It's Yesterday Once More....

Traces, faded, folded pencil sketch ca. 1974-1975

I was recently taking my usual afternoon ride with little Noah ("our" ritual), singing along with the radio (Noah is indulgent and sometimes even enthusiastic) and beginning to ponder just what I might do to mark the August 27th anniversary of my initial topic post on the blog (Blue Room, Hot Wheels, Purple Prose and the No. 4 Chili Cheeseburger..., although my first comment was published on August 15 in response to Nicki's inaugural post of August 13, Reflections on a Teacher at CHS). As Noah and I cruised the local drag (yes, I still do that), while I was contemplating possible "takes" ... the crystalline voice of Karen Carpenter (dead at 32 of anorexia nervosa) filled the car with the haunting words:

When I was young
I'd listen to the radio
Waitin' for my favorite songs
When they played I'd sing along
It made me smile.

Not only did those particular lyrics, that specific song, make me smile then, they conversely and concomitantly brought tears to my eyes, along with that breathtaking tug on my heart as so many years instantly fell away ... like those pages falling off calendars in old Hollywood movies to indicate the passage of time. So many different years, so many diverse images ... volatile times, kaleidoscopic places, memorable faces, a beloved twindred soul ... impossible to actually count or relate just how many memories (some good, some not so much) crowded my mind in the space of only a few moments....

I prudently had the presence of mind (and the opportunity) to swing into a convenient Sonic Drive-In just ahead, order a cherry limeade (another memory trigger) and then close my eyes and let the rest of the song work its wistful, beautiful, sometimes bittersweet magic.




Karen Carpenter (1950 - 1983) and her brother, Richard

Anyone who has read some of my blog posts, or who otherwise knows me well, apprehends that music has always been important in my life. Some of my most wonderful memories are bound in silken, sensuous chords or silvery, sussurous words, sometimes intricately woven, mellifluous, moving slowly like warm aural honey through the canyons of my mind ... soaring, close harmonies ... psychedelic screams or insensate mumbles symbiotically clashing with primitive percussion and ripped guitar riffs to savage the senses ... cry-in-your-beer but ultimately soothing and cathartic country ballads plaintively detailing love and loss, or the efforts by some Desperado to hide his Lyin' Eyes, or ...Make It Through the Night to another Tequila Sunrise with some Angel of the Morning, or to hang in just a little longer For the Good Times without thinking of What Might Have Been. (It is worth noting here that recent scientific studies have indicated that crying in response to sad songs is indeed therapeutic and should actually be encouraged as a means of feeling better, as many who have spent time drowning their sorrows and feeding the jukebox in some dark, smoky places can attest.)

I've always had a broad appreciation for sometimes startlingly different types of music ... I remember as a small child listening to Big Band music and the songs which were popular in World War II at home with my Daddy, who also introduced me to purported Peruvian/Inca exotica performed by Yma Sumac of the five-octave vocal range; hearing my mother (a wonderful pianist) play from her sheet music and sing; and watching Your Hit Parade every week with either my parents or grandparents, and with my brother Scott. But I must note that it is often our old music ... oldies, if you will ... the music that was being born and growing to maturity at the same time I was beginning to sense the inchoate yet questing nature of my own soul ... which moves me most.

And there was so much coool music those years after the advent of Elvis in the mid-'50s (see The Times of Our Lives: August 16, 1977 ... Elvis ... and Heartbreak Hotel ..., published August 15, 2008) ... Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Frankie Lymon, Little Anthony and the Imperials, the Flamingos, the Marcels, the Five Satins, the Mystics, the Platters, the Crests (an unusually integrated group for that time, consisting of one Italian, two blacks and a Puerto Rican, who nailed the classic 16 Candles), the great Roy Orbison, the super-great Ray Charles and so many others.

Those were such happy times
And not so long ago
How I wondered where they'd gone
But they're back again
Just like a long lost friend
All the songs I loved so well.



Statue in Ray Charles Plaza, Albany Georgia

I remember Carl Lee and Truett Ball (both CHS Class of 1962) and later Jerry Huddleston (Class of '64) when they DJ'd at 1510 KCTX Radio in Childress ... as I recall, their shift was 3:00 p.m. until sign-off (which was dependent on when the sun set ... when so many of us then changed the dials to 1520 KOMA in Oklahoma City) ... and I remember singing along with the girls (or often just by myself) in the car to Patsy Cline, the Shirelles, the Drifters, the Ronettes, Jackie Wilson and Jerry Butler and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Peter, Paul and Mary and the Beach Boys ... feeling an absolutely spiritual connection and uplift whenever I heard Ferrante & Teicher's powerful instrumental Theme from Exodus ... sighing softly along with ethereal instrumentals like A Summer Place (Percy Faith and Orchestra), Wonderland by Night (Bert Kaempfert and Orchestra), Moon River (Henry Mancini and Orchestra), Stranger on the Shore (Acker Bilk) and Sleepwalk (Santo and Johnny) ... and groovin' and movin' to Green Onions (Booker T. and the MG's), Midnight in Moscow (Kenny Ball and the Jazzmen), Washington Square (the Village Stompers), Rebel Rouser (Duane Eddy), Wipe Out (the Surfaris), Walk, Don't Run (the Ventures), Misirlou (Dick Dale and the Del Tones) and the truly cooooool Pipeline (done by the Chantays, only one of any number of one-hit wonders).

