i first started going out to the desert, the Palm Springs area, after Maureen and i returned to the Southwest corner in 1985. We celebrated one of first anniversaries in Idyllwild, a mountain retreat, which is en route to the desert. To do both, one must go through Temecula, California.

It has also been a spot for golf outings since the late 1980’s. It was rumored the Mafia ran the place and had Robert Trent Jones design the course. Then, it was named Rancho California Golf Club. It was surrounded by scrub desert. Sometime in the 90s, the Southern California Golf Association turned it into The Members Club. It now goes by the moniker of The Golf Club at Rancho California.

Through those forty years or so, it has been a frequent spot for my golfing buddies and me. This year, it became the host club for the San Diego Telephone Company Golf Association tournament. i will write more about that super golf group later. But this post is about Temecula.

During those first years of golf stops and pass throughs, Temecula was not much more than a spot in the road, a small village in the desert. Leaning on Google’s Artificial Intelligence, i learned the name came from the Pechanga Band of the Luiseño tribe of native Americans, who have occupied the valley for more than 10,000 years. “Temecula” was the Spanish interpretation of the Luiseño Indian word “Temecunga.” In the Luiseño language, it is a combination of “temet” (sun) and “ngna” (place of) and means “where the sun breaks through the mist.” The term originated from the Luiseño legend of the beginning of the world in a place “where the world began and the sun and sand meet.”

The name is apropos for such a place. It was a stop for the Butterfield Stage line that delivered mail to the West Coast, specifically San Francisco. This was in the mid-1850s, and i’m guessing the “Southern Immigrant Route” through Temecula was chosen due to the travails of going north, which required crossing the Sierras.

Still the area relied upon water from the Santa Margarita River and its tributaries, a small amount indeed.

Back in the Spanish days, missionaries planted and harvested mission grapes in the 1800s. In 1968, Vincenzo and Audry Cilurz planted the first winery in the valley. Ely Callaway established the first commercial winery a bit east of “Old Town Temecula” in 1974. Soon offshoots and competitors created more and more wineries. It is now a big business and significant tourist attraction.

That small village of Temecula had several horse ranches and a bunch sod farms when i first transited there. But the interstate system placed I-15 running by the village as the wine business was beginning to expand. And then, and then, folks from Los Angeles and San Diego decided it was a good place to live with much lower home prices. The hour commute to San Diego and longer to LA did not deter them. The mega explosion of the small town into a metropolis is complete.

The Sunday evening trip was a pleasant drive. Then about a mile into Orange County with another eight miles to go, i hit traffic, three to four lanes of stop and go traffic that took an hour to cover. At the I-215 split from I-15, it was ten lanes one way of a crawling wall of cars.

The next morning, i awoke and walked to my car. Murrieta Hot Springs, the adjoining town to Temecula is no longer adjoining. Its strip malls of franchised everything were flanked by house upon house upon house. Hotels are flourishing. The golf course, once desert with double wides surrounding the 14th through 16th holes is now new homes, new homes, and the original double wides.

My ride home on Tuesday was grueling, i hit Temecula traffic, had a brief respite and then ran into the San Diego commute. The normal transit time of ninety minutes took nearly three hours.

Stunned is a pretty good description of how i feel about all of this. Temecula spends a majority of its days in 100-plus temperatures. It is dry. i find it difficult to believe there is enough water for such a large population…and it is still growing.

The Temecula explosion seems to be de rigueur for towns nowadays. They all seem to want growth, and boy, do they get it. Seattle, Austin, Nashville, Temecula. i recently read my home town of Lebanon is the 12th fastest growing city in the country. Traffic is awful. Cost of utilities rise astronomically, real estate taxes, will eventually rise to cover some infrastructure increases. And sometime, the governments, state and local, will need more money and taxes, if not income itself, will rise.

When i first came to the Southwest corner, it was the right size. i could drive to my ships from home quickly and easily. Going downtown was a pleasant experience. Dining at fine places was affordable. Access to everything was no problem. The people here made fun of that disaster to the north called LA, were glad the two cities were separated by Camp Pendleton.

