“You will be haunted… by Three Spirits… Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One…. “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”
-Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol
Blood pressure's off the charts this morning, after several days of being okay. Not sure what that's all about. Last night Peg and I ate leftover Thai turkey soup, as healthy a meal as we could conjure, then crawled in bed to watch Christmas movies before light's out at a reasonable time.
But then I was up at 2:30, worrying about how to implement the accountant's advice that now might be a good time to replace that unreliable tractor back at Wyldswood. If we go down this road it needs to happen by the end of the year, sixteen days hence. I know almost nothing about tractors. Maybe that's what has my autoregulation all out-of-whack.
Or it could be the work up in Laura's room this week, where we finally are getting around to addressing the worrisome, sagging ceiling. When Steve's worker Chris started poking at it on Monday, the whole damned thing came down on his head, filling the room with dust and almost knocking him silly. I texted Steve to see if he had worker's comp, a tad too late.
With the sheetrock gone, we found the original lath, plaster, and horsehair ceiling that's almost certainly original to the house.
Steve says it all needs to go. A cash register's ringing goes off in my head at the not entirely unexpected revelation.
Yep, that's probably worth a few BP points.
Or maybe it's Peg's health lately--she's having a much harder time shaking this crud than I did, after I tested to make sure it wasn't Covid. Instead of cooing next to me in the darkness last night, Peg explained that the rattling sound was her poor, sick pleura struggling to do its job. One can't help but worry, even if it doesn't do any good.
But in the midst of this swirl of concerns, we decided it was time for a trip to Buffalo.
You may ask yourself, fairly, "why?" Well, months ago we ran across an ad for the James Taylor-Jackson Browne tour, which included a stop in Buffalo this past Monday. We figured on a great show, but I had a trial scheduled for this week in Florida so it seemed we'd have to see them another day, if there was another day. Then my trial was removed from the docket, and we revisited our plans. On a whim and with a little help from Chris to get Peg out of the OR a little early on Monday, we found ourselves driving west on a glorious December afternoon toward Buffalo.
It's not often you get cobalt blue skies and fifty degree temperatures up here this time of year. We spent two hours winding through magnificent country full of tidy farms with stacks of hay bales and fat dairy cows peeking out the windows of the big red barns.
Buffalo was not at all what we expected, we two southerners whose image of the place was about fifty years out of date. We came expecting a decaying, red brick post-industrial wasteland along the shore of a lake that might catch fire at any moment.
Instead we found a vibrant, clean, very cool town laced with parks designed by Frederick Olmsted, the guy who designed Central Park.
And the town was hopping with excitement for the big concert that night.
Our first stop was a gustatory pilgrimage to the Anchor Bar. They claim they invented the Buffalo Wing there.
The place was near-deserted at three in the afternoon. Peg ordered a bad cab while I tried their signature IPA. We split a plate of overcooked, desiccated wings soaked in a sauce my traveling companion described as "greasy", then bought a $35 long-sleeved souvenir t-shirt and waddled back out to the car to search for our hotel.
Which was, in a word, awesome.
The Mansion on Delaware was built in 1869-70 by a guy names Charles Sternberg, who made his fortune owning a grain elevator. The 20,000 square foot structure was constructed for $200,000.00. Sternberg was trying to impress a girl, his new bride in fact, by blowing all this money on a house. Some things never change, I guess. He never got to live there, however, having died before it was finished. The place changed hands a few times before being made into a hotel in 1901, and then it was abandoned in 1970 when all of Buffalo was a crumbling mess.
The current owners bought the mansion in the 1990s, and poured over $3 million into making it a showplace, now the only AAA four-start hotel in Buffalo. It really is spectacular, and the staff are all denoted as "butlers" and truly deliver a level of service beyond anything I've ever experienced.
After a short nap (we oldsters know that staying out late on a school night for a concert's going to take its toll), we enjoyed a complimentary cocktail in the bar before haling Jamie the uber driver who has six kids at home, and making our way to the Key Bank Arena for the show.
As usual, we arrived just in time to stand in line at the concession stand as the music started right on time, with Jackson Browne's "She's Gotta Be Somebody's Baby" blaring from inside as we paid for a very, very expensive glass of cheap cabernet.
Once we found our way inside and to our seats, which were extraordinarily good, the show didn't disappoint.
Both 73 now, Jackson Browne and James Taylor haven't missed a beat. We all should be so fortunate. Taylor's son, who could pass for my Drew's older brother, played backup with him.
Jackson Browne's songwriting has always amazed me. Like John Prine, he wrote with old eyes as a young man, giving us songs like "These Days", which he wrote when he was sixteen.
Well I've been out walking
I don't do that much talking these days, these days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to . . .
Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them.
Or the more radio-friendly "Doctor My Eyes," recorded when he was maybe twenty-four.
Doctor, my eyes have seen the years And the slow parade of fears without crying Now I want to understand
I have done all that I could To see the evil and the good without hiding You must help me if you can
Doctor, my eyes Tell me what is wrong Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?
Like Prine, Jackson Browne seems to have been able to place himself in the conscience of another person's life that would have been pure abstraction for the kid from Fullerton.
And his set sent me hurtling back, back to times of dissatisfaction in my own life, times when I could feel a marriage failing as I buried myself in work. Those songs were the soundtrack of that part of my life, a long, lonely stretch that took years to play itself out.
I want to know what became of the changes We waited for love to bring Were they only the fitful dreams Of some greater awakening?
I've been aware of the time going by They say, in the end, it's the wink of an eye When the morning light comes streaming in You'll get up and do it again, Amen
Caught between the longing for love And the struggle for the legal tender . . .
I'm gonna be a happy idiot And struggle for the legal tender Where the ads take aim and lay their claim To the heart and the soul of the spender And believe in whatever may lie In those things that money can buy Where true love could have been a contender
Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender Who started out so young and strong only to surrender
That was me talking to myself all those years ago, kicking myself for giving up on the life I ended up living after all, these last few years with P. Life's a long game.
Jackson Browne has always called me up short with his willingness to confront and talk back to the forces working against the betterment of our lot as Americans. He took anti-nuclear petitions door-to-door when he was in high school. He spoke out against our support of the Contras back in the '80s. He's always been a voice for peace and taking care of each other, for almost as long as I've been alive.
I used to find his politics repellant, just another liberal unwilling to acknowledge the need for violence in a dangerous world. Now I can see where he's coming from, and feel this tug to take a more active stance, to move from sentiment to purposeful action, to quit being what Henry McKenzie described as a "refined sentimentalist . . . contented with talking of virtues which they never practice," who "pay in words what they owe in action."
I'm not talking about anything radical here, just perhaps using that law card and big ol' brain to help do something about the recent undermining of our rights as citizens. It'll be something to tackle in my free time, when I'm not running a law office or shopping for a tractor.
I spent the concert's intermission lost in reverie, taken back to another time but unable to feel what I felt back then. Probably best.
James Taylor's set was an exuberant embrace of the now. He played the old standards, and the audience sang along. As I understand is his tradition now, Taylor played "Shed a Little Light," his tribute to Martin Luther King, as the first encore.
Oh, let us turn our thoughts today To Martin Luther King And recognize that there are ties between us All men and women living on the Earth Ties of hope and love Sister and brotherhood
That we are bound together In our desire to see the world Become a place in which our children Can grow free and strong
We are bound together by the task That stands before us And the road that lies ahead We are bound, and we are bound
I didn't think much of MLK either, as a child in north Georgia. Did I mention my dad's from Yalobusha County, Mississippi? Another moment of repentance and redemption.
Taylor's set was mostly exuberant, with a stage full of instrumentalists and vocalists collected over the course of a half-century in music. It all felt so optimistic, and JT seemed unable to wipe the grin off his face as he played next to his boy. And the place was filled with love, with people who weren't there on an errand of hate like those angry folks who half-filled the arena for the first installment of the "History Tour" down in Florida the other night. The concert crowd wasn't a bunch of liberals, either--western New York is notoriously conservative, and the concourses were filled with concertgoers defying the governor's mask mandate. Still, we were all there to celebrate something better, something we could all agree upon at least for those couple precious hours. For a little while, anyway, the present felt like a kind, happy space.
Then the lights came up and it was time to head back to the Mansion. The scene outside was the usual post-concert chaos of Ubers and drunk pedestrians and gridlock. We decided to walk the 1.7 miles back to the hotel, and once we arrived sat up talking until after one, energized by what we'd just experienced together, reframing the meaning in terms of our own experience, P and me.
And all that's pretty good.
Time to get ready to testify as a fee expert in a few minutes, then return to the important task of finding a tractor by New Year's.
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