tall prairie grasses with showy panicles, blue asters, and yellow goldenrods brightly shining in the late summer sunlight. But I would not think about those coming days too much, as doing so tends to rush the season, and rushing through the year is what I least wish to do, just as I prefer to take my time reading a good book.
        Life, in fact, has been compared to a book—each day, month, year, or season like turning a page—with a definite beginning, middle, and final end. Life also has been compared to a river like the Mississippi, with narrow, energetic, swift-moving headwaters; a long, drawn-out middle section that forms the majority of the river’s length; and the aged, languorous, massive final segment before its end, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Either over worn analogy has merit. But I think life is more like a cloud: it forms out of nowhere, grows, changes unpredictably until it no longer resembles what it once was, and finally dissipates back into nothingness once again.
        Productive thoughts or pointless day dreaming? Before deciding, my attention was again diverted by a bird. This time a soaring turkey vulture. The mid-day sun created strong rising air thermals, so the vulture gradually circled higher and higher with no obvious effort except subtly adjusting its wings or tail one way or another to maintain stability or to change direction or altitude. The bird flew against a backdrop of blue sky and changing cloud patterns, reminding me of when I first saw a turkey vulture forty-one years earlier along the upper Mississippi River bluffs.
        The vulture, of course, is a bird of death, feeding on dead, decaying animals. Its message is the mortality of all life. Yet I find this not a depressing thought. For the bird causes me to recall many beautiful locations where I have watched soaring turkey vultures, from Arizona to Maryland, and what a joy it must be to sail effortlessly upon the winds, among the clouds.
        When I looked again at the telephone wires along the road, the bank swallows were gone. Perhaps they were bound for the nearby Illinois River and its backwaters, which undoubtedly offer a richer invertebrate life—fuel for their travels southward—than the insecticide-sprayed corn and soybean fields in the vicinity of my home. They might even share the same air space for a time with the young eagle at Quiver Lake that I am confident fledged only a few weeks before. So I turned back toward the house and prairie, which seemed more of an oasis than ever, and left my mind blank for a while.

 

 

Accordion Boy

 

By Thomas V. Lerczak

 

[Author's preface:  I first began making notes for this essay over twelve years ago in preparation for being interviewed at Dickson Mounds Museum, Lewistown, Illinois, as part of a series of programs the museum planned on American roots music (e.g., folk, mountain, blues, zydeco).  Up to that point, I had never thought that playing the accordion was much out of the ordinary or that anyone other than my mother would be interested in reading about it; but after seeing the videotape of the interview, which was part of the Smithsonian’s “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music” traveling exhibit, I realized that placing my accordion experiences into the larger context of history and personal growth could result in a unique and interesting story.  I hope that I have been successful in accomplishing that.  The following essay, first published in Sobatka Literary Magazine (Issue #8), is the result.]

    

The steady breeze that blew in from the west did little to relieve the afternoon’s heat and humidity. And so only one week into my retirement at age 60, I remained inside our air-conditioned bluff top cabin, playing one song after another on my guitar, gazing out across the backwaters and forests of the three-mile-wide Illinois River valley. The songs came easily from deep within as my right hand hammered out rhythms and tunes, and with only a small effort I recalled each song’s lyrics and their meanings while simultaneously thinking about the past, the idyllic scene in view, and what the future might hold. At times like this I have found it to be absolutely true that while playing a musical instrument, the mind enters a highly enhanced state of functioning and awareness on many levels. When I finished Martha Scanlan’s song “Little Bird of Heaven” with its final line “There’s a little bird of heaven right here in your hand,” I paused for a moment: Yes, there is, I thought, and how fortunate I have been to have music as such an integral part of my life, listening as well as playing.
        My maternal grandfather was the musician in our family. And his instrument of choice was the button accordion, a highly ornate, old-time instrument in the shape of a box that looked like it came straight out of the Middle Ages. There were sets of keys or buttons for the left and right hands to press with bellows in between. Moving the bellows in and out forced air through internal reeds which created the sounds. I don’t recall that my grandfather could read music; in fact, I believe that he played strictly “by ear,” meaning that the tunes were in his head, and he simply “knew” which buttons to press at the proper times. The right hand played the melody, while the left played the rhythm or bass which sounded like “oom pah pah, oom pah pah” for ¾ walzes, and “oom pah, oom pah” in 4/4 time. As a small boy, I thought he was a genius, and I longed for the day when I would be old enough to play a musical instrument.

 

Author's grandfather Vincent Zelizko on the button accordion, mid-1960s.