Yet, the Southwest corner hunted for growth, and got it. The place is a mini-LA.

i gotta tell you, i prefer small places, places like Lebanon used to be: farms, woodlands, a small downtown where you could go easily and enjoy. Everyone knew everyone else. Children played and roamed the streets and fields with no supervision. i could go on, but i’m sure you get the picture.

Maybe it’s just my age. Things change. But it doesn’t seem to me to be any better, just different.

My rant is done. My amazement remains. Oh yes, my foursome won the first day and did well on the second.

The quote in the title of this post comes from Bob Dylan’s song title, which he sang in 1964, the high time of my music.

In case you haven’t figured it out, i’m an old music nut. Like all kinds of old music. As far back as my conscious thought (which now are beginning to fade away), i listened to the Nashville AM stations we could pick up thirty miles away.

At night after nine o’clock, WLAC played the blues until around four in the morning. Of course, most of my listening was with the radio under the blankets with me after lights out.

Simm’s Motorola store on South College Street had wonderful stereo system consoles in the front (long before we had an inkling of a phone without a wire and a dial) had rows of wooden bins chocked full of 45 RPM records stacked neatly. i would get my ten dollars for the weekly mowing and trimming of Fred and Ruby Cowan and J. Bill and Bessie Lee Frame’s yards and head down to Simm’s on my Schwinn one-speed bicycle. There, i wished i had more lawns to mow and drop that ten bucks on about ten records, saving the change for a Dr. Pepper and a Three Musketeers candy bar or two.

The records would be placed in the bicycle basket on the handlebars, and i would pedal home just over a mile, run upstairs to the bedroom my brother Joe and i shared. i would pull out the 45 RPM record player (portable if you were going to someplace had an electrical outlet, and play my new purchases for the rest of the afternoon.

Or…i would listen to a special offer on WLAC from Randy’s Record Shop in Gallatin and order ten records for somewhere around three bucks from the Excello or other minor recording studios, all blues, all blues and play them over and over and over. From there, i graduated to folk music and fell in love with Judy Collins and all the others. i began to appreciate country music, especially bluegrass after eschewing the genre in my know-it-all teen years. And someone exposed me to jazz.

At least, i left Vanderbilt (unceremoniously) with a wider appreciation of music. i did not realize i was about to be immersed into the waters of all music. MTSU was now my college education site. It turned out better than i would have ever imagined. But to get there and stay there, i had to have at least one, two, or three jobs to pay for it. The Navy and primarily my parents had paid for cavorting around Nashville’s West End. Now, it was my time to pay. The biggest paycheck was from WCOR. i got my third class radio engineer license and became a deejay.

Time to absorb some music. i was the FM evening disc jockey from 7:00 to 10:30 each weeknight and Sunday mornings. i worked AM, playing Top 40 pop music, although i snuck in as much blues as i could on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

Clyde Harville and Coleman Walker’s country music began to grow on me . My stops at the Birdwell’s diner, which was originally Winfree’s Restaurant, after my evening work for beer and table shuffleboard, sold me on “country.” After all, how could anyone not fall in love with country music after listening to Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn sing “Sweet Thang” several times a night.

But my real education came on that FM show. FM radio was a new phenomenon, especially in small town country stations. There were no commercials, only public service announcements. The small studio walls were crammed with 33 RPM LPs, not one of them country, rock, or blues.

For the first week or so, i followed my predecessors and would pick out an album randomly, introduce it, and put on a side and relax until it was over. i played a public service announcement every ten minutes, read headline news at the half hour and read a five minute news wire service along with the current temperature on the hour. It provided some study time, but it was boring, boring.

An idea came into my head: why not explore that vast number of albums in those cubbies? The station’s FM format was called “Accent.” i adopted the term and began “Evening Accent.” i would go through the albums and try to mix easy listening, light classical, jazz, big band, and vocals. i would introduce each song and explain the genre, artist(s), and source.

It became a music school for me. i loved it, especially in the summer. That’s when i would open the evening with Tony Bennett’s “Once upon a Summertime,” and then proceed with what i called a “cornucopia of music.”

It was a pretty thorough education. i had covered most music genres of that time except opera. i covered that when i heard an aria from Bizet’s “Carmen.” i immediately went out and bought a three-record set of the entire opera, and listened to it end on end for a couple of days.

There was more music until i went so far west i was in the East…on a ship. i didn’t listen to a lot of new music simply because there wasn’t any available over there at sea. But i had recorded tapes and cassettes of my old music. As i warned in my intro to “JJ the Deejay’s weekend afternoon rock program from years ago, it truly “may sound scratchy, but it’s just the gold dust in the grooves.”

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That is mostly what i listen to now, my old music. i have listened to the new music, not enough to claim any valid assessment, but it seems to me there is a difference from today’s tunes and mine.

The old music i listen to seems to focus on two themes. Most of it is about love, treasured loves, broken hearts, promises of love, adoration. The second focus is about dancing, every kind of dancing: “It Takes Two to Tango,” “The Twist,” “The Bossa Nova,” “The Walk,” “The Tennessee Waltz,” “The Alligator,” “Shake Your Money Maker,” “The Dog,” “The Monkey,”…ahh, i think you get the idea.

It seems to me the stuff i get from today’s music is angst and anger, or braggadocio macho or feminist rants. i have heard some really good stuff. After all, i have two daughters who are both music lovers and they play a lot of today’s good music.

This isn’t a knock on today’s music, although i don’t like all of the fireworks, smoke, flashing lights and bizarre costumes that seem required to present it. i like my music to focus on the music.

i come from a different, long gone world. Things have changed, and howdy, have they changed. i remember being admonished by Dr. Womack, formerly my seventh grade principal. Years later number of my contemporaries were bemoaning the state of our teenagers, Dr. Womack pointed out that our parents had said the same things, held the same concerns about us when we were teenagers. He was correct.

During my four score years around here, i have been exposed to many cultures in many countries. The Navy was responsible for a lot of that exposure. And as much as we fear different folks from different places and cultures, we all are a lot a like. Each bunch has a lot of good folks with good intentions. There are a lot of people who only care about themselves and mistreat others to get what they want. There are folks who tell the truth and folks who lie. There are saints and there are devils in all of those groups.

i’m done with any effort to improve our group: too old, and i’m pretty sure no one under 65 would not listen to me anyway. i am not complaining. i’m not well-versed in how folks today think about living well. It’s sort of like my music and theirs. i wish them the best.

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But late this afternoon, i plan to sit on patio as the sun slides into the Pacific behind our hill, turn on Tony Bennett’s “Once Upon a Summertime,” close my eyes, and smile.

It’s taken over a week for me to write this. It has been difficult for me to put down my thoughts about losing a sister.

She wasn’t really a sister. She was two years my older cousin. She lived with her parents about a four-hour drive from our home. But my family was very close. My mother and her older sister Evelyn loved to spend time with their nephews and nieces. When i was an infant, my mother and grandmother would board the train and ride to Paris where Aunt Evelyn, with Nancy and Johnny, were there for her first teaching job. The men of the family were away, occupied with a small disturbance we call World War II. So, from the first thoughts i had in my head, we would spend at least one month a weekend together until we approached the end of high school.

She was the first daughter in my mother’s Prichard generation. Here, she is with our Aunt Bettye Kate Prichard Hall.

She was the leader in the Prichard offspring. Johnny, her younger brother was between Nancy and me. Then there was Martha and Joe, and the Florida Prichards, Butch. Tim, Pam, Mike, Patrice, and Mary Colleen, when they could get to Tennessee or we could get to Florida.

Nancy was always very special to me. She and my sister, Martha had a very special relationship.

Since i learned of her passing last week, memories keep popping up at unexpected moments:

The side yard of our home, probably 1950 or 1951: We played cowboys. My cousin Johnny shot me with his cap pistol. i dropped my six gun and fell to the ground. The other three children stood around me. i recalled the final words of a hero on one of my oaters and emoted with the best of them, finally expiring playtime, closing my eyes, and rolling my head to the side. Dead cowboy.

