Often I walk the streets of this ancient city to see new things, new places and new spaces. I am serious about Lisboa being an ancient place. According to the Wiki on the city Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in the world, and certainly the oldest in Western Europe. Lisboa predates other modern European capitals such as London, Paris and Rome by centuries. Julius Caesar made it a municipium called Felicitas Julia, adding to the name Olissipo. The origins of the word Olissipo are murky; it may come from the Phoenician word for the Targus river.
One day I walked my neighborhood in a grid and came upon a new fountain. The font was tucked away in the shade of a courtyard next to a large four or five story building. In the middle of the fountain was a kiln. A posting by the fountain says that the kiln, and maybe it is just an oven, was a remnant of an old brick factory that used to be located at that site.
The fountain and the pool surrounding it are expansive and stretch for some distance, about half a city block. Located in a shady place (something at a premium in Lisboa), the fountain is a bit of an urban oasis. Alongside the fountain are statuary of people, almost life sized. Near the edge of the fountain are tables and chairs hard fixed into the grounds. Given the fountain is part of the Caixa Geral de Depositos complex (the largest financial institution in Portugal according to Wiki) my guess is that the tables and chairs are for people to enjoy breaks from the office, be it lunch or otherwise. This is just one of many squares with fountains in the city. Interesting note the oldest still functioning fountain here dates from the 13th century.
There was a song, or maybe an album title, from Elvis Costello called All This Needless Beauty. Instead of Needless the word might have been Useless. This city is a center of needless beauty and nowhere is that more on display than in its fountain squares. Lisbon is filled with little courtyard spaces of fountains and trees. As often as not there is a small coffee shop or kiosk adjacent.
In a hard-edged capitalistic world run according to the harsh principles of the free market, these places would not exist. In America these spaces after debates had been held and commissions appointed would have been deemed irrelevant and redundant and sold on the sly, out of the public eye, on the cheap to a developer. Up would pop a five-story building with “retail” on the ground floor. The retail would sit empty for years until a variance was given to turn the spaces into market priced rentals.
A good guess as to reasons why these spaces still exist in this corner of Iberia would bring two factors to the fore, i.e., weather and history. Lisboa is for the majority of the year warm, lacking in in rain but often very humid. Back 85 years ago, back before the metro and wide ownership of automobiles, back before the wide adoption of air conditioning in commercial spaces, a day in an office, factory or walking to or from a job was a sweaty thing. Cooling oases were needed. Courtyards with trees and fountains were necessary.
The Romans who one held this land knew the benefits of courtyards, trees and fountain. You can find courtyards designed 2,000 years ago all over what was the Roman world surprisingly similar to the little pocket parks of Lisboa and the smaller cities that fill this country. According to a Wiki post Rome in the 3rd century CE had 1,423 drinking fountains. Today Rome has 50 monumental fountains and more than 2,000 fountains overall. While Roman courtyards were smaller the principles used there are the same as those used in Lisbon’s squares.
Until I began to write this and began to research the history of Roman courtyard use I had never heard of the courtyard effect. The gist of the concept is during the dark hours cooler night air sinks into the courtyard and flows into the surrounding rooms thus cooling them. The rooms and surfaces are cooled until about noon the next day. Until noon the courtyard provides storage of cold air and cold air exchange with surrounding rooms. At noon, when the sun strikes the courtyard floor the temperature of air inside the courtyard increases gradually, causing the hot air to move up. This draws air from surrounding rooms into the courtyard, resulting in cooling for the rooms. Finally, as the courtyard and the surrounding rooms get warmer, all the cool air leaks out, preparing the system for a new cycle in the next day.
When you throw trees and fountains into the mix the cooling of the courtyard is enhanced. Trees in a courtyard give off cooling oxygen and facilitate the air exchange of the courtyard effect. They also provide shade drawing out the period the courtyard stores cooler air. Fountains assist in the cooling process the water temperature being usually below the air temperature.