        Riding a great wave of European immigration to the United States following World War I, both my maternal grandparents came to the United States in 1922 from a part of Czechoslovakia called Bohemia. They brought along few material possessions from the “Old Country,” as they referred to Europe, but in their minds they carried the cultural richness of the home country in the form of secret food recipes, language, stories, and music. Like other European immigrants, my grandparents sought out folks like themselves who spoke their native language, much like anyone would do if transported to a strange foreign land. And with so many immigrants from different countries doing the same, major parts of large cities, like Chicago where they eventually settled, became composed of neighborhoods defined by ethnic origin or race. In these neighborhoods, the home cultures survived in reality, not just memory. In “Little Bohemia,” not surprisingly, the button accordion was king.
        Finally in 1966, at eight years of age, I was deemed old enough for music lessons. The Chicago Park District’s Lawndale Park offered lessons for several types of instruments, but my parents never really thought seriously about anything other than the accordion. I, however, was more open-minded. With The Beatles at the top of the music charts, I remember thinking that maybe guitar lessons were the way to go; my grandfather, though, scoffed at that idea; and the sad fact was that all of the guitar classes were full. But the accordion class had plenty of room for more students, and, besides this, I was assured by my grandfather that “The accordion player always gets the girls.” Of course, I was embarrassed by the idea of “getting girls,” but I thought if this instrument could influence females, maybe there was something to it, something even The Beatles were missing. In fact, who were George, Paul, John, and Ringo anyway compared to an accordion? So accordion lessons it was…for the next ten years.

 

The author in 1966.

Playing before a school assembly, 1966.

        Progress was a bit slow at first, though, probably because I was only a few steps behind my music teacher at the park, who could barely play. My grandfather occasionally tried to offer a little guidance, but I was learning on the more modern piano accordion (with keys for the right hand similar to a piano), which he could not play. And at my lessons I was being taught to play from written music, and discouraged from playing by ear, as this was thought to be undisciplined and merely made-up music. So my grandfather and I never really teamed up, although he did teach me the tunes of several Czech folk songs, which I continued to play without written music. Those songs, in particular, made my 67-year-old grandmother smile, even while she may also have been thinking of the times when she carried my 20-pound accordion a half mile to my school for “Show and Tell.”
        By the summer of 1967, I could read simple music and had shown at least a rudimentary ability. And so I was encouraged to enter Lawndale Park’s annual talent contest, where I would be in competition with other children who were taking music or dance lessons at the park. It was stiff competition, indeed, especially the little girl in a ballerina costume and one boy whose parents had purchased a professional accordion system for him called a Cordovox. I thought they probably spent many thousands of dollars on that equipment, which consisted of an electronic piano accordion with four suitcase-sized amplifiers that could sound like an organ. Where did he come from? I wondered. I didn’t remember seeing him at any of the accordion lessons. There was no way I would win.
        On the evening of the talent show, the park district’s auditorium was packed. The audience’s size, by my conservative estimate through the fog of 50 years, must have been at least 200. And the park district staff were highly excited by the turnout, which added to the anticipation and my anxiety of playing before a large crowd. As I stood backstage and peeked through the curtains, I could see several of my neighborhood friends, including the girl who lived across the street from me, sitting in the front row; she would soon be impressed, I thought, and be putty in my hands, although I had no idea what to do if that actually happened.
        Soon the show began. I was too nervous to pay much attention to the first several acts which quickly passed, and then it was my turn. I plugged my small accordion into the amplifier system, and with an anxious stomach waited for my introduction. After the curtain abruptly opened, I stood there ready to puke. The stage lights blinded me to all but the first few rows of the audience. In the sidelines I saw my music teacher nodding to me: Play! And so I began a song called “Juke Box Rock,” with my left hand pounding out the bass rhythm, “oom pah, oom pah, oom pah, oom pah,” which I could feel through the floor. I played with no mistakes, this song I had practiced maybe 100 times (my poor family), but it was quickly over. The audience cheered and clapped. I stood there in shock, probably with my mouth hanging open, and the curtain closed.
        A few more acts followed and then a short break ensued so the Cordovox system could be set up for the last act. When the curtains opened, it was as if we were engulfed by no less than the mighty Heavens; the kid was a deity and his Cordovox was magical; it looked like an accordion, but it sounded like a mixture of smooth organ-like sounds, deep bass notes, and haunting violins, a triumphant combination of talent and electronics. After this performance, I think there was no doubt in anyone’s mind who would win first place.
        Finally, all of the participants were called to the stage to stand together as the judges announced the winners. The kid with the Cordovox , of course, took the first place trophy. I have no recollection who won second place, but then as the third place winner was announced, everyone began looking at me, and I realized that it was my name being called. The door had opened to accordion stardom.
        But the next year saw only minor progress in my playing. I learned many new songs, but I was not learning proper technique or increasingly complex music. My music teacher admitted that he had done all he could with me, given his own limited abilities, and suggested I pursue private lessons with a professional accordion player. And so, I became a student of Tommy Kosatka in Cicero, with one-on-one meetings once per week. I played scales over and over, and learned proper fingering techniques, chords, how to play songs in different keys, and how to improvise, which to me seemed very similar to playing by ear. I learned how to read and play more complex music and how to add a personal touch to an arrangement. Mr. Kosatka challenged me to do better and not be afraid of any music, no matter how complicated; I would simply learn pages and pages of music one measure at a time over a period of weeks. I learned rock, jazz, pop, crooner ballads, and, of course, polkas. Many polkas. These lessons provided a firm foundation in musical theory with the precision of mathematics.