Nancy was caught up in the moment and began to cry. Even when i jumped up and cavorted to show i was alive, she kept crying. Even when we declared the game was over, Nancy cried at the dead cowboy. It was a good ten to fifteen minutes before we finally got her to wipe her tears and return to being a normal child.

She cried because she cared.

When our grandmother, “Granny,” chopped of the head of a garter snake in our backyard, Nancy cried.

When Granny preparing for supper mid-morning, she twirled a chicken by the neck, snapping the head off. The headless chicken was running frantically around the yard. The other children were laughing at the sight. Nancy cried.

After Thanksgiving in 1954, we took off to Nashville on Saturday for the movie at the Loew’s Theater on Church Street. The area was our most frequented spot in Nashville. We shopped at Harvey’s, Cain-Sloan, and Caster-Knott. This outing was strictly for the movie. The family women all wanted to see “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

After many twists and turns in the romantic comedy drama, the three women (the coins) end up with their men, and Frank Sinatra croons the title song.

Nancy cried all the way home.

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About five years earlier, the two families had gathered on our great uncle’s farm on the corner of Hickory Ridge Road and Blair Lane. “Papa” and Aunt Corrine Wynne had a picnic dinner in the front yard. The adults went into the living room and began to talk about important things. The five children, tired of their usual activities of chasing chickens, playing Red Rover, etc. wandered into the pasture bordering Hickory Ridge Road.

Nancy became enthralled with the abundant prickly pear cacti, which were blooming at the time, amidst the grasses.

Wishing to collect some, she picked them and put them in the back pockets of her jeans. By the time we got back to the farmhouse, the barbs of the prickly pears were sticking through the jeans and lodging into Nancy’s rear end.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the living room. Nancy lay across Aunt Corrine’s lap in the chair by the side window (more light to see). With her mother hovering over the two, Aunt Corrine, with her tweezers poised, was picking each barb from Nancy’s rear end.

She cried then from pain, but we laughed a lot about that incident later.

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Nancy was legendary for wrapping presents, whether it was Christmas, birthday, or other special events. The decorative exterior was not out of the ordinary. But inside, ahh, inside, was a puzzle. Nancy used more scotch tape than most people keep in their household goods. Every seam, every flaw in the packaging, even the tape itself had been covered with scotch tape. It would take extra time just to get inside.

Her scotch tape was a family legend.

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i wish everyone could have seen Nancy and her brother dance. When we visited Red Bank while we were in high school, i went to several of their school sock hops. The two of them could do any dance together. They flowed across the floor. They danced at the hop and were often the center of attention. i wish i could have danced like that.

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i have a special first with Nancy. She had married and moved to St. Augustine, Florida where her husband worked for the telephone company. i was a junior at Castle Heights Military Academy. On spring break, i chose to take a bus to Jacksonville to spend the week with my aunt and uncle. But one day, i went to Cape Canaveral for a day with Nancy and her family.

She cooked her first meal for a guest. Me. It was a six-course extravaganza. She was learning her timing on how to have a meal: first course, the salad; second course, the bread, it had not been ready for the salad, and the rest of the meal wasn’t cooked yet; third course, the potatoes and beans, the meat wasn’t ready yet; dessert was served without a hitch.

It was all delicious. i guess she had grown up. She didn’t cry. But we did laugh that evening and many times afterwards.

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When her mother became ill with Parkinson’s Disease and eventually dementia, Nancy was a saint. She took care of that wonderful woman in spite of many in conveniences to herself. She was with her whenever she was needed. She loved her mother.

There are many other Nancy stories that are part of our family’s lore. i will keep paving those pop into my head at unexpected moments.

Did i mention she was beautiful? She was. Growing up, she resembled a young Elizabeth Taylor.

Nancy was one of my closest relatives. i never spent enough time with her.

i miss you, Nancy.

Rest in Peace. You deserve it.