Every Sha-la-la-la
Every Wo-o-wo-o
Still shines.
Every shing-a-ling-a-ling
That they're startin' to sing's
So fine.

I have such vivid (and verbatim!) memories of so many old songs ... from grade school and Junior High School, from my years at CHS and in college, through all the intervening years and the intermittent tears ... the genuinely warm glow spreading throughout the body, or the quick stab to the heart, when a particularly strong mnemonic suddenly sparks a half-forgotten or half-buried moment or a day in the life. Memory ... the kind that lights the corners of [the] mind ... is a true gift, though not unlike the gift of rain in that whether it is ultimately good or bad depends on how it is used or deployed. When coupled with the honest assessment of your actual feelings and thoughts, proper use of these keys may help determine your future path, and may help clear obstacles you may encounter otherwise.

Bearing in mind the strong, killer karmic injunction not to cause pain to the innocent, I nevertheless think failing and/or refusing to quietly look at and discreetly examine the past is a profligate waste of the gift, perhaps even a thwart to destiny ... and further begs the question(s): If you don't remember who you truly were at some certain significant time(s) of your life ... what you really felt ... if it has been colored or distorted by outside influences ... then how do know who you really are now??? How do you contemplate who you may be(come) in the future???

I remember the love songs that meant (and still mean) so much to me ... I remember all the words and the melodies ... I remember all the ephemera detailed by the Classics IV ... the Faded photographs, covered now with lines and creases/Tickets torn in half, memories in bits and pieces/... souvenirs of days together/... pages from an old love letter ... so many things gone now in ritual cleansing flames or in the natural attrition of almost half a century encompassing moves and spring cleaning ... and still there remain old totems and anonymous traces like a ballpoint pen, an empty cigarette pack, champagne corks, pressed flowers, hotel receipts, matchbooks ... things that when I stumble across them, I smile to think that I kept such innocuous things, which mean absolutely nothing to anyone but me ... but to throw them out would be somehow to throw away or devalue the memory. And that I will never do. I am reminded that if we cannot or will not remember, we cannot know ... we struggle to learn ... we impede our own progress....

When they get to the part
Where he's breaking her heart
It can really make me cry
Just like before
It's yesterday once more.

[Sidebar: I've always loved the 1966 song Elusive Butterfly, by folksinger/songwriter Bob Lind (another one-hit wonder), which as someone once said to me was the closest thing to pure poetry I ever heard set to music. ... "You might wake up some morning ..." and it goes on from there, making as concrete as is humanly possible all those intangible, surreal (yet so very real) moments of stasis in the midst of constant flux that we call love.... Sidebar Addendum: I almost wrecked the car the other day (perhaps a slight exaggeration, but not much) when the female afternoon drive-time DJ on the usually wonderful Platinum 96.7 station here played the gorgeous, evocative Grammy-winning Misty (recorded by Texas-born Johnny Mathis and released in 1959), and then went on to state oh so erroneously that the song was specifically written for the movie Play Misty for Me, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood (his directorial debut), released in 1971 ... a twelve-year gap. Jeez! Do a little research, for god's sake!!! I cringe to think of the people who will now tell other people that the song was written for the movie.... And I hate disinformation, even in such small matters.... Grrrrrr.... But I digress....]



Cairns Birdwing, the largest butterfly in Australia

I think (and have ventured to say on the blog) that memory ... revisiting times and places and things and people who were once (and may still be) important to us ... is vital as we continue to grow and learn in this life. If we cannot "tap into" the person we were at age 16, or 25, or 34, or 43 ... then how in the world do we comprehend not only whether we have changed, but the extent and nature of the change ... whether the change has been good or bad for us and our ultimate spiritual growth ... instructive or stunting in the development of our lives and our souls ... a comfortably-padded and well-accoutred prison or a true liberation allowing us to be all that we can be? I know some people will immediately think "Oh, but you can't live in the past" ... and of course that is true. It is dead and gone ... but not forgotten ... and I am certainly not proposing that anyone try to dwell in that ghost town, to the exclusion of the present and the future. But ... but ... I believe remembrance and true, unclouded examination is as necessary for our eternal, living souls as air and water and food are for our temporary, temporal bodies....

Lookin' back on how it was
In years gone by
And the good times that I had
Makes today seem rather sad
So much has changed.

One of the greatest things (in my mind, at least) about the blog is that in addition to contemporary topics and catch-ups and reunions ... here in this small space in the vast ethereal universe ... it is ... it can be ... it has been ... yesterday, once more. The blog provides an impetus, if not an imperative, for us to return to a place and time, now vanished except in memory (I am reminded of Margaret Mitchell's halcyon fever-dream of the Old South), to revisit things that happened to us then and in the years thereafter, and to analyze them ... both the beautiful and the painful ... in the light of the knowledge we have gained in our life journeys since then. It provides a place for us to reach out to each other, when a saving hand might be welcome, or necessary, or easy to to proffer.