 

[Listen to the author playing "Night Train" on a recording made in the early 1970s 

Download Night Train TVL early 1970s.]

        While all of this was happening, though, my musical tastes were changing as I became older, especially after I entered high school. Like most kids, I listened to music on the top 40 AM pop stations in the 1960s. None of this included accordion music, except maybe as a background instrument. So I did not listen to accordion music for enjoyment or inspiration. The Lawrence Welk Show, of course, had accordion music. But Lawrence Welk was…well…Lawrence Welk. Squaresville. None of my friends watched this program; their parents did, of course. But how could parents know anything about what was good? Polkas were from the Old Country. I had entered the rebellious teenage phase of rejecting the older generation and their music.
        And while I continued to take accordion lessons, by the early 1970s I became drawn to music that had deeper meanings or stories in the lyrics. Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about the riverboat “Proud Mary” and leaving a job in the city, “working for the man every night and day.” In “Me and Bobby McGee,” Janis Joplin sang about being free, owning little, and drifting around the country, where “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” I was drawn to singers like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Tom T. Hall who sang about working and living hard, and the challenges faced in everyday living. Bob Dylan’s sardonic lyrics, commentaries on society’s ills, struck many nerves. And during this time period, the world was literally about to blow up. The Cold War and thermonuclear threat were raging, with the Soviet leader shouting that his country would bury us. There was the Vietnam War, the maniacal Cultural Revolution in China, war in the Middle East, starvation in Bangladesh and Africa, the 60s assassinations, civil rights protests and riots in our cities including my hometown Chicago, air and water pollution getting worse, hippies and free love, and we were putting men on the Moon.
        Through all of this, I played the accordion, diligently learning the music Mr. Kosatka placed in front of me. But it was not long before he could tell that something was missing, and I felt that too. I was competently learning to play the notes, some very complicated songs, but I now know that what was lacking was the heart, a connection to the inner soul and life experience. Just playing the notes as written is not enough; true emotion must be a part of the playing, and that must be real, not something to be produced on demand. When I listened to recordings of my accordion playing, I could hear that something was missing, which was not so apparent when I was actually playing the music. One day when it became clear that I was unprepared for my lesson, Mr. Kosatka finally asked me: “What kind of music do you listen to? What do you want to play?” He rightly knew that the songs I listened to on my record player and on the radio were the ones I should be playing on the accordion; these songs, he hoped, would make that important personal connection to the music and put the heart into my playing. So I bought song books by Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Creedence, and others, plus assorted sheet music of songs I heard on the radio. I played “Proud Mary” and “Me and Bobby McGee” on the accordion. It kind of worked for a while, providing some new inspiration, but there was still something missing. While I played the tunes, I would hear the lyrics in my head; I needed something more than the accordion could offer, especially since in the end, they all still sounded like polkas from the Old Country. Now, a polka may be a fine piece of music, but the fact is that certain types of instruments sound best for certain types of music; one would not attempt “Stairway to Heaven,” for example, on the tuba, although the results might be amusing. I did not wish to be amusing.
        After I graduated from high school, I stopped the accordion lessons, mainly because for a couple of years, I was no longer advancing, and both the teacher and student seemed to be out of ideas. I think Mr. Kosatka knew this too, but he was not about to suggest that a paying student discontinue; if I stayed under his tutelage for the rest of my life, I think he would have been fine with that.
        In the late 1960s and 1970s a part of Chicago’s north side was at the epicenter of a folk music renaissance that produced such icons as John Prine and the late Steve Goodman, as well as the renowned Old Town School of Folk Music. As it turned out, I was able to experience the tail end of this musically rich period, especially at the same time that disco was taking over the airwaves and popular night spots; and this resulted in my musical tastes moving further from accordion music. A key factor was that in 1976, the year I turned 19, the state of Illinois, in its wisdom, lowered the drinking age for beer and wine from 21 to 19; I’m not sure of their rationale, but after only a few years, and probably a lot of DUIs, it was back again to 21. But this brief period opened up a great opportunity, and I wasted no time gathering up a few friends for some serious bar hopping. And not being familiar with any bars, I first looked at the entertainment section of the local newspaper for a place to try out my new drinking privileges. One item stood out: The Bitter Creek Newgrass Band at the Clearwater Saloon on Chicago’s Lincoln Avenue.
        From the outside the Clearwater Saloon looked a bit dingy. From the inside it appeared authentically rustic from years of hard use and benign neglect, rather than from the creative mind of a degreed interior designer; it was a comfortable atmosphere that smelled of wood and long-ago spilled beer. My kind of place. As the only customers early on a Friday evening, we had our choice of tables; so we awkwardly chose one, ordered our first pitcher of Beck’s dark beer, looked around, and waited for something to happen. Gradually over the next hour, more patrons entered along with the band, who began setting up equipment, tuning instruments, and initiating their own night of drinking. Judging from the appeal of bluegrass music in those years, I kind of expected a much older, rather conservatively dressed crowd, maybe even a family-like atmosphere, as bluegrass music tends to have a strong gospel component. But this was “newgrass,” whatever that was. By ten o’clock, the bar had a full crowd with every table occupied, and they were mostly younger folks, probably with an average age of between 25 and 30. The band itself was composed of five unpretentious long-haired characters in faded denim that looked right at home at what might be called a “dirt bar.”

