i was ready to go on a rant. No, not about the things i promised myself and likely many others to not discuss here or elsewhere. No, there were several incidents where i have been getting ripped off and discovered such in the last couple of days. And it wasn’t by scammers or phishers or whatever other kind of little people with small mean minds keep on trying to con you and me out of our money. No. It was big business and developers and marketing buffoons trying to fool me to get as much money as they could rather than trying to make money by providing a product or service at a fair price, a concept long gone down the swirling water in the toilet bowl.

In fact, i wrote about six long paragraphs on the rant before remembering someone once wrote or said money was the root of all evil. Gave it up.

i gave it up because i moved out of my home office to under the umbrella in the corner of our backyard. Late afternoon. A glass of viognier, sun moving toward our false horizon of the slope at the back of the yard. Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album i first heard in Bill Parsons apartment in Nashville when he was still a teacher at Montgomery Bell Acadamy is playing on the bluetooth.

And again, i’m thinking i a lucky man.

And i remember:

Like Junes growing up flat in the middle of Tennessee when the thirty mile trip to Nashville Pike named the Lebanon Pike on the other end making it pretty much a day trip. Remembering when nothing much was entering my mind besides sports, playing it, that is, although i caught every baseball, football, and basketball radio broadcasts and  couple of college games on Saturday and one NFL game on Sunday.

Then there came the girls and i was smitten, oh about two dozens times: the fair, movies at the Capitol and the Princess, dances where you got dressed up and danced to that scandalous rock ‘n roll music. “The Stroll.” Every once in a while getting a good night kiss at the door and eventually figuring out that parking stuff.

i could go on through college as even at that advanced age all was still relatively innocent, even though we didn’t think so at the time.

But why go further? i was in the glory of not knowing all the real problems. i was being taught the right way to act and how to treat other people and ethical behavior and i didn’t, did not  even know it. i thought the world was full of folks like us, thought that good was at the core of everyone’s heart. i was working toward figuring out i would get along in the world under those rules.

Then it was gone. Adulthood sucks. i had to learn how to deal with all those folks who didn’t fit the image i had they would be.

But this afternoon, i’m listening to “Golden Slumbers”

Ahh, the lullaby. Will it come tonight? i know i will awake to smiles in the morning. And i will not cry.

Fittingly the next track on the “Abbey Road” album is “The End,” and i think about carrying that weight a long time. But i gotta tell you folks, i ain’t carrying that weight. i have a whole bunch of family and friends of every variety — and it just struck me i can’t be more specific without someone interpreting i’m on one side or the other — and they are not a weight.

Sitting here in the Southwest corner, i am back home. George, Paul, Ringo, and John and i have gone on that journey back home.

And it is time to leave my reverie. Maureen is serving up carnitas tacos with all the fixings.

Peace.