You're a creature of habit
Run like a rabbit
Scared of a fear you can't name
Your own paranoia
Is looming before you
But nobody thinks that
It's a game.
Balance the cost of the soul you lost
With the dreams you lightly sold
Then tell me
That you're free
Of the power of gold.
The women are lovely
The wine is superb
But there's something about the song
That disturbs you...
-The Power of Gold, Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg
I've always had a strange sense that the songs playing through my head, and they're present pretty much all the time, are a species of discernment rather than schizophrenia, a cry from the subconscious or the divine to draw my attention to something grinding away in the back of my mind.
The other morning it was "Texas in My Rear View Mirror" by Mac Davis, a song I haven't actually heard in probably forty years, with lyrics about yearning to escape from the Lone Star State as a young man, only to come home in his mature years and find peace at the end of a life of struggle and frequent failure.
My momma kept calling me home
But I just did not want to hear her
And the vision was getting clearer
In my dreams
Yeah, you don't exactly need a degree in psychology to see where that song's coming from. Mom's lying in bed right now in an assisted living facility in McKinney, just a few miles north of where I went to high school and learned to drive and took a girl to a dance for the very first time. We talked on the phone last Sunday, Mom and me, and I told her all about our plans to turn Wyldswood into a wedding venue so it can pay for itself during our extended absences. She sounded okay at first, but within a few minutes asked, "When are you and Peg going to get married? Don't you think it's about time?"
We married several years ago, of course. In Mom's living room in fact.
"Gotta go. Love you, Mom."
"I love you too, honey." She sounded relieved to be ending the call, lost in a headspace I can't even imagine.
So there's that.
But why Dan Fogelberg, and that song about losing your soul to the quest for wealth? The blunt instrument of lyrical divination would suggest it has to do with my continued unease even as things are going fine financially finally (knock on wood), but there's more than that. "The Power of Gold" is the winter of 1979-80, cold prairie winds and a brown Texas landscape, the end of that season in my life, the end of what had passed for a family up to that point. I don't mourn that loss, not any more, can see it for what it really was: a blessing for all involved. P's helped a lot for that, which is yet another reason I wish I'd met her sooner.
And in the years that followed, it was the song that popped into my head annually as Thanksgiving approached, the season my father left all those years back, and I again made the trip to Texas to see them both, first with three boys in tow and now with Peg, whom they love and look forward to seeing as much as they do me, I think. So the mournful little melody is not just about the corrosive effects of chasing lucre, this musical prodding from deep in my head; every note sounds like an echo across the passage of time, and in some quantum mechanical sense sends me through a wormhole where a nearly sixty-year-old me drops into a Plano, Texas that no longer exists, feels it, and wishes he could tell the depressed, awkward sixteen-year-old about all the good things that would eventually arrive in this life.
But enough of that mawkishness. I come not to speak of old, unhappy, far-off things, but rather of mushrooms. And old trucks.
Because, you see, we're farming mushrooms here at Tara, not as a result of my damp untidiness but on purpose.
Back at the Fall Festival on Market Street, in early September, I think I mentioned that we purchased a pungent, plastic-wrapped block of decay from a family of hippies from Waverly, with the promise that it would sprout several cuttings of mushrooms. I took it home, and for weeks thereafter dutifully kept it covered in a plastic grocery back (contraband from Free Florida, given that such environmentally insensitive totes are unavailable here), watering the lump several times a day and wondering if we'd been duped as nothing happened except that it seemed to get a little stinkier over time.
But then, about two weeks ago, it exploded with life that looked like something off the cover of a Yes album.
Peg clipped the first batch and, I recall, mixed them into a pasta dish. This is the second growth, with several more supposedly possible if we keep to our praxis of shade and dampness. Not sure what P has in mind for these, but I can tell you they're delightful--nutty and rich like nothing you'll get at the grocery store.
And last night we made a major investment for Wyldswood, a 1960 Willys pickup that will provide a ready photo-op for those brides and grooms who'll be flocking to the farm in the years ahead to spend way too much money on a relationship that probably won't outlast paying off the invoice for the whole exercise.
She's a beauty, isn't she? They even painted a Wyldswood logo on the tailgate!
No, that's not actually a "Wyldswood" logo, although it's pretty close to what Peg already designed years ago for her cattle brand. That "W" is actually the monogram of the Willys Jeep Company, now long dead and merged into AMC and oblivion. We'll have one of my intellectual property lawyer friends tell us how close we can get to the old design when we trademark our own, without drawing a cease-and-desist letter (but who'd write it? The descendants of the old owners? Chrysler, which bought AMC?).
We also need to have a contractor run a ductless system into the barn, along with a robust dehumidifier, because my buddy the car guy tells me these old cars can't just live in a non-climate-controlled space. Another hangar for another toy. Then again, we probably needed to do something to make the space bearable on a hot August evening for some future young lady in several layers of bridal gown, a steamy experience even if she's not wearing any underwear.
On that note, it's time to get at paying for all this, mixing in a little time lining up a classic car inspector in St. Louis where the truck is located, and trying to think of something I can start for supper to take a little of the load off my poor, sniffling bride after a long day of standing in an operating room watching someone lop pieces off of feet. What a life we lead.
Comments