 

The Clearwater Saloon, late 1970s or early 80s.

        As we moved into our third pitcher of beer, the band—with banjo, bass, two acoustic guitars, and mandolin—finally launched into its first song. When they finished, the place erupted in an explosion of applause, yelling, stomping, and whooping. I had never seen a bluegrass audience react in such a way. By the middle of the first set, folks were dancing between the tables with a couple of blue jean-clad young ladies, with long flowing hair, dancing on top of the bar between glasses and bottles. The band played more traditional bluegrass songs plus bluegrass versions of songs by Creedence, The Grateful Dead, and other contemporary country and rock artists (i.e., newgrass). I felt at home and more connected to this music than any I had ever played on the accordion, and I was reluctant to leave even as the midnight hour had long passed.

 

[Listen to a scratchy live recording made at the Clearwater Saloon in 1977 of the Bitter Creek Newgrass Band playing Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Lodi." Download Bitter Creek at Clearwater Saloon 1977]

 
        My friends and I returned often to the Clearwater Saloon. But its heyday continued only for another two or three years, when it seemed the main customer base settled elsewhere and the somewhat rickety building itself seemed to be about played out. In a few years, its doors would close for the last time.
        I have never experienced another establishment quite like the Clearwater Saloon, where the audience was truly in sync with the live music. I think those years may have been an example of a short-lived, unique convergence of social and cultural trends that can never be deliberately duplicated. Were it not for the brief change in the legal drinking age, I may have missed it completely. It was great fun, but also educational as it opened my mind to new styles of playing familiar tunes as my musical tastes continued to evolve. Even so, throughout all of this, I was faithful in maintaining my accordion-playing skills, but less and less as the years went by. I eventually attended a university in southern Illinois, and I took my accordion with me. And it was with me still when I later moved near the Illinois River and began working as a natural resources manager.
        One day, a friend down the road, at his home along the river bluffs, held a yard party. Several of his friends played guitar and one was very good on the harmonica. With the river valley as a backdrop, they sang as the sun set beyond the western river bluffs, then under starry skies, and well into the early morning. Their songs included many of my favorites from Dylan and Creedence. I could not help being reminded of certain rowdy evenings at the Clearwater Saloon, nearly two decades in the past. Their playing was straightforward and loose, the kind of playing one learned by ear or made up on the spot with a few lyrics and simple chords. They had fun, and I had fun listening. And I thought, yes, I could do this too. The next day, I unpacked a guitar which I had acquired a decade before but never learned to play. Determined not to give up, I would play the guitar at least as well as I could play the accordion, maybe even better.
        At first I was a bit daunted. Holding down strings with my left hand to make the chords was a painful process until my fingertips toughened up. And I discovered that a stringed instrument requires a gentler touch and more subtle movements than an accordion’s keys, buttons, and bellows. The slightest shift in position or touch on the strings in one direction or another can produce vastly different sounds and effects. And while music theory is the same for any instrument, as in the order of notes and chord patterns, the relationship between player and instrument could not be more different. I also had never sung before and did not even feel that I had a decent singing voice, let alone learning a song’s lyrics and meshing those lyrics with a tune and timing the guitar’s rhythms. But then singers such as Dylan, Kristofferson, and John Prine showed that having a melodious singing voice was not necessarily a requirement. (Of course, it is possible to sing along with an accordion, but I decided not to go there.)
        Quality of voice notwithstanding, singing was one of the missing pieces, because the lyrics were important; with the lyrics came the stories and the emotions tied to those stories. To memorize a set of lyrics, I had to think about what they meant, and those with personal meanings were the easiest to learn. For most songs, I may not have lived the stories, but by relating them to my life in a realistic way, I could make the words flow without much effort, each verse logically following another as the stories unfolded. Unlike playing the accordion, it was not necessary to imagine the lyrics. With the guitar, all of the pieces were there, the physical act of playing and the emotional or intellectual part, the meaning and deep truth behind the songs; as when I’m singing Woody Guthrie’s songs of the dust bowl era in the 1930s, I imagine walking down a dirt road in Oklahoma among grassland covered hills, billowy clouds overhead, dry winds blowing through my hair. Each song is its own journey.
