As God is my witness, this is a true story.
I was sitting at my local watering hole last night nursing a couple of cold ones watching a hockey game and catching up on some local bullshit when something really strange happened.
The jukebox normally clicks on after awhile if nobody puts any money in it and plays a random selection of tunes. When that happens it’s usually something that I would deem as “contemporary” music by some artist or band that I’d never heard of and I tune it out .
Imagine my surprise when I heard some soft guitar and the sound of Bonnie Raitt’s voice when she started singing:
I am an old woman
Named after my mother
My old man is another
Child who's grown old
It’s funny how you associate can a song with a person and I got a chill up my spine and thought to myself,“Holy fuckin’ shit, has it already been two years.” Bartender, please, another round on me.
If dreams were thunder
And lightning was desire
This old house it would've burned down
A long time ago
The internet’s a weird fuckin’ place. I only met Grundoon a couple of times in real life. Once was on the so called ”hike from hell” and the other time she was passing through C-bus on some kinda cross country jaunt and crashed at my place for a couple of nights. I introduced her to my local saloon and she fit in with the regulars as if she’d been coming there for years.
Awhile later, she told me about a vending machine in the ladies room and asked me to try and craft a story about it. I hope I did her proud.
Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery,
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go
I was never fortunate enough to meet Kevin in person or even talk to him on the phone but I have the feeling after knowing him here in his online persona, even though he’s a Brit at heart, we’d have hit it off just fine. He hasn’t logged on now in close to a year (I check his h/n on a fairly regularly basis) and if he does I hope to hell I don’t miss him if and when he decides to rejoin the flock.
When i was a young girl
I had me a cowboy
He wasn't much to look at
Just a free ramblin' man
But that was a long time
And no matter how i tried
The years they just flowed by
Like a broken down dam
I’ve been writing here for over twelve years now and like most people who started out I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing or what this place was about. Sometimes I still wonder if that holds true today. Kevin had me beat by about six months but it might as well have been six years. I can’t begin to count the numbers of times he advised me about such things as subject matter, vocabulary, syntax and a host of friendly advice that helped along the way. I think he told me to “write what you know” and that pretty much opened the floodgates for me to chronicle a whole host of events that either blessed or haunted my past, was about my kid or just some every day shit that I felt the need to put down in writing.
I owe him, and many, many others, a debt of gratitude that I hope one day I will be able to repay.
Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go
Not long after I joined grundoon came along. I think we shared many of the same experiences when it came to being a single parent and I wish to God I would have saved some of our conversations so I could fall back on them and read what she had to say when I sought out her advice. Sadly, those words are floating around somewhere in the ether along with grundy herself.
There's flies in the kitchen
I can hear them there buzzin'
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today
But how the hell can a person
Go on to work in the morning
To come home in the evening
And have nothing to say
Between the both of them I think we sorta shared the same worldview. We laughed and shed tears over many of the same things and weren’t afraid to let those feelings be known. Now, due to circumstances beyond her control, one of them is silent (unless she took up temporary residence in that jukebox last night) and the other has gone missing (hopefully on a temporary basis) and I’m the poorer person for it. Perhaps in some strange internet kind of way, we all are.
Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go
Many of us were heartbroken when events transpired two years ago to pluck grundoon from our midst. I hope that many of us can still take some solace in either reading her stuff for the first time or re-reading it again to either get some inspiration, perspective, or some new found wisdom in her words.
The same goes for wertperch.
I also knew this was one of her favorite songs (as well as one of mine) and I hope I did her a bit of justice by trying to add to what she said in the previous write up here. I also remember expressing my hope that one day when my time comes we would meet in the ether I mentioned earlier and do a kickass version of the song.
If you’ve ever heard it performed as a duet by Bonnie Raitt and John Prine, you’d know what I’m talking about.
I too, choose love.