LIKE A ROCK
MUSIC has always been a big part of my life in spite of the fact that the only musical instrument I was good at was a record player. I am at the age where I dislike anything in the way of new music, and I try to listen to ‘back in the day’ format radio stations. Although there are a ton of ‘car’ songs, my two favourite, (like they will be played at my funeral) songs, are about different subjects. One is a protest song from the ’60s, and the other would be a song of lament. Both feature some excellent guitar work that pulls you into the song.
THE first song is ‘For What It’s Worth‘ by Buffalo Springfield, which features the guitar work of Steven Stills, prior to his association with that horse’s ass Neil Young. There is a lot more I could say on the subject, but maybe another day. You may have guessed that the other song I have in mind is ‘Like a Rock‘ by Bob Seger. Any time I hear it playing on the radio, the volume gets cranked to 10- especially during the guitar solos. Being as how I am still this side of 70, I am at the point where I have a lot more living behind me than what lies ahead.
UNTIL I hit the ‘publish’ button, I don’t know where the Image of my ’57 GMC will wind up. I’ve owned the truck for a little over 30 years now. It spent the first few decades of its life with a grain box on it, that is until I dropped a wrecker deck on the back of it. Then we went to work.
JUST LIKE in the song, I’ve been looking back on the days when I was young, strong, and thinking I was a whole lot smarter than I was. I did things that to this day amaze me; and I trusted people that I shouldn’t have. My wife and I raised a couple of kids who are adults whom I admire; they are what you would call ‘functional’, which in this day is really saying something. The fact is that they no longer need much of anything from me. So, what do I have left to offer them? In a word, memories.
WHILE they were growing up, we tried to give them the childhood they could look back on and not require therapy. We succeeded in that respect. I am in the middle of writing a novel- sure it is fiction and contains a great deal of fantasy, but I have also buried a great deal of ‘truth‘ between the lines. In one of the situations the main character asks his daughter in law “Is your husband (paraphrasing here) the man he is because of me, or, in spite of me?” Think about that for a minute or two.
FOR the most part, I grew up in the second category in kind of a good cop- bad cop household; all of the good things came from my mother, while my nasty side, well, you know. My mom once said that the reason we didn’t get along was because we were too much alike. You can guess what I thought about that; in hindsight, decades later she proved to be right. There are times when I can see that he had good intentions, but things got in the way.
WHERE the ’57 GMC comes in is it represented the point in our lives where we actually worked together as father and son. I put ‘his’ wrecker deck on an antique- partly for nostalgia’s sake, and in an act of bridge-building. When the original engine let go, we built a ‘new’ engine for it working shoulder to shoulder. He even helped me to chase down some needed parts and get some machine work done. Since I was working at the time, a cousin of mine did the initial start-up on the engine with dad supervising. His comment was “You put a racing cam in it, didn’t you?” You should have seen the smile on his face when I took him for a sideways ride down a gravel road.
THIS time in our lives brought us together as father and son, but more importantly as equals. The memories we created in his last few years were for the most part good ones. Now it’s my turn to be ‘the old man’.
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