        For the last twenty years, then, the guitar has become my instrument of choice. And so, what has become of the accordion boy? After a few years of exclusively playing the guitar, I actually started to miss the keyboard. So I obtained an electronic keyboard that can duplicate the sounds of many musical instruments including drums; in fact, it can put the old 1960s Cordovox to shame. I usually play it in the grand piano mode, where my accordion skills easily transfer. The accordion, I rarely unpack. But as it turns out, my wife has always loved the accordion and polkas. Soon after we met, both in our 40s, she became overjoyed to learn that I was an accordion player. I think it even helped solidify our relationship. So only for her, the girl that I finally “got,” I will, on occasion, play the “Baby Doll Polka,” written in 1954 by Eddie Korosa, a button accordion player personally known to my grandfather. And to my surprise, so many years after I had first learned the tune, I discovered that the simple lyrics actually do resonate as a deep, yet simple, truth.

        You are my Baby Doll

        You are my Baby Doll

        You are my Baby Doll

        You’re my darling now.

        Don’t leave me Baby Doll

        Don’t leave me Baby Doll

        Don’t leave me Baby Doll

        You’re my sweetheart now.

 

 

 

[Download a PDF file of "Accordion Boy" here:  Download Accordion Boy for Kindle.]

 

 

 

 

The Shrinking Comfort Zone

 

I’m longing to ride on a freight trail, and be a good old American guest. – from Good Old American Guest by Merle Haggard

 

On a late afternoon in mid-September, I sat at the timber’s edge, watching our two highly active honey bee hives: so many bees every few seconds flying out of the hives, out over the prairie and beyond; and just as many returning. Except for gusty winds blowing through the tree canopy, all was quiet, with not much else going on. I was well within the comfort zone, and there was no reason to upset the apple cart, as the old saying goes. And yet, something gently pulled at me, a vague notion that I was missing an opportunity; the pull was not strong like it was when I was young, but it was definitely there.
        Despite occasionally feeling that I should be doing something else, I remained sitting for a long while. And with my wife running errands, I then spent the rest of the afternoon reading, playing the guitar, and walking the home trails. I was at peace, enjoying my surroundings, feeling calm and secure. In the outside world, there were many potentially harmful unknowns; but not here. So at sixty-one and retired, I may have finally understood some of what my seventy-six-year-old grandmother may have felt so many decades ago: Frustrated with a mere week’s worth of vacation from work each year, I once approached her and asked, “Since you’ve got the time, why don’t you travel?” “Not for me,” she answered. For her, whose first language was still Czech after being a U.S. citizen for over half a century, the increasingly complex environment beyond her small brick bungalow must have seemed overwhelmingly daunting, full of dangerous risks. The outside world may have been pulling at her, but she was strong willed and quite firmly rooted.
        Throughout life, the comfort zone develops for a reason; of course, there is a fear of the unknown involved, but I think the boundaries develop more as a result of experience, finding out what works and what doesn’t as a reflection of one’s unique personality, abilities, desires, and knowledge. At some point, what is “not for me” becomes clear. At the same time, it is important to test or redefine the boundaries, gently pushing the envelope with an open heart and mind. If I had not done so, I may never have taken that first trip to Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, ridden a motorcycle across the northern Great Plains, taken a solo canoe-camping trip on Missouri’s Current River, sung and played my guitar before a large gathering, left a good job to pursue a degree, given a lecture on ecology to a room full of college students, or felt comfortable with a smartphone. While safe at home, the outside world pulling at me is a prompt to ask, What else am I capable of?
        Whenever I’m at our Quiver Lake cabin, I’ll always take at least a few minutes to simply sit and look out across the 3.5-mile-wide Illinois River valley to the distant bluffs of Fulton County. It’s a beautiful view of forests, bluffs, wetlands, and open water that I can never have enough of. But it also makes me want to grab my canoe, cross the lake, and head to the Illinois River beyond, just to see what is there that is different from the last trip. Most of the time, just thinking about it is enough, and I’ll go back to reading my book. But then there is the rare occasion when a seed has been planted, and I may begin thinking of longer trips. Most of them never happen, but for those that do, the actual planning, especially with my wife, can be like a shot of adrenalin and my enthusiasm soars. A few weeks later, after going over numerous maps and reading a stack of background materials, I sometimes feel as if I’ve experienced a journey weeks before even leaving the driveway.