People in Lisboa love their past. They love the fact that the city is so very old and that it has a past extending far longer than most major European cities. They love it was once mighty and its people opened the age of discovery. With that passion they are loath to see ancient spaces disappear. They fight for their parks. You have got to love a place where they have not allowed the lust for money to destroy so many functional, sustainable cooling spaces.
Last we needed to take an explore. Upcoming is a tall ship race that is starting from the Port of Lisbon. We wanted to see the tall ships. We walked to the subway. Took a subway to the train. Took the train to Alcantara Mar. Turns out it was one stop too far to actually see the ships at dock.
But wow what a restaurant scene. Located under the 25 de Abril Bridge suspension bridge the row of restaurants was packed to the gills. (Yes, it is a seafood pun tied to the fact that these are almost entirely seafood restaurants). We walked around and gawked and watched the crowds pour in and then caught the train back to the Santos stop where the ships actually were docked.
Again, despite having been here a year I was surprised at the very vibrant, very active bar and restaurant scene down along the Rio Tejo. The stroll from Santos to the ferry/subway/streetcar/train stop at Cais do Sodre is a short, pleasant and vibrant walk.
We found the tall ships at dock awaiting the race. We saw one of the ship’s crews returning from wandering about Lisbon. We saw people watching the set and fade. We saw the outstretched arms of Jesus blessing the river and its denizens.
The light along the river is amazing. If you get a chance you need to take a wander down along the Tejo as the day is fading. Hey grab a pint or a gin and tonic and let the day fade away as colors of orange and indigo bleed across the river’s waters and the western sky.
Yesterday I had a plan. The plan wasn’t great but it was a plan nonetheless. We were going to Ikea to get three or maybe four things. To quote the good old Grateful Dead, “…it never works out the way it does in the song.” We got more than three or four things.
Going into Ikea is basically a trip from meatballs to madness. For us the meatball plate is front end loaded given the restaurant is right there at the start of the maze. The madness follows as you work your way from chairs to mattresses to kitchens to kid rooms to downstairs and clothing hangers, kitchen scales, plants live and plastic and the weird cinnamon buns.
One thing about Ikea, if you see a display with add on pieces or parts you like, get them all at once. When you go back three months later the display is gone and the specifically adapted parts are nowhere to be found. I was looking for cloth boxes to go into the closets we bought six months ago. The size I needed was no longer to be found although the display back then had lots of them around. Sigh.
I also wanted to get a heavy-duty clothing rack. The one on the website seemed a possible match to what I desired. Up close and personal it wasn’t. So, what to do? Well instead, we bought a kitchen scale, new sheets, a desk lamp, a flower stand, cloth shoe boxes that will be repurposed and pilsner glasses. Sigh. Between the baffling maze and the disorienting noodling of the piped in Scandinavian jazz I believe I was subliminally manipulated to buy, buy, buy. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.” Oh wait, I did get pants hangers. They were on my list.
While in Ikea ran into a couple of other ‘Murican family units. Both were from California. The one I talked to at length had two kids of grade school age. He was in IT and she was a licensed psychologist, both of whom are remote workers. The IT guy I get, just give him a fast internet connection and he can work from anywhere. The psychologist is more interesting, obviously her practice is by teleconference. I used to do hearings every single day by teleconference. However, I think there is risk in a psychologist not living in the same land as her patients. One day she is going to advise someone to cool off and refocus, you know take a few deep breaths and then walk to the Mercado or …., oh wait I meant you favorite store. Oops. Hank or Hal Ketchum (I don’t remember his first name), the guy who did Dennis the Menace had a similar problem. At the height of the comic’s fame, he moved to Switzerland living there for several years. He knew he had to return to America when he found himself starting to draw Dennis’s father returning from work on a bicycle carrying French bread and a bottle of wine.
Later in the day I Facebooked, I read newsletters, and I watched some trashy TV. Of those three actions the one that was the most important was the reading. Will Bunch is a columnist for the Philly Inquirer. His article Journalism Fails Miserably at Explaining What is Really Happening to Americahttps://archive.ph/haxhn is a must read for anyone who believes the US is worth saving. What he writes talks about how newspapers, TV and news websites are covering the current admixture of political races, criminal indictments and the purported tribalism in America in the wrong way. Mr. Bunch says this time the election is different, very different.