I had an e-mail exchange with Clemi Higley Blackburn shortly before her shockingly swift and untimely death this past February. Despite an estrangement between us, I had e-mailed her to verify some information for my December 31, 2007 post Bobcat Treasure: Jade ... Candles ... and Auld Lang Syne..., and Clemi graciously answered my e-mail and those questions she could. Always looking (with Nicki) for "new voices" on the blog, I wrote again to Clemi, asking if she might be interested in doing a topic post for us, and she e'ed back that she didn't have a clue what she'd write about even if she was interested in undertaking such a project. And so I answered: "Oh, just whatever might be of general interest, or some happy memories you have from school, or something like that." And I felt a literal, physical pain when she wrote back: "I don't have any happy memories from high school, so wouldn't be able to write anything that would be of interest to your readers."

I was absolutely stunned. No happy memories from high school??? Zip, zilch, nada? I had some pretty ugly, painful memories of my own from those days ... as did many of us. But to say you had absolutely no happy memories? That you had not managed to separate and salvage the good from the bad??? Clemi and I were not good friends in school, but we did take dance lessons together for some years, and we worked on The Corral together my Junior and her Senior year, and I was frequently at her house visiting with her mother Carol during my last year of high school (and after) ... and I know that there were happy memories that she might have found there, if she had chosen to access them ... had made the effort to look ... if someone might have reached her ... if she had been able to consign the bad memories to the black hole where terrible memories should go. But as it was, less than two months before she died, Clemi said and remembered she had no happy memories of high school after 45 or so years. And that made me cry ... then and soon thereafter, when I heard of her death.

It was songs of love
That I would sing to then
And I'd memorize each word
Those old melodies
Still sound so good to me
As they melt the years away.



Spider lily and butterfly

The blog gifts us with visions and memories of yesterday, once more. It is a place to come together to share our lives and our thoughts and our acquired wisdom and compassion ... to reach out to each other in these years when love and friendship may be more important than ever. The blog gives each of us the opportunity to reconstitute the complex, layered individual essence of our past, present and future ... it helps us perfect the essential "blending" of the florals and woods and ambergris and spices acquired as we've walked through this life ... to meld the strong but fleeting "top notes" (aromas which are apparent immediately upon application of a perfume but dissipate soon thereafter) with the "middle notes" (the "heart" or "core" scent which begins to emerge as the top notes fade), and the more subtle but deep and rich "base notes" (formulated to emerge as the middle notes begin to fade, but also to pair with and sustain the middle notes to engender the lingering signature of the essence) ... our quintessence, if you will.

All my best memories
Come back clearly to me
Some can even make me cry
Just like before
It's yesterday once more.

I have been privileged to be Nicki's partner on the blog during this past year and I thank her so much for her invitation, for her trust in me and for her support. I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you, have been delighted by your comments, and I look forward to the future with anticipation. And, even if some of us don't always agree, I believe we may continue with an adult respect for diverse opinions. I am humbled and so stoked by some of the wonderful thoughts and insights many of you have shared, whether or not it was for publication on the blog. I remain hopeful that more of you will find your own "voices" here, either in topic posts or comments. And I am fortunate and truly blessed to have been able to "reconnect" after so many long years....

And as ever, I so hope that we each are able to take something from here ... to cherish the good things, and consign the "bad things" to the darkness, to build and plan for days to come ... that we may continue for a long time to share our past and present lives, our commonalities of history and circumstance, and our dreams for the future.

Thank you for all ... for everything ... for oh so much ... you have given me ... and for the eternal, immortal connection....

)O(

The Times of Our Lives: August 16, 1977 ... Elvis ... and Heartbreak Hotel....

Elvis Presley in his 1968 Comeback Special,
reproduced here for informational/educational purposes only,
citing "fair use" provisions of applicable U.S. Copyright Law

Well, since my baby left me,
Well, I've found a new place to dwell
Well, it's down at the end of Lonely Street
At Heartbreak Hotel....

In 1956, a true, culture-bending/shattering phenomenon burst onto the American music scene. His name was Elvis Presley ... a poor boy from poverty-stricken Tupelo, Mississippi, transplanted to Memphis, Tennessee ... and he would be a major factor in altering the face and tenor (no pun intended) of American music, and the relationship of kids, adolescents, to their own brand of music, actually a new concept ... forever.

Some have posited that the Beatles had the most profound effect on the world of music in the 20th Century ... but I must respectfully disagree. There was nothing like Elvis ... before or since ... nothing like the absolute liberation and joy and sense of unfettered abandon and all the possibilities and dreams he brought to our music and our lives.

Some may contend That's All Right Mama and Blue Moon of Kentucky, recorded under the aegis of the legendary Sam Phillips at Sun Records studios in Memphis on July 5, 1954 were the true rhythmic harbingers of the coming youthquake. Others wax absolutely rhapsodic over the nuances and influence of Mystery Train and I Forgot to Remember to Forget, recorded at Sun July 11, 1955 and released in December of that year. Aficionados or specialists in Elvisiana will hold that "the (once and forever) King" first impacted the national consciousness in a significant way with the releases of his cover of Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog and Don't Be Cruel, recorded at RCA Studios in New York City and released in July 1956.