                                               * * *
For most of her life, my grandmother was never really much of a traveler, although she did sail across the Atlantic Ocean in rough seas and pass through New York’s Ellis Island at age 22 to begin her new life in the United States at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. And she did return twice, as I recall, to her native Czechoslovakia with my grandfather, where he, in fact, died on their last trip in 1973. Upon returning to Chicago alone in a 747 jet, with her cremated husband in an urn, she never traveled again. (I now realize that I was insensitive when asking her about why she no longer traveled, by not taking that experience into account.)
        But I suppose a shrinking comfort zone is a natural tendency with advanced age, even without any great tragedies (for example, these days I would never consider traveling cross country on a motorcycle). It may not be possible to stop this gradual process, especially if health issues become a complication. But I am convinced that it can and must be resisted, lest one becomes too constrained and maybe even immobilized in an inescapable and perhaps uncomfortable safely net. 

 

                                Grandmother with Miska, 1980s

 

 

Recollections of a Man on Skid Row—Chicago, Early 1970s

Recently my wife Julie and I were planning a trip to Lake Michigan’s dune country, about 50 miles across the lake from Chicago.  And as is my habit before such a trip, I’ll make a visit to the plastic cabinet on our front porch, where the miscellany of my life is being stored:  brochures from sites visited long ago, outdated maps, scattered photographs, bits of this and that being saved for obscure reasons.  And during my search for whatever I was looking for, I came upon an envelope crammed with old black-and-white photographs.

        I shuffled through the prints rather quickly, like a deck of cards, and was almost ready to store them away again before seeing each one—as I remembered the photos very well, and knew there would be no surprises—when one rather abruptly grabbed my attention.  It simply showed a man walking on a sidewalk.  Yet the photo brought forth a flood of memories, and pulled me back to that exact day and time over 40 years before.

 

Chicago, Madison Avenue, early 1970s

 

        In those days, my father, who passed on in 2009, often took my brother Bob and me on Sunday drives.  Sometimes it seemed as if we had no particular destination in mind, just being out of our little neighborhood for a while was enough.  Downtown Chicago and the lake front were our favorites.  We once drove through beautiful neighborhoods of what seemed like mansions in the northern suburbs of Kenilworth and Winnetka, to see how the other half lived.  And we drove through Chicago’s western suburbs past new shopping malls, which my father said was how the future would look; and I felt as if we had just traveled through time.  I remember seeing the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, in the 1960s, before, it seemed, much attention had been given to air pollution control:  a sunny day turned somber, dark, and gray; and my father said that this was progress, and called the wetlands and open fields “wasteland.”  On one adventurous trip, just after Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had been killed, followed by riots with burning inner-city neighborhoods, my father was curious to see the aftermath—what he, a World War II veteran, called a “war zone.”  We traveled down Madison Avenue where the rioting had been the worst; there was no shortage of charred buildings and debris strewn over the streets and sidewalks; yet all seemed peaceful on our Sunday drive, even though tensions must have been tight as a drum.  Though my father seemed oblivious to any danger, he instructed us to shut the car windows and lock the doors.

        A few years later, in a high school photography class, I learned about the different cameras available and how to develop black-and-white film and create prints.  My parents indulged this budding interest by purchasing a small photographic enlarger and allowing me to develop film and prints in the house, which, to my mother’s dismay, involved the use of some rather smelly chemicals.  Soon, from money which I earned through various odd jobs, I bought my first good camera:  a 35 mm, Yashica rangerfinder with adjustable lens, shutterspeed, and focus.  Armed with this new camera, then, I was eager to take pictures of just about anything. 