I urge you to read the whole article. The gist of it being the Republican party of old, the financial conservatives that acted as a balance to social program favoring Democrats no longer exists. It has been replaced state by state with diehard defiant Trump acolytes, people who no longer believe in democracy but rather in the cult of personality of Donald J. Trump. (See https://apple.news/A3DZI7L7hSam488dNwDigbg ). They worship an authoritarian who is waiting to be crowned something more than President. Covering this race like Kennedy/Nixon, Nixon/McGovern, Bush/Clinton, etc., is not honestly covering what is really occurring. This is a fight between democracy and an almost certain capitulation to authoritarianism should Trump win. I believe Bunch is correct.
I really, really urge you to read the whole piece. But here are Mr. Bunch’s concluding paragraphs.
“These are the stakes: dueling visions for America — not Democratic or Republican, with parades and red, white, and blue balloons, but brutal fascism or flawed democracy. The news media needs to stop with the horse-race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable “tribalism.”
We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements, and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst covered election in U.S. history, that it might also be the last.”
Woke today and took my morning meds. Started a load of laundry. Then I did the same with a load of dishes. Took a moment to read a couple of news articles. Scanned the stuff regarding American politics, Trump this, Trump that, blah, blah, blah. Read about real estate developers trying to buy land from fire victims when family members of those people have yet to be found. Came across an article in the Guardian talking about how tourists with wheeled suitcases are destroying Europe. Most of it in the article was stuff I had heard before, inappropriate behaviors in public spaces, noise, crowding, etc. Most of what was there on the page was seemingly code saying Americans are being ugly, they don’t respect our cities and their treasures.
Then I got to the part where the author argues expats, retirees and digital nomads have killed the essence of Lisbon. Zoe Williams said, and I quote, “Lisbon is the prime example of a city altered beyond recognition, to many people’s eyes denatured by an influx of people who could just afford higher rents.” (The emphasis is mine.) She then quotes a half Brit-half Portuguese man who says, “The main avenue, where there used to be old multibrand boutiques, now Gucci has come in, Prada has come in, so that’s shot the rents up. The newcomers want sushi, they want Thai food, they want vegan. The old lot can’t cater to that, so they’ve shut down. Lisbon has lost its soul.” Geesh, make me feel like a soul butchering murderer why don’t you Zoe?
I took a break at this point from doom scrolling, and anytime you actually follow the news today from the fires in Hawaii to bombings of grain silos in Ukraine, you are doom scrolling. Made my breakfast. My morning repast was oatmeal with nuts, raisins and a teaspoon of sugar. Couldn’t read the instructions but the recipe is universal, two cups boiling water, one cup oats and five minutes simmering. Sat on the balcony and watched the city of Lisboa awaken. Deliveries were being made. Women with heels totally incompatible with the sidewalks of this city headed into office buildings. Birds chirped.
Hung the laundry. Put the dishes away. Checked my calendar, nothing urgent today. Have to straighten up the room where my nephew will stay when he arrives tomorrow. I probably should pick up a fan for that room. This place is not air conditioned.
I am troubled by the Guardian post. Note well, I have spent more than a year here over the course of the last five years in bits and pieces. I have done what I can to observe local courtesies. I don’t join the crowds in the touristic areas (unless someone is here visiting and wants to see a particular sight). We shop local and cook most of our meals at home. I am trying to learn the language, but I am an old dog and I am going deaf so it is hard. I rented a place at asking price in the business district and I pay my rent on time. I have expat health insurance so as to not overburden the health care system. I pump my retirement income into the Portuguese economy by buying goods and services. I am not alone in these practices.
I fell in love with Portugal because of its beauty, its kind people, and the pace of life. I am trying to be part of this place, not a destroyer of it. Thanks Zoe for making me feel awful which is what I think your whole article was about. I think the goal of the article, without explicitly saying it, was to justify xenophobia and shame the others, in this case primarily Americans.
