Old School

Nary a leaf is moving here in Lower Merion, a haze hangs on me and my every word. Nevertheless, the air conditioner is off and an incoming storm is on our hopeful radar. Lacking a microwave, Gus reheats leftovers for dinner in boiling water and tin foil, washed down with a freezer-chilled Chardonnay. Our kitchen table, moved to the living room for a floor cleaning and not yet returned, allows me a television show during dinner. My selection, a Carole King and James Taylor reunion concert on PBS. Am I thirty-four or sixty-four?

This music is goodly reminiscent for many, including me, twice over, some might say thirty years too young. Once is my first time around -- my mom playing LPs on the record player, singing along in a clear, young voice to Carole and Cat, Mary, Peter and Paul. Humming along to Bill. Garfunkel and Simon. Joni. There was nothing to entertain, no Einsteins, baby or otherwise, just record jackets, kitchens, gardens and the wide world around me.

The second is much later, 2001, having returned from an extended vacation in Europe. I was unemployed and looking, but meanwhile, taking continuing education guitar lessons and living in Greenwood. Trying with Gus to hash out the next chapter following his decision mid-Sicily to go back to school. On a whim, we sold our piece of shit and paid cash for a roadside car with a real personality, a Volkwswagen Type 3 Squareback, a gal whose presence I miss to this day.

In any event, I remember rattling the old girl's stick shift back and forth to strumming lessons, listening ad nauseum to a James Taylor CD, made possible by a dummy cassette tape I inserted into my car's dash, which simultaneously plugged into a walkman, allowed James' clear voice to come through my small stock speakers, circa 1973.

Those are good times, both. Different and simple, but good times and ones I miss sincerely this hot faraway night.

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway/
A song that they sing when they take to the sea/
A song that they sing of their home in the sky/
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep/
But singing works just fine for me.
--James Taylor "Sweet Baby James"