        Downtown Chicago continued to be a prime choice, but I tended to travel there more by the elevated train system (the “L” train) and buses accompanied by one or two friends.  Though Sunday drives with my father were becoming less frequent as I became older, on one of our last, we ended up, once again, on Madison Avenue.  By that time, about 1972, there had not been rioting for a few years, and the perception was that social disharmonies had improved quite a bit since the late 60s.  Our optimistic world view said that that had to be the case:  things always improved, and progress moved everything forward.  But Madison Avenue was still Skid Row, as it had been known for a long time:  a poor, dangerous, high-crime area with flop houses, junkies, prostitutes, homeless street people, gangs, broken-down buildings, filth, and disease.  Skid Row had not improved, and may actually have gotten worse.  Now, some may say this is a harsh assessment, flavored by the flaws of memory.  Fair enough.  But it is called Skid Row for a reason.

        When our car slowed in the traffic, I noticed a tall man walking quickly, taking big steps, dodging around slower-moving pedestrians.  He stood out in the crowd.  And I cried, “Look at that guy!”  His face had a wild, maniacal expression.  And so I quickly readied my camera over the protests of my father and brother.  When the man was just opposite our vehicle, I snapped the shutter, and we quickly drove onward, back to our world, a world away from his.  I think this was the last time we traveled to Skid Row and one of the last Sunday drives, as my life apparently became busier, and being with friends assumed a greater importance.

        As I now look at the print of this man on Skid Row, I wonder about his story.  How did he end up there?  Was he a penniless alcoholic who had just found enough money for a drink?  Is that why he was in such a hurry?  Or did he just steal something?  Was he a war veteran, who had seen terrible things, and been broken by the experience?  Was he someone’s once beloved husband or father who had fallen on illness and hard times?  Or were the hard times of his own making?  Was he dangerous, and would he have been furious to know that his picture had just been taken?  Should I not have taken his picture?     

        Such questions were not on my mind when I snapped the photo, knowing only that I wished to be as far from this man and his surroundings as possible (yet there he is in a cabinet, in my home, along with special moments from my life).  And I also did not wonder why it was that my father brought his two sons through Skid Row on a Sunday afternoon.  As I recall, my mother also wondered, shaking her head in disbelief at her former husband’s choice for a drive with his sons.  But I believe his reason was to impart a valuable and memorable lesson:  Work hard, get an education, save your money, be honest and kind, stay sober, and you won’t end up here.  Although he never offered an actual word of explanation, his message was loud and clear, then as now.

 

Amazing Grace - A Music Post

Please click on the following link to hear my piano version of the classic song Amazing Grace: 

Download Amazing Grace mix#1

Down in Salley Gardens - a Music Post

In a previous post called The Highlands, I told the story of how I became interested in Celtic music in the 1980s and how that interest eventually culminated in a trip to Ireland in 2011.  Since that post I have tried better to learn one of my favorite Irish folk songs, Down in Salley Gardens, on the keyboard.  I recently made a recording of this song on the keyboards with the sounds of pan flute and recorder added later (to hear the recording follow the link:

Download Down in Salley Gardens-mix#1). 

With the recording, the photo below, and a selection from my trip journal, I hope I have been able to convey a bit of what it felt like being in Ireland.

 

Blasket Islands, Ireland, 2011

  

Journal entry, September 25, 2011, Doolin, Ireland:  "And then finally the end point:  the head of the Dingle Peninsula and the furthest extent of Europe westward.  As at Dunbeg, the winds were strong and constant.  We parked and gazed toward the distant Blasket Islands.  It was amazing how all of the peninsula was covered by stone-bordered fields, even the larger Blasket Island.  New homes were also dotting the land, a strange modern/ancient mosaic of life ways.  I thought of the fear the people living here must have felt upon seeing a distant Viking ship.  And the sobering  fact is that the human nature that allowed the Vikings to exist has never died.  We must never let our guard down again."

  

The Highlands

 

“…And when I’m gone, may I be one with the air, the land, and the foam, in an orchard green ‘neath the Comeraghs in my sweet Dungarvan home.”  From The Orchard, by Kevin Evans

 

My fascination with Ireland and Scotland began in the late 1970s at a place called Dirty Dick’s Pub in Oak Park, Illinois.  It was an Irish pub, and it was here that I was introduced to Celtic folk music.  The songs told stories of Ireland and Scotland and traveling on the sea.  This was a different kind of music from what I had ever heard on the usual top 40 of the day or FM radio.  After a few pub visits and a growing familiarity with certain tunes, I began to form mental images of what I thought these faraway places might be like:  of course, they were radically different from and more interesting than Berwyn, a near Chicago suburb where I lived at the time.

        Though the songs told of large cities such as Dublin and Belfast, I was more drawn to the images of the small hamlets, countryside, rugged mountains, and coastlines.  I filled my record collection with music from groups like the Dubliners, Liam and Clancy, and the Tannahill Weavers.  I learned about places such as the Dingle Peninsula from a song called Red-haired Mary; Cork, Killarny, and Kilkenny from Whiskey in the Jar; and the Comeragh Mountains at Dungarvan Bay from The Orchard.  Many of the songs told the history of Ireland and Scotland, which I pieced together bit by bit from titles such as Sound the Pibroch, The Rising of the Moon, Foggy Dew, and Botany Bay.  Songs of travel like Wild Rover, and the many seas songs fed the growing wanderlust of my early twenties.

        Though I was intrigued by travel abroad, there was much that I wished to see in my own country.  And so, for a long time my interests in Ireland and Scotland would remain confined to the music and my imagination, whether the latter was accurate or not.

        Music, in fact, had been a big part of my life since childhood when I began playing the accordion at around nine years old.  During my teenage years, I was persistent and occasionally worked hard at improving my playing abilities, but I never really connected with the instrument.  The problem was that I did not listen to accordion music, did not play with a band, was not very fond of polkas, and contemporary rock and country music—the music that I actually listened to at the time—were not accordion-friendly.

        I probably would have eventually given up on the accordion were it not for discovering Celtic folk music.  Groups that played this music actually had accordions in their bands.  And it sounded great!  Irish and Scottish folk songs on the accordion sounded good to my ears; my own playing improved and my musical horizons expanded.

        One day in the mid-1980s I had a tune in my mind.  I’m not sure where it came from, but it “sounded” like a slow Scottish ballad.  Along with the tune, I imagined the Highlands of Scotland, although I had actually seen few photographs of Scotland up until that time.  Still, I imagined rugged mountains covered in tundra-like vegetation with hidden wilderness valleys, cobble-bottomed clear streams with gallery forests, blowing winds, greyish skies with only intermittent sunshine, and few or no people.  I quickly worked out the tune on my accordion, and added it to my usual repertoire.  I had written a song, and I called it The Highlands.

 

***

        Since that time, I eventually did drift away from the accordion at about the same time that I took up the guitar as my main instrument.  My wife, Julie, though, loves accordion music.  At her request one day, I played her a few tunes.  One of those tunes turned out to be The Highlands.  Her response was enthusiastic, even more so after being informed that I had composed the tune over twenty years before.  Without hesitation she encouraged me to copyright the song.  And after writing a few lyrics, before too long, I did just that.

 

The Highlands

        Grey skies, to the Highlands, I’ll journey.

        Great waves, they break on the rocks.

        The wild Highlands they call on me;

        Buried away in my dreams.

 

        In lochs, we’ll sail through the Highlands,

        Leading us down to the shore.

        At sea, one night I must leave you;

        Fair winds, I’ll wait and be gone.

 

            Ancient battle cries;

                The eagle flies;

                The gathering storms will arise.

                Grey skies, to the Highlands, I’ll journey;

                Or never no more may I roam.

 

        Dark cliffs, to the Highlands, I’ll journey.

        Mountains, they rise with the dawn.

        At home, no more will I leave you;

        This night and all through the ‘morn.

 

                Ancient battle cries;

                The eagle flies;

                The gathering storms will arise.

                Grey skies, to the Highlands, I’ll journey;

                Or never no more may I roam.

                

***

        In 2011, I finally saw Ireland, when Julie and I flew across the Atlantic Ocean and landed at the Shannon Airport near the town of Limerick in Ireland’s west.  Julie’s goal was to see Cork, where family legend said her ancestors, in the 1800s, sailed for the United States.  On our visit, we found the exact departure point in the coastal town of Cobh.  From there we drove to Ireland’s far west, eventually reaching the end of Dingle Peninsula, considered the furthest western extension of Europe.  At nearby County Clare, we stayed in Doolin, known far and wide for its Celtic music pubs.  Late one afternoon, we enjoyed a few pints while listening to a group of older musicians playing The Orchard.  For both of us, circles had been completed.

At the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland, 2011

 

[To hear The Highlands on the keyboard, follow this link: 

Download The Highlands.]

 

[To download The Highlands sheet music, follow this link:   Download The Highlands Sheet Music.]