Ms. Williams seems to intone that tourists and expats need to somehow solve the issue of housing affordability in European countries but she offers no insight as to how that might be accomplished. In the end I think her xenophobia shows its full ugliness in her last two words, “…go away.” Don't be just another pundit Zoe, if you going on this kind of attack, throw in some proposed solutions to the problem you feel you are highlighting. "...[G]et naked or go away," really isn't much of an answer now is it?
Sunrise 8 miles high and 500 miles from the coast of Portugal
East Lansing to Lisboa, twenty hours door to door. Flight time was a little over 6 3/4ths hours all told. Fastest flight across the Atlantic ever for us, 5-3/4ths hours. Travel time, flight time, whatever, it is a whole different world we live in here reached after less than a full day of travel.
I had forgotten when I scheduled our return every single small store owner is out of town in August. Walking around I saw a great many of the small coffee shops are closed. Rush hour is very damped down in terms of both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Kind of nice to have the city moving slow when I am moving slow. Today in Lisboa is especially quiet being a holiday, Assumption Day.
Pushed myself all day yesterday to stay awake and active. In an attempt to avoid jet lag. When I finally hit bed, I fell so deeply into sleep that I did not hear the garbage collection that happens each night at midnight and one AM.
Woke up early. Body of course thought it was noon when I rolled out of bed at seven to the morning’s softly glowinglight. Francie was deep into the dream zone so I quietly set about my tasks. Agreat number of our plants had been moved around so as to make it easier on our friends who were watering them to take care of that task. They did a splendid job mind you, but the plants needed to be back in their places.
Started a load of laundry.Went to two super mercados to get bread, milk, eggs, sandwich meats, and a variety of otherstaples. Cleaned out the refrigerator wiping down all the shelves and drawers before stashing the newgroceries. Brewedice tea, brewed coffee. TookFrancie coffee and an apple pastry as she was waking up in bed. Hung the laundry on the line.
Today in Lisboa is warm but it is enjoyable.Going to head out shortly for a quick lunch. We are back in Lisboa; we are back in the rhythm and pace of life that can be lived joyfully.
Given the vacant city streets today this seemed like a good musical coda.
As I type this Dead & Company, the final offshoot of the Grateful Dead, are about to begin their last tour’s final three-night run. Bob Weir and the boys will make their stand back where it all began: San Francisco. In numerous posts over the years, I have used references to the Grateful Dead’s music as a background element of whatever events I have described. Often, I have quoted a lyric from one of their more iconic songs like Ripple or Box of Rain. I don’t think I have ever written just about the Grateful Dead in my life and how they have been a thread that weaves in and out of everything I have ever done and experienced since I was 12 or 13 years of age.
I first heard the Grateful Dead late at night on my plastic crème and blue Philco Radio when I was 12. A DJ on a local AM top forty station had a Sunday night underground radio show. In the hushed deep tones of an underground DJ of the era he announced he would play only the Grateful Dead on the upcoming Sunday night. The DJ described them as a band at the forefront of the underground scene from San Francisco. At 10 pm on a Sunday night in 1968 while listening to WIBG in all of its static filled AM glory I heard St. Stephen and The Eleven for the first time. It was like nothing I had heard before. The music was captivating. I was hooked and followed the Grateful Dead with growing intensity for the next five decades.
As to what I heard that night well wow. Just Wow. I was blown away. The music, the lyrics they boggled my little mind.
Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the bye and bye,
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills,
One man gathers what another man spills.
St. Stephen-Hunter/Lesh/Garcia
I would not be listening to Wibbage AM 99, home of Jerry Blavat, the Geator with the Heater for much longer. I shifted the small plastic switch on my radio from AM to FM first to WDAS and then to WMMR. And suddenly it was 1970 and these stations were playing the Rolling Stones, Argent, the Incredible String Band, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Fairport Convention, Love, Jimi Hendrix, Mississippi John Hurt and on and on. Music washed over me. I was drowning in blues, rock, psychedelia and folk.
