Feelin’ Blue

Really i’m not. Feelin’ Blue that is.

Oh, horse pucky…and i cleaned that up. By Easter Sunday, we will have hunkered down for 28 days. Four weeks. i think i would be okay with all of this if someone would quit telling me how bad it is and how great they are managing the crisis and give me some realistic expectation when it’s going to be over. If it were my choice to remain sequestered, i’d be okay, but these folks just keep talking about how bad it is.

i’m a little sad that folks are focused on blaming someone else for this pestilence, coming up with conspiracy theories, finding fault with the other political party, having it over hyped and under hyped and not knowing what is really going to happen and how it will affect our lives.

“Feelin’ Blue.”

And being a bit blue ain’t all that bad. i mean in some ways i’ve been a little blue since the first girl broke my heart, and being blue created Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters and Lighting Hopkins and Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson. So in some ways, i’m okay with that.

But the Southwest corner has not only become vacant buildings and vacant lots and vacant beaches but has done so in a time of drear. i mean drear. The famous weather has forsaken us and wet skies of gray have become the norm for two months with the projection this dismal condition will continue for at least another two weeks.

So in the late afternoon, i have taken to retreating to my garage workshop and turn some LP records into digital form, usually with a Lagunitas “Little Sumpin” pale ale (Thanks, Alan Hicks). Yesterday, i picked out “Creedence Clearwater Revival,” their first album.

i was taken back to Boston, late autumn 1969. Andrew Nemethy and i, shipmates on the USS Hawkins (DD  873) drove from our new homeport of Norfolk (we regrettably had a homeport change from Newport, Rhode Island in July). We drove up in Andrew’s Fiat Spyder. Kathy McMahon (now Klosterman) had begun her graduate work at Boston University (i think it was BU) en route to her doctorate and special needs advocate of high order at the University of Miami, Ohio. She was rooming with a couple of her fellow graduates of Salve Regina, the women’s college in Newport, Rhode Island. We were taking a break before headed to different worlds. i had my orders to head to the Western Pacific in hand. i would be leaving in a few months. Andrew was trying to decide what was next.

We had a wonderful weekend. Tales abound.

But as i sat in my garage workshop, the last cut on side one began to play, i remembered going out on the street on mid-morning Sunday, perhaps to load up for the trip back to Norfolk. Don’t remember.

i do remember someone had their stereo speakers in the open window of another apartment on the street. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Willy and the Poor Boys” had just been released and whoever the stereo owner was had it blasting, echoing down the empty street of  three and four-story apartments. i stopped and listened for about four cuts before returning to the apartment.

The last cut is “Feelin’ Blue,” but it had just the opposite effect on me the other day.

My kind of music.

i hope it makes you feel a little better in this time of pestilence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHLLgVUFrI

1 thought on “Feelin’ Blue

  1. I remember that visit very well. We all went to a movie (I have no idea which one) but we laughed ourselves silly standing in line to get in! I think ‘Doc” might have been there too. Could that be? The old songs bring me back to memories and melancholy. Life is so wonderful and there are so many fun stories with dear friends …I am fortunate and treasure the memories and the friends.

    ps. It was Boston College (not BU) and Miami U not U of Miami (which is in Florida). The Miami U students have t-shirts that say, “Miami was a university before Florida was a state”! None of these nuances matter, however …it is the friendships that last and hold us all.

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