History

Ventura Highway in the sunshine

Where the days are longer

The nights are stronger than moonshine

You're gonna go, I know

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair

And the days surround your daylight there

Seasons crying no despair

Alligator lizards in the air, in the air

-Ventura Highway, Dewey Bunnell

Can't believe it's already 10:22, and I've been running like my ass is on fire since 5:04. And just now getting to this.

Just before my one-and-only hearing a little over an hour ago, I sat in the lobby of the circuit judges' chambers making small talk with opposing counsel and his clients. It was all pleasant enough until somehow we got on the topic of Chicago, a place I've always really liked and the venue of the opposing client's graduate school. Then the wife brought up crime in the Windy City.

"I'd never go there. I see on the news people being robbed at gunpoint, their jewelry ripped off their necks. It's awful, just awful."

Oh great. A Fox News watching MAGA asshole. There's no escaping it down here. They're everywhere and unrepentant about the Scarlet Stain on American history their vote for the Cheeto Messiah represents.

The depression returns, and I shuffle back to my truck wincing at the sandpaper on my soul of continuing to live among these people.

On the way home Dewey Bunnell of the band America was the guest DJ on the Bridge, XM Radio's channel dedicated mostly to '70s folk rock, Fleetwood Mac, and the like. I hide there often these days.

One of my favorite albums of that era was History: American's Greatest Hits.

Three Air Force brats made good, one of whom was born right here in Panama City. I bought the eight track version of the offering with my allowance money right after it came out in 1975, then bought the cassette to play in my Jeep during pilot training and F-15 school, and finally wore out the CD I purchased, if memory serves, not long after I left law school. Fifty years, and I still perk up every time one of the songs comes on.

Mind you, this is not deep stuff. And when I started listening to it in the mid-70s, I didn't really understand all the lyrics about love and loss and starting over.

My biggest unscoreable miss came when Sister Golden Hair was released that summer. The lyrics began with:

Well, I tried to make it Sunday

But I got so damned depressed

That I set my sights on Monday

And I got myself undressed

I ain't ready for the altar

But I do agree there's times

When a woman sure can be a friend of mine.

"Sister", "Sunday", the "altar": it was manifest to me that the guy had fallen in love with a nun. Mom did her best in the car, with the song playing on a.m. radio in the heavy Orange County traffic, shrouded in orange smog, to guide her ten year old to a different conclusion. Mom always had time for those critical moments of guidance. And I was a very naive kid.

The folksy feel of the songs always made me think of misty mountains in the late fall, of places with more natural beauty than the series of ugly tract home communities that were the backdrop of my childhood. Wouldn't it be nice to be somewhere that allowed one to actually walk down a dirt road, admire fog shrouded hills, feel a stillness not constantly interrupted by traffic cacophony?

I guess that's what was in my mind and on my heart when we found Corning. The place I dreamed about as a nomadic middle schooler actually exists.

Happier thoughts than MAGA nonsense this Friday morning. I need to get back to work--there are still 100+ emails crying out for a response, and we fly to Oklahoma for my biannual flight review as soon as Peg gets off work.