Two thirteen-point lightning bolts struck that year. First, in June “Workingman’s Dead” dropped. It was the Grateful Dead’s sidewise return to guitarist Jerry Garcia’s and lyricist Robert Hunter’s bluegrass roots. If you listen to Cumberland Blues you get that hill mentality mixed with the hippie ethos. The album was filled with songs of what would come to be called Americana. American Beauty was an innovative direction for the counterculture musicians. The screaming guitars and feedback of Garcia and company were replaced with acoustic sounds, even mandolins. Workingman's Dead was an enigmatic album but it seemed hopeful. Workingman's Dead was a defining moment of change for the Grateful Dead.
Almost instantly Casey Jones became a staple of late night underground shows. Vice President Spiro Agnew noticed. He raged about its drug-loving message and tried to order radio stations to stop playing it. Agnew’s attempt at censorship went over like a fart in an elevator. FM DJs would simply slip the song into a marathon 10 song set and never announce the song's name or the artist. In the politically charged Vietnam War/Nixon White House/Generation Gap era, nothing gave an artist greater credibility than being on the receiving end of a Nixon/Agnew enemies list.
Who really cares about Casey Jones? Yes, it rocked. It still rocks. Yes, it got tons and tons of airplay. But I mean if you heard the opening strains of side one, song one you knew a seismic shift in the Grateful Dead’s sound had occurred. Uncle John's Band was something far beyond what the Dead ever created before. It was sweetly sung, had a delicate melody and lyrics that you could ponder for hours if you had smoked a bowl or two. Uncle John's Band was the pylon on the Camino whose arrow said make a sharp turn pilgrim.
So, when American Beauty dropped in November of that year, I had to have it. I couldn't afford it but fate intervened. My cousin Pat had obtained a copy that he was willing to sell to me for one dollar. This was a bargain at half the price of what it would cost in a record store. I was in on it at once, wholeheartedly and without reservation. A dollar price implied the LP's provenance was sketchy but I didn’t care. I was on the road to becoming a Deadhead and I had to have that record. From Box of Rain to Ripple to Brokedown Palace to the Attics of My Life to Truckin’, I was mesmerized. Hunter’s cryptic lyrics combined with Garcia’s intricate lead guitar and Phil Lesh’s bass took me to places I needed to explore mentally and emotionally.
So, this is what led me to the door that opened my path to becoming a Deadhead. However, it was that first live show I saw in Philadelphia’s Tower Theatre that pushed me into the Dead Zone for real and for good. This was the first of my top four Dead experiences. On June 24, 1976 I ventured to Upper Darby to see my first Dead show. I worked at that time in Ocean City on the Boardwalk. One of the guys I worked with had somehow gotten a ticket to this show which had only been sold only by mail order to Deadheads. I bought the ticket at a premium, got another friend to drive me up there and let me stay with him. I went to the show. When I got to the show, I was offered five times what I had paid for the ticket but I would not sell, not for the world.
This leads me to peak Dead experience #1. During the first set at the Tower, they performed five songs that were everything I had expected of a Dead performance and much more. The five songs began with Friend of the Devil and moved into Cassidy. The band followed up with It Must Have Been the Roses finishing with Lazy Lightning'/Supplication. The voices were clear and strong, the guitar work was impeccable and whatever was in that guy's wine sack I drank from was choice. The second set was also very, very nice with a stunning version of Wharf Rat, just incredible.
When I left the Tower, I knew there was nothing like a Grateful Dead show. Nothing, period full stop. Here is a link to that show if you want to hear what I heard. https://youtu.be/g7dLrnCKC6g
The next of my four peak Dead experiences was Labor Day weekend in 1977. 1977 was the year I attended college all summer. I took a full quarter of classes and four pointed every single damned one of them. As a result, I did not get to my beloved beach until Labor Day. When I got there I looked for one of my favorite cousins, La De Da Dot. She was not at the family compound but I found out she was probably hanging out with some friends at 32nd and Asbury. I walked down that perfect summer day two blocks to the general area where she was supposed to be. Nobody knew exact addresses back then. We didn't have tricorders to guide us like we do today. In the end I found her by smelling weed on the wind and hearing the sound of the Dead playing live at Englishtown Raceway over the radio, WMMR I think.
