i am sitting here as i normally do. What television we normally watch in the evenings didn’t demand our senses tonight: we left it off.

We had a wonderful repast of Maureen’s renderings. She is taking her bath and will retire with her kindle until she falls asleep. The fire is slowly dying as i sit besides the warm remnants. i will not last much longer. The night is calling me.

i just finished Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” It is an amazing, dark tale, captivating to me. Conrad’s talent in deep thought writing continues to blow me away. It occurred to me not many people nowadays would enjoy his work, or even finish it. It takes work. Good work with a reward if you think about it. Conrad takes me to the depths and width of human nature.

i should stay up a little longer to escape an absurd early rising, something for which i have gained a reputation. Nightly old age meds have been taken.

So, i simply am listening to music, my music, i have turned off Apple music and all of the other streaming music services. My library is about 4500 tunes of my music. i am going down the list, picking out the ones i want to listen to this solitary evening — the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do is Dream” just finished playing.

Lately, i have found a great deal of comfort in my music. In the beginning of this week, i pulled out the LP “The Essential Hank Williams.” A great playlist including “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” “Move It On Over,” “Honky Tonkin’,” and two that mean a great deal with me. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” has been covered by a seemingly unending list of artists and almost every genre and remains one of my all time favorites. It is my “lonely” song. Then, there is “Kaw LIga” about the wooden indian standing outside the antique store who was in love with the wooden indian maiden who was bought by a rich man and taken away. But he stood there and never let it show. Such a wonderful story of human tragedy with so much meaning, deep meaning if you think about it.

And i got to sing it. Knew it by heart. My older cousin, Graham Williamson, who later played fiddle for Roy Acuff, was baby sitting me with his wife Mary Ellen and his band in their home — i think it was over on Sunset Drive — when i was about ten. His band was practicing. Then, he asked me to sing “Kaw Liga” with the band. i belted it out, knew every word, with feeling.

After listening to old Hank, i pulled out my Platter’s albums. Oh, “The Great Pretender” brought tears to my eyes. 1955, i was a blubbering, heads-over-heels in love as an eleven-year old and they played it at the soda fountain. i almost cried. And their songs accented my romances until i was well into my thirties.

And tonight, as i scrolled though my library, i thanked the gods of ancient wax for my appreciation of music.

Most of that story has been told here in various posts of the past. Perhaps the most impact on my music appreciation journey was WCOR. i worked AM, 900 on your dial on the weekends as the “weekend warrior with sounds to lay down…they may sound scratchy but it’s just the gold dust in the grooves.” i also worked 107.3 on your FM dial, which boasted of easy listening music and a plethora of public service announcements. My shift was weeknights from 7:00 to 10:30 P.M. when i shut down the station for the night. i also worked Sunday mornings on FM, following with my afternoon Top 40 stint.

For the first couple of months on FM, i played just what was required. i would pull down an easy listening LP from the shelves surrounding the studio from floor to ceiling. i would put it on the turntable, announce the artist, and let it play. When side one was over, i would play a public service announcement while turning it over and then play the other side. i would read a short news summary and the weather report on the hour and half-hour. i got quite a bit of studying done. i also got a little bored.

So sometime around the turn of the year, i invented the evening show, “A Potpourri of Music.” i played jazz, classical, show tunes, big band, and all sorts of other things i found in those shelves except for country and rock and roll — those records were down the hall in the AM studio. i would announce the artist and read some of the attributes from the back cover of the LP jacket.

In the summer after the station had revised the AM and FM formats, FM had a short headline or weather every ten minutes under the umbrella of “accent” news. i turned my “Potpourri” into “Summer Accent.” i would lead off with Tony Bennett’s “Once Upon a Summertime” over which i related the theme for the next three and one half hours.

It was enjoyable, i was learning a lot, but my studying took a hit. i then had to find time for that in between my work as the Wilson County correspondent for The Nashville Banner in the afternoons as i was commuting to MTSU in the mornings with Jimmy Hatcher and others.

Tonight, i listened to the Platters again. “Twilight Time:” “Heavenly shades of night are falling / It’s twilight time / Out of the mist your voice is calling / ‘Tis twilight time. // When purple coloured curtains / Mark the end of day / I’ll hear you, my dear, at twilight time / Deepening shadows gather splendour / As day is done / Fingers of night will soon surrender / The setting sun…

Ahh, visions of past loves, innocence, the coolness of a summer night in that little town smack dab in the middle of Tennessee.

They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

A potpourri of thoughts over the weekend, most unfinished and certainly unedited…but it’s time for a nap.

The tree is up by me and decorated by Maureen. The “Noel” sign is up. It is all mine and an incredible jury rig (that’s for my sea-going friends), Rube  Goldberg affair, that if i keep improving for the next 20 years, it might look professional – a later post will repeat the horrors from about 25 years ago.

It’s been a weekend plus of stray thoughts running through this empty head. It hit me today’s sports announcers sound more like gossipers on the corner and tell me more than i care to know to support their latest analysis, accurate or not. Then, the ones for Sunday night football all predicted the Chiefs would win. I couldn’t put up with the post-game mumbo jumbo, but i’m betting none of them brought up the fact they were wrong: sullies their reputation they think, i guess.

The below were thoughts not yet well captured. i’m working on making them better, but i have been known to sluff off on finishing such things, so here they are:

antiquity me

i prefer a cedar Christmas tree
chopped down by us
in a world long ago
in a place far away
and
we decorated the tree
in the small living room
with only a real holly wreath
hanging on the front door –
i know because around six-years old
i stuck a holly berry
up my nose
requiring the family doc,
Doctor Lowe of local renown,
coming over to remove
the berry with tweezers –
they were simple decorations
compared to today’s lawns with
plastic myriads of comic characters,
religious figures, legends epitomized
with enough lights to light up Vegas
but
if they like fake,
go for it i’m okay with that
just prefer
something simpler
for i’m old fashioned.

storm clouds

i have seen the storm clouds gathering
over the horizon
two points off the starboard bow,
NNE or Nor, Nor, by NorEast,
storm clouds, cumulonimbus,
fearsome dark gray-black,
would bring us to the reality of
the omnipotence of the sea,
finding it beautiful,
fearsome, yes, but beautiful;
remembering, i wish
i could see them gathering again,
feel the power,
smell the coming rain
again.

no running

remember when you were a young’un
feeling the pure unbounded joy
of running?

i remember when i learned
my best friend’s mother
died too soon,
running as fast as i could
in a steady spring rain
until i thought my lungs would burst,
feeling some relief.

i remember taking up running
in the middle of the divorce,
not knowing how to pace myself,
then stop, winded
only a short distance
before walking home.

i remember running
through rice paddies, jungle,
a mud hut village
in Sri Lanka in the rain feeling
like i was a young’un again
running with unbounded joy.

i remember running on Coronado’s beach
at noon every weekday,
often with friends matching pace,
feeling like i was floating on the waves.

I remember the grinding up and down hills
in near euphoria;
endorphins i think they call them
and
later while grinding, panting,
finding it was now work, labor,
not near euphoria;
now, i walk,
doc’s orders:
says i’m too old to run,
something might break;
lord, when i walk,
it’s okay, even enjoyable sometimes
but
not like running;
not like running.

a place i knew

i would like to take you
to a place i knew
it is no longer there,
blown away by changes through time.

it was a lovely place
quiet, peaceful,
on the shoreline of a creek,
a spring just off the dock;
folks there didn’t lock their doors,
homes or cars,
until it was time to go to bed.
children played outside;
walked to school by themselves;
rode one-speed bikes with abandon
all over town,
often with baseball cards in the spokes
to sound like a motor bike,
hah!
men fishing on the bank
in the early morning,
late afternoon,
for crappie mostly;

this is no judgement of mine,
only the observation
old men remember fondly
things being not like then:
i’m too old to criticize the younger;
they will have their own memories
to cherish and miss.