But IMHO ... in my memory and my judgment and personal preference ... Elvis was forever seared into the folds of our collective brains, engendering a mass media mindmeld, with the release of the hot, heavy, mournful but edgy, sexually charged Heartbreak Hotel, recorded at RCA Studios in Nashville and released in January 1956. (I must add here that I've always been very fond of Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, released by RCA in August 1956 ... which my brother Scott, all of five years old at the time, used to wail in a pretty good imitation of Elvis while "strumming" a tennis racquet at the Saturday morning Birthday Club talent competitions at the Palace Theater. Some of you will remember.... But I digress ... for the moment....)

Those smoldering, piercing eyes ... that curling, promissory yet cautionary lip ... those unbelievable hips rolling and those legs shaking as if they were somehow separate entities from his body ... all seemed to explicitly guarantee that this mad, bad and dangerous man would indeed take you down a honky-tonk road to that hotel for the broken and the broken-hearted ... that you would gladly take the ride ... and that you would love the trip ... if possibly poetically and tragically regretting it later when your seducer had moved on to new conquests.

I was nine years old when Elvis "hit" with the 1956 records (I would turn 10 in October of that year, just before he wiped us out again with the release of Love Me Tender in November) ... and yet he spoke to me ... and to my friends ... in a visceral, primordial language ... and we felt the power, even if we couldn't have articulated very well then just exactly what it was we felt.

Until the day she died in 1983 (also in a relatively young ... age 56 ... tragic, needless, substance-abuse related death), my mother never tired of telling the story of how that one year ... 1956 ... only one of several that the girls and I participated in Camp Fire Girls ... that one year that mother and Neysa Davenport (Pat's mother) decided to sponsor our troop ... that one year of maternal sacrifice on her part ... just had to be the ELVIS YEAR. (As if it had been preternaturally and specifically arranged that way as a personal affront to her and her intermittent, fitful motherly instincts....) It frustrated mother and Neysa to no end that they could not, despite dire threats and wheedling entreaties, get us to work on Camp Fire projects ... all we wanted to do was listen/dance to Elvis Presley records. I don't even have to close my eyes to visualize all of us now, in our Camp Fire blue skirts and white blouses and neck scarves, dancing dancing dancing to record after record, and then repeating and repeating the records, in Pat's living room ... and mother and Neysa pleading with us to please turn off the record player and come work on our scrapbooks, or whatever. I am not exaggerating this ... Yahn heard my mother tell the story many, many times ... always in the same tones of aggrieved consternation and disapproval, tinged ever so reluctantly with a subtle acknowledgment of the overwhelming nature of the Presley mystique.

My grandmother was 56 when Elvis initially appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. (I think it is worth noting here that in early 1956, Sullivan stated unequivocally: "I wouldn't have Presley on my show at any time" ... before introducing Elvis to his audience for the first time on October 28, 1956.) I think my grandmother developed a bit of an innocent, matronly crush on Elvis. I know she always liked him after that original cropped-at-the-waist outing ... always called him "that sweet boy" ... always made time to watch when he was a guest on someone's TV program, or later in his televised specials including the black leather "Comeback Special" in 1968 ... and the Elvis: That's the Way It Is documentary special released November 11, 1970 ... and the Aloha from Hawaii special in 1973.

My grandmother, who lived almost two years after Elvis died, was saddened by his untimely demise ... and despite his much-publicized problems in the years before and after his death, she always retained a soft spot for "that sweet boy" ... always enjoyed the special magic of his music.

In many ways, my grandmother was a "better" Elvis fan than I, certainly more constant, because I somewhat condescendingly put him aside when he was no longer as "hot" ... or "cool" ... as he once was ... after a string of truly egregious movies negotiated by his manager, the wannabe "Colonel" Tom Parker (ne Andreas Cornelis Dries van Kuijk) ... after a string of marginal and downright bad records ... but Mamaw remained steadfast in her appreciation for him.

It was with Mamaw that I sat down to watch the 1968 special ... and found myself captivated once again by the sheer talent and inimitable musical styling ... the sight of that black leather, and that bad-boy hair and hunka-hunka snarling lip, that promise of danger and the unknown ... that seminal rebirth combining pop and gospel music, and including the wistful Memories, as well as the moving and hopeful If I Can Dream ... which was actually substituted for the more wonderful and now standard I'll Be Home for Christmas.

It was after I "came back" that I developed enough maturity and compassion to look at the man as well as the stratospheric/Stygian career ... to celebrate and acknowledge the undeniable talent (and yes, he was sui generis) while beginning to comprehend how the pain inside him helped drive him to the heights he attained and the depths he plumbed ... without the mental or emotional supports he needed to navigate the rocky terra incognita of fame.

Oh, although it's always crowded,
You still can find some room
For broken-hearted lovers
To cry there in their gloom....

[Sidebar: There was one bit removed from the "comeback special" which was deemed too risque by NBC network censors ... a segment set in a bordello featuring a pretty much unknown song titled Let Yourself Go.... Though the first airing of the Burbank recording sessions comprising the "comeback special" aired in December, only one seasonal song, the haunting and truly classic Blue Christmas, was included ... and that was replaced when the show was rerun in 1969. Further, it is worth noting that some believe the "comeback special" was the model for the later MTV series Unplugged....]




Elvis in 1970, reproduced here citing "fair use" provisions of U.S. Copyright Law


If anyone is interested in a complex, thorough analysis of Elvis and his career and his music, I recommend Peter Guralnik's wonderfully researched and written duo Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (published in 1994, and the better of the two books, IMHO) dealing with Elvis's early career, and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (published in 1999), chronicling the later, darker side of his life ... both much better, more factual and more insightful than some of the scurrilous and self-serving biographies of so-called friends and/or the "Memphis Mafia" which have been written for selfish (largely pecuniary) reasons.

Of the day Elvis died ... August 16, 1977 ... I am sure there are many in our class ... our generation ... generations either side of ours ... who can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news (although it was certainly not in the same category as the JFK assassination on a "shock and horror" level). I was in my office, drafting a presentation for submission to a governmental regulatory authority, listening to the radio as I did throughout my working life (which is one reason it was always helpful to have my own office ... grin) when the announcer interrupted the record to say that Elvis was dead.

As is usual in such moments (the death of Marilyn Monroe August 5, 1962 springs readily to mind), the initial reaction was complete and total disbelief. No way!!! Not Elvis!!!! (Nor Marilyn, nor....) He was young! He was an absolute icon! He was part of our lives and our youth! He was Elvis, for god's sake ... therefore ipso facto immortal!!! If he could die, we could die!!! It simply could not happen!!!! (And under no possible imagined scenario could the King have died falling off the toilet after a drug-induced cardiac arrest ... how gross!!! ... but we would have to wrap our heads around that later....)

Now, the bellhop's tears keep flowin',
And the desk clerk's dressed in black
Well, they been so long on Lonely Street
They'll never ever look back....

While many of us may not have felt ... or come to feel ... the identification and affinity with Elvis that others of us did ... I would still speculate that there is at least one Elvis song (and probably more) which resonates individually with the majority of us in the Class of 1963 ... and the Class of 1962, and 1964, and other years ... which threads through the intricate tapestry of our memories and reveries and dreamscapes ... that there is at least one song rendered in that honeyed, melting caramel-smooth, stroking-stoking voice ... at least one song that compels you to recall kissing your girl or guy for the first time ... for the last time ... for a long time ... that you got engaged, or broke up, or yearned for someone to get engaged to or break up with ... in other words, there is at least one Elvis song ... somewhere, over all the years of his remarkable career ... that meant something in your life.

And I would wager that you will all think of that one song which is special to you ... or more than one, if applicable ... during the televised shots and stories this weekend from Graceland, at the culmination of another Elvis Week in Memphis, a true American cultural happening that has taken root in the years since Elvis's death ... arguably making him a bigger star ... and inarguably making him richer ... in death than he ever was in life.

Elvis week ... and particularly August 16 ... is always unusually difficult for me. Not only do I have all the cultural, aural baggage and touchstones which weigh on me with regard to the King ... not only is Elvis a formerly living, breathing and now real gone allegory for many of the problems which have beset our generation ... but there are more personal connections and memories which are triggered for me as well. My brother Scott ... my only blood sibling ... a talented musician in his own right, a singer with a strong voice and a "magic" understanding of how to play many musical instruments ... brought to grief and premature death by immaturity and substance abuse and addiction, as was Elvis ... also died on August 16 ... in 1981 ... at the age of 31.

Scott played and sang with bands around the Childress area for years, but despite a couple of efforts was never able to break away from that area of the Panhandle and the bonds which tied him there to seek a wider audience. Some of you (I know some of my friends) heard him play and sing and knew that he had a special talent ... perhaps not as incandescent and otherworldly as Elvis's ... nevertheless, a true talent for music.

I loved Scott very much, despite the usual cliched sibling rivalry ... but he was in many ways a sad, tragic figure ... and I really had not-unwarranted (valid, as it turned out) concerns about his prospects for surviving to middle age. Nevertheless, when he died, it was a complete shock and surprise ... ultimately mystical, in truth, and perhaps ordained as the universe is sometimes wont to do such things, as Scott's death (and relative, relevant occurrences) helped set me firmly on the metaphysical path that I have traveled since, where I believe I am meant to go. But that is another story ... and I digress....



Elvis in the Aloha from Hawaii special, 1973,
reproduced here citing "fair use" provisions of U.S. Copyright Law


The deaths of Elvis ... and Scott ... did help teach me ... solidify in my mind ... one of life's greatest lessons, which has been articulated several ways by different people, but I will posit thusly: Don't judge anyone else ... how they've lived or died ... until you have literally walked that metaphoric mile in their shoes ... inside their head ... until the same demons which may have been their frequent companions are on a first-name basis with you. Otherwise you lack understanding ... comprehension ... empathy and compassion ... anything which might possibly and broadly be construed as giving you any sort of right to judge someone else. As a historically-noted Jewish carpenter with a vision is said to have taught: Judge not lest ye be judged....

Well, if your baby leaves you
You got a tale to tell
Just take a walk down Lonely Street
To Heartbreak Hotel

Where you will be
You'll be so lonely, baby
Well, you'll be lonely
You'll be so lonely you could die....

Today ... August 16 ... once again I will listen to the radio and the ubiquitous Elvis tributes ... and I will watch the television news programs do their stories featuring Elvis Week and the annual candlelight ceremony at Graceland ... and I will let the music and the feelings wash over me, and through me, and carry me to someplace outside myself for just a little while ... and I'll think of long, long ago when I was young and hopeful and not too cynical ... and of a sometimes confused man-boy who yearned for and sang about and knew of love, and loss, and need, and the quest for the perfect complementary soul ... and I will remember ... mostly the good things, because I think if we are wise these are the memories we choose, and not the ones of crushing, crippling sadness....

I wish you good memories this weekend ... even if they sometimes bring a quick, illuminating, purifying tear ... and every other day....

)O(

As You Like It: Le Holiday ... Ours (Bears) ... and Face to Fang ....

The main pool at the Acapulco Princess. There is a swim-up bar behind the waterfall. Photo by Yahn Smith

Obviously still in French mode after my recent sojourn with les girls in Paris ... and what a lovely mode it was.... Nevertheless ... been there, done that (again) ... now on to other things. Poor Yahn. Over the many years we've been traveling together, we would no sooner get home, drop our bags, and then drop ourselves into bed for a looong rest ... than I would be up and planning our next escape. Before our first trip to Paris, I told myself that if I never got to see anyplace but Paris, I would die happy. Well ... I didn't exactly lie ... but I truly failed to reckon with just how badly the travel bug would bite.... I hesitate to use the word "addiction" ... but I suppose as addictions go, it's one of the more benign. I could have picked worse....

If anyone saw my two brief (error-ridden) blog comments made in Paris, then you know that we had an "exciting" landing at Charles De Gaulle Airport. As to the "error ridden" part: Don't get me started on the difficulties of the French keyboard ... it's not the qwerty we're used to ... the q and the a are reversed, the w is on the bottom row under the q (which is where the a should be), the m is where the colon and semicolon should be, and among other challenges, there are various key combinations to strike to make certain punctuation marks, including the aforesaid colon and semicolon, as well as the @, and others. Jeez Louise!!!! Strictly hunt and peck ... then hunt for the controlling key.... Even Mrs. Denny would have been at a loss.... But I digress....

On final approach to CDG, our plane suddenly pulled up just before touchdown, heading back into the wild blue yonder (my Daddy the pilot drilled me in the Air Force hymn from a young age) and pouring on the gas in a steep climb. Flying with Daddy when I was a child, and my air travel in later years, told me immediately that something untoward was happening. We made a wiiiiiiiiide circle over the airport, and finally came back on another approach ... landed and bounced ... and then saw all the emergency vehicles arrayed on either side of us ... fire engines, ambulances, paramedic vans, etc. It seems the light on the control panel which indicates the landing gear is properly locked failed to register. So ... there was no certainty that the wheels wouldn't collapse when we touched ground. (It was also not a good time to remember that I was once told by a commercial airline pilot that a landing is nothing but a controlled crash....) We had to disembark via stairs onto the tarmac, rather than via the usual jetway, and then were bused into the Customs terminal.

I must say that after our landing experience, it was NOT comforting to hear yesterday that American Airlines, the carrier we flew, pulled 300 (300!!!) or so of its planes from service for "maintenance issues", canceling many flights in the process. So ... right after being thankful that AA didn't kill us on landing, I am glad we were not stranded in Paris (although there are worse places) when AA scrubbed those 300+ flights.

When we planned this trip, I broke a long-standing rule to NEVER again fly an American air carrier ... ANY of them ... if there was a decent foreign alternative. Unfortunately, American carriers simply cannot hold a candle to foreign airlines such as Cathay Pacific, Air France, Singapore, Thai, etc. As with all rules, I make an exception to that one in the case of Aeroflot or Egypt Air (when they serve dinner, you know what happens to old camels who can no longer carry tourists around the Pyramids). Indeed, our AA flight to Paris had been delayed leaving Dallas for "maintenance problems" as the pilot announced, and all during the flight my reading light and others in the cabin failed to operate, which meant I couldn't read on the flight .... NOT a good thing. IMHO, it is basically a good rule of thumb to do everything possible to fly on a good foreign airline in your travels, if at all possible. But again I digress....

When we booked our trip, we arranged for transfers via van from and back to the airport, and by the time we cleared Customs after all the delay, I feared (justly it seems) that our driver had given up on us ... so I chased down a really cute little French guy at baggage claim, and using my fractured French in counterpoint to his fractured English, managed to persuade him to use his cell phone to call the company which had arranged our transfers. Sure enough, our driver had left and was just exiting the airport when his company called and sent him back for les travel-frazzled girls. And so, at last we left the airport and ventured into Paris itself. But ... more on that (and pictures!) in a few days. Today the topic is other vacations ... specifically, summer vacations during the late '50s, early to mid-'60s....

