A procession of dreamers and clowns

David Brenner is talking on the country radio station this morning. I always liked him (and Gary Muledeer). Still, it strikes me as a bit odd.

We're headed up to NC tomorrow. Wednesday, when we fly back, we're bring a load of vittles home in our carry on. Livermush, of course. (Livermush Link) I feel like a smuggler. Like a mule. Which is funny because I can go for days,or probably weeks, without saying the word mule and yet here I have used it twice (thrice if you count this explanation) in just a couple of sentences. Mundane stuff cracks me up.

OK. It's tomorrow and we're flying up today. All the pre-trip stuff is done:
1. Cat sitters: Check
2. Dog to Brother's house: Check
3. Bags packed: Check
4. All the laundry in the house done: In progress
5. All floors swept and swabbed: Check
6: Bills paid and stacked neatly to mail a couple days after we return: Check

Nope. I don't understand numbers 4, 5, and 6 being part of the preps for a two day business trip either. But they are. Be more like me. Just accept it.

I think the temp may dip into the 30's the next night or two. The weather people on the news are all a'twitter. I lost some small fruit trees last year on the ONE night of the winter it got below freezing. I think the temp will stay just above freezing, but just the same, I wish I wasn't going to be gone. I'd like to drape a sheet or put a bucket over them. Guess I'll just have to hope for the best. I may never be the mango man that I aspire to be, though.

OK, let's finish up my little fantasy from when I was 19, shall we?

Part 1: The Winterland April 1979

My friend, do you believe in snow?
Faster horses in the rodeo?
Cotton candy on your hands?
The shyster tactics of another man?

Did you run and did you hide
from the prying eyes of the man inside
From paranoia stalking slow
The tell tale tracks there in the snow

Their eyes are everywhere it seems
There's hints of Heinlein in your dreams
Chasing, racing through your head
You feel you'll drown beneath your bed

It's fear that makes you rush the walls
Pounding, praying they will fall
A mix of blood and sweat, you know
there's another foot of fresh, white snow

Your dreams harrass, there's no relief
There you stand in disbelief
With no salvation anywhere
The faster horses stand prepared

The horses know the way to go
their hoofbeats muffled in the snow
down winding, long forgotten paths
can you sort out the aftermath

While stars avoid the threat of night
to turn their backs on one last fight
A newfound friend? A deadly foe?
Perhaps a vestige of the snow?

Your stallion stops and fades from sight
your nightmares gather for the fight
No sanctuary. No place to go.
Do you, my friend, believe in snow?

Part 11: Jesse May 1979

Jesse James is out there somewhere
Burning out a desperate rage
Surviving like a desperado
and dying like a man his age

Jesse still knows all the stories
Songs of life's own sweet refrains
A slowly sinking road to glory
A blood red trail across the plains

"When I was young," he told me slyly
"My wits were sharp as any blade.
I played my hand, the cards were with me.
Or maybe it was me got played."

Jesse James is out there somewhere
Solitary in the haze
It's the poets added all the romance
To dying like a man his age.

Part 15: The Final Scene (A love Story) May 1979

Together we've loved for a lifetime
never worrying much about names
Never saying I Love You (the cause of all grief)
Writing our wrongs in the rain

Such a love we found as we wandered
trapped inside somebody's dreams
Such beautiful beggars, such a beautiful game
and we lived through the Sixties it seems

So let's ride through the streets with a jazzman I know
let's take our parade through the sky
We shall lead our procession of dreamers and clowns
After all the old jazzmen have died

Bet the black girls will sing as the black girls will do
And the boys have a look in their eye
the streets will be cleared for a showdown at noon
Yeah, the girls will be singing tonight

Like the ghosts of a lost generation
every song, every whisper the same
trekking through life like the gypsies we knew
never burdened with each other's names

Together we challenged a lifetime
with our glass of fine wine and two straws
Never saying I Love You (the cause of all grief)
Since we'd lived through the Sixties and all.

Like a love affair I'd hoped to write, out
Ramblin' Ed