In a one-story beach bungalow, we sat. My memory makes the house's interior almost white or some soft pastel creme shade of color. It was totally beachy. I believe we both wore whites of some kind or another. I mean what else do you wear on a warm late summer day a block and a half from the beach? I am really sure had on my Mexican wedding blouse with roses embroidered on it. We drank beer and listened to the band as they took the music home that night. We talked about our dreams and laughed. We watched the sunlight fade outside the windows. Yeah, there were those thin white curtains blowing in and out as the wind changed with the coming of night. I am pretty sure we stumbled down to the beach at some point, although that might just have been me. This was an idyllic moment, with my cousin, a dear friend. This was a sunny day flowing into a warm night. It had the Grateful Dead singing and playing and, on the ball, and the warm Atlantic waters in late summer.
The third of my peak Grateful Dead experiences involves one who was lost and then found. I doubt that anyone in my high school class thought I would escape the inexorable pull of the very large DuPont chemical plant ten miles from our homes. This is where all our fathers worked. Pretty much everyone was pulled towards Chamber's Works on the Delaware River. This was a city of metal orbs and large tanks filled with chemicals and it paid well.
I didn't want anything to do with it, though. I wanted something new, so I moved 600+ miles away to attend university. Then, I stayed for law school. Then I stayed for my first job. I moved back to Delaware for a couple of years, but it didn't work out for me. So, since 1974 (with that couple years excepted) if I wanted to see someone or perform a family obligation I have had to travel from Michigan to New Jersey.
On one of those occasions, I hustled off to see my dear friend Don who lived in Sea Isle City. Again, this was before mobile phones and electronic maps. And I kind of sort of had his address written down in and unintelligible scrawl. And it was a long trip from Michigan to New Jersey. And we were tired. And honest to God the closest I could narrow it down was that he lived on the bay and the street started with a 3, I think.
So, we drove around block after block and I could not say I recognized his house. The streets were parked up to the brim and each lap was tedious and miserable. Finally, pulling over to the curb we rolled up the windows and got out of the car. It was at that moment that I heard from the balcony of the house next door the opening lyrics to China Cat Sunflower. I looked up and saw people laughing and drinking and I knew. I hollered out, “Hey Don, is that you?” And I got back a, “Jaaaaaay, my man.” And the Dead kept singing. In that moment the Dead led me home.
We were so relieved to find it that we almost ran to the door. We knocked and were greeted by my friend's smiling face beers in hand.
I have often told the tale of my second son’s birth, the harrowing nightmare it was. Suffice it to say I had that conversation no husband wants with the doctor. Yeah, the one where the man in the white coat says, “Within half an hour you will have to make a choice, the baby or your wife.” But the lad was born and the wife survived.
But the first son’s birth was not without its moments. Preeclampsia motivated an induced delivery. We were frightened. And it was really nerve-wracking, but we had support present. Friends and neighbors kept us company and encouraged us. We also had a boom box in the room playing a mix tape (or CD). When the nurse came in and gave a look and said, “Don’t push, the doctor is already delivering one baby,” we knew the time had come and it was going to be okay. The fourth moment of the Grateful Dead major life events took place then.
When the doctor got into the room and began the whole process of getting the gelatinous garden slug out for us, the boom box segued into a Grateful Dead song that was appropriate to the moment, Unbroken Chain. Our elder lad was born healthy and strong. But was it synchronicity that this continuation of my wife and I came into the world just as a hippie band sang a song called Unbroken Chain? I mean that is what a birth is, isn’t it? A link in our humanity's continuous chain.
Yeah, the last few lyrics.
Unbroken Chain of sorrow and pearls
Unbroken Chain of sky and sea
Unbroken Chain of the western wind
Unbroken Chain of you and me.
Unbