A little walk down the way

Tonight Cindy and I came home after church and sat out on the patio in the cool of the evening and watched God walking around the backyard. Cindy was reading a big print book by Anne Rivers Siddons. I read an Anne Rivers Siddons book earlier. It was her first book. I really did enjoy it. It took her from high school in North Alabama to college at Auburn. I can't remember if it was autobiographical in the telling or if it was historical fiction. But I liked it and I think it was the best thing she wrote although a lot of people would argue with me.

Before we came home after church we went to Eckards. Cindy and Kate were discussing the relative merits of the various female antiperspirants and whiffing them like there was some remnant of cocaine on the bottles. They were so wrapped up in this that they completely ignored me and anything I said. And I was stuck smelling aftershave. The aftershave that they sell at Eckards are the remnants of high school in the 70's. Brut (for Joe Willie Namath) and English Leather and British Sterling. I tried to get Kate to appreciate the smells but she is beyond that. Heaven knows what high school boys were wearing on their faces in the 90's when she was there. I guess they probably wore the son of Brut and English Leather and British Sterling. That changes so fast. I know that the aftershave smells were so much different between my high school years and my younger brother's years. And that was only three years apart. I know Frank and Mike used to gag me with how much they wore and the sheer smell of it.

I just heard the beginning strains of "Coming around the bend" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their music was so good. I had to turn the sound up. It pops me back to a house on Lake Lanier with so many sweet friends from the past. What a great time to live it was in 1973. I can't hear "American Woman" by the Guess Who without thinking of that day at the Schwammle's lake house. All the rising junior football players were there with a lot of the cheerleaders. What a wonderful memory. I water skiied and sailed around the lake and listened to the music of my youth and spent time with friends and just had a grand time.

I also remember laying in my bunkbed at camp in North Georgia listening to music from my counselor's record player and feeling the mountain breeze keep me cool in the cabin. I remember he had Johnny Cash's "Live at Folsom Prison" and he had a 45 of Cream's "Sunshine of your Love" and "Love Potion No. 9" by somebody. I don't remember any other music at camp that summer. We didn't really need anything else. Terry Fritts and I came back from Rabun County singing "Love Potion No. 9" to our dads and eating barbecue at a place in North Gwinnett County that burned down and never was rebuilt in Duluth or the country between Buford and Duluth or whereever, before they became the parking lot/shopping mall/suburban sprawl that they are.

This is the music of my youth. Jim Croce and Cream and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Did I ever notice before now that they all began with the letter "C"? How weird.

How strange that you don't notice this stuff when it's actually happening. When Susan was five, the Allman Brothers were playing free concerts in Piedmont Park. I vaguely remember them playing at a place called "Richards" on Cheshire Bridge in Atlanta. How about REM playing at night in little places in downtown Athens when I was in law school? Did I stop to listen? No.

But I knew the countryside in Christian County, Kentucky was beautiful. The electric green grass and the blue sky so pure and clear. The fences painted white. And all the relations who lived in their parts of the Pennyroyal, too numerous to count, in so many places. I remember a wonderful supper in my Cousin Betsy's house in Princeton with Momma and Frank and Susan. I remember eating dinner in an old Victorian house in Cadiz which had been turned into a restaurant and finding out, through Grandmommie, that the hostess was my cousin. It is wonderful to visit a place like that where everybody has a connection.

When I find myself among strangers, more strange than normal, I need to remember that once there were places where everyone seemed to be my cousin or aunt or uncle and everyone valued me as part of themselves. If I can remember that, then I need to remember that that connectiveness never changes. Just the ages and the faces change. The connections and the relations never change. Even when they are not our actual blood relations.

In honor of connections past and present, I have to give plaudits to Larry Jones and Hand Spun for this weekend's Preakness. Got to do it for Hoptown and Christian County and Golddust Messenger.