Our private plunge pool at sunrise in our villa overlooking Jimbaran Bay, the Four Seasons Resort, Bali Indonesia. Photo by Yahn Smith

A looooong time ago when I was at CHS (not quite early Jurassic, but getting close), and experiencing my heretofore acknowledged teenage angst and the stifling sense of ennui I felt within the confines of Childress County ... I made a sweeping vow (as teenagers and those who have flown American air carriers are wont to do) that one day I would get as far away as possible from from that dusty little town. And I've done my best to live up to my promise. Happily, in later years I rediscovered the treasures to be found in that particular corner of Texas ... lifelong friendships and relationships, commonality of experience, shared memories ... but we are talking now of a teenaged mind ... questing, questioning, dismissive of authority (now that I think of it, still got all of those)....

The poet Sylvia Plath (a taco or two shy of a combo platter in many ways, but a brilliant talent before she turned on the gas and put her head in the oven) articulated such feelings in her poem Ennui when she wrote:

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.

Ah ... The Lady or the Tiger ... one of my favorite stories ... first read in Brownie Kimbrough's class at Childress Junior High School. I remember we had some spirited discussions in class about it ... the guys were all sure the tiger came out of the door, and the more romantically inclined girls just knew it was the lady.... Despite my deep-seated romanticism, I could never quite make up my mind ... still can't ... depends entirely on my mindset when I ponder the question, and perhaps my pervasive Libra tendencies to see and weigh all sides of an argument ... which can get a bit tedious as Yahn will tell you, particularly when we're just trying to pick a place to go to dinner.... But once more I digress....

I remember I always looked forward to summer vacation ... getting away from the everyday, the quotidian, all things Childress.... We nearly always went to Denver in the summer, to visit Daddy's family. And there was soooo much to do there ... the Denver Zoo and Museum of Natural History (two of the best in the country, IMHO) ... Elitch's and Lakeside amusement parks (those roller coasters ... the old, rickety wooden kind!!!), exotic things like the Lotus Room (there wasn't even a semblance of a Chinese restaurant in Childress then) and the Fuji-En (Japanese, with tatami rooms ... where I persuaded Daddy to buy my first set of chopsticks so I would know how to properly eat with them when someday I made it to Asia) ... so many wonders....

The summer of 1960 (between my freshman and sophomore years at CHS) we actually branched out with my aunt and uncle and their two daughters and went from Denver to Yellowstone National Park ... they slept in a tent and Daddy, Scott and I took the little Airstream camper ... for which I was extremely grateful the first night as you could hear bears rustling around the campsite. The rangers (and the signs all over the park) warned ... repeatedly and in dire terms ... of the dangers of feeding the bears, or not securing your food ... and yet there were always those who just refused to heed the warnings. I remember one day we had gone to see the Fountain Paint Pots, and when we walked back to the car we found the parking area cordoned off by rangers ... some fool had left a picnic lunch in his car, and left the windows down ... and somehow a bear (resourceful critters, like their "cousins" cats) had managed to climb into the car and was chowing down (and excreting) lustily ... rendering the car uninhabitable, even once the bear was permitted to amble lazily on his way.

At Yellowstone (which I remember as having the best vanilla ice cream in the world, later acquaintance with Blue Bell notwithstanding), I was absolutely fascinated with the college kids (called "savages") who worked there during the summer. I thought that would be such a cooool summer job ... but missed out on that particular aspiration, although our dear Clara (Robinson Meek, of course) did achieve it. And BTW, Clara ... I am sure we would all be interested in your stories about that ... if we can persuade you to write them ...?

Of course, the 1960 film Where the Boys Are, a story of college girls (and guys!!!) on spring break in Fort Lauderdale, was the uber adolescent female vacation fantasy. It starred Dolores Hart before she became a nun, George Hamilton when he was only medium well done, Yvette Mimieux at her loveliest and most vulnerable before she owned a sweatshop in Haiti, Connie Francis, who also sang the killer title song, and others, and I know my friends and I were certainly inspired by it. Then in 1962, the film Rome Adventure (Troy Donahue, Suzanne Pleshette, Angie Dickinson) proved the genesis of my vow to someday spend a magical summer in The Eternal City. (Another vow ... with all that vowing, perhaps Dolores Hart is not the only one who should have entered a religious order ... grin.) By the time I did make it to Italy, I was well beyond teenaged, and I only got two weeks, but the magic of Roma, Napoli, Pompeii, Sorrento and bella bella Venezia (one of my very favorite places) was just as strong as I'd imagined so many years earlier. And BTW, Troy Donahue and others of the 1960s "heartthrob" persuasion were never really my cuppa beef tea when I was younger. JoAnn had Paul Newman, but I went for dark, sensitive, brooding types ... the recently mentioned George Maharis of Route 66 springs most readily to mind; or the bald, sensitive, brooding Yul Brynner (never cared for him when they slapped a wig on him); or the variously toupee'd or bald (doesn't matter), sensitive, brooding, utterly magnificent Sean Connery. And so I married a blond, sensitive, brooding type.... Go figure....

In 1988, our 25th year after graduation from CHS, I prevailed upon a very popular DJ friend of mine in Houston to make a special tape (now expanded and transferred to a set of three CDs) for a "slumber party" Linda Kay was hosting for the gang in honor of the occasion. The rock bottom criterion I set for myself while compiling the music was that it all had to be popular music from our junior high and high school years, containing nothing after the summer of 1963. I was also pleased that the music I selected did not repeat any single artist, difficult to do with some performers like Elvis, Roy Orbison, the Four Seasons, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, et al. Those who know me well (and who have heard the tape or CDs) were not surprised that the very first song on the set is Where the Boys Are ... and the beautiful Al Di La from Rome Adventure (sung meltingly in Italian by Emilio Pericoli) which speaks of a love beyond all others, a love "beyond the beyond", is also on the CD set. And ... the Theme from Exodus (Ferrante and Teicher), which I named as my favorite song in my Senior Profile in The Corral, is also there ... and remains the song I would pick if stranded on a desert island with only one song I could hear for the rest of my life. Some things deserve constancy, despite the imperative for change.... But again I digress....

Balinese rice workers near Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. Photo by Yahn Smith

If you are a regular reader of the blog (and why wouldn't you be?), you know I recently inaugurated a continuing (albeit finite) series featuring my humor column As You Like It, which I wrote for two years for The Corral at CHS, and during the summer of 1962 for The Childress Index. So, as I continue decompression after le holiday in La Belle France, I've decided to share with you a column I did on the subject of summer vacations during my Index summer. As I have previously promised and averred (difficult though it may be), I have not changed one embarrassing, cringe-inducing word of the column as it originally was published (shortly after Gutenberg's marvelous invention ... grin), and only hope again that you will deal with me kindly in regarding this modest effort. Of course, I do hope you enjoy it ... and that perhaps it brings back some memories of your own vacations ... which BTW, we would be delighted to publish under 'Cat Tracks, or as "comments" to this post. That is a hint ... not to say a heartfelt plea....

As You Like It
by Jennifer Johnston

Aloha! Thought you got rid of me, didn't you? Oh well, smile -- you can't win them all ... snarf, snarf.

Now that summer vacation is actually here, you are probably spending your time doing the things you dreamed about during the school year -- mopping, dusting, hanging out clothes, making beds, washing windows and cooking meals for Momsie, or working your fingers to the bone for some slave-driving boss -- no offense, Mr. Higley. But -- BUT -- if you are one of the lucky ones -- one whose parents have several assorted maids, three cars, etc., and who has no desire for the material things in life -- you will spend your summer vacation doing various things which we all love and enjoy.

This column is dedicated to those people (like me) who must spend their summer in an office or under a clothes line. In it, I shall attempt to present a mental picture to those of you who cannot enjoy loafing and would like to see how the other eighth lives.

Picture yourself, far away from civilization -- beautiful thought, eh wot -- lounging around around a camping area, enjoying the beauties of nature in some mountainous wooded section. No one around for hundreds of miles -- all right, maybe two or three trailer spaces over -- but anyway, back to the topic. There you sit, at peace with the world, until you suddenly hear a buzzing around your ear -- and you discover you're camped three feet from a stagnant stream. Yes, dear people -- mosquitoes -- but this is a problem easily overcome. All you have to do is reach for the insect repellent. So what if you forgot it? You can always stay inside the trailer, or stand in the line of smoke from the campfire.

So the next day, you go into town and buy some mosquito repellent. Your worries are over -- until a bear smells your food -- you didn't know you were having company for supper, did you? And of course, no mountain vacation would be complete without a swim in a cool, clear mountain lake. The fact that the lake runs into a waterfall doesn't bother you at all. Mainly because you don't know that the lake runs into a waterfall. By the time you find out -- it's too late for you to be bothered about much of anything.

Now let your mind wander to the seashore. Can't you just see yourself, basking in the hot sun on the hot sand? Loafing -- to put it bluntly. You're so comfortable that you don't want to move. So you drift off to sleep. Of course the fact that you will probably wake up three hours later with a third-degree sunburn doesn't bother you -- until three hours later, anyway.

But, undaunted, you make your way into the cool, blue shark-infested water. Although you have been warned of several dangers you might encounter, you swim on -- nothing can happen to you -- you're just on vacation. Well, you're right -- nothing can happen to you -- unless you get caught in the undertow, washed up on the rocks, or meet a shark face to fang.

For those of you who stay home during the summer, but do not have jobs to do, you can always spend your time going swimming, and going bowling, and going swimming, and going to the show, and going swimming, and if you are still in a mood to continue with this, you're on your own.

Well, I'm running out of ideas, so I shall let you rest your eyes -- and stomachs. Snarf, snarf.

Purcell Castle, County Tipperary, Ireland Photo by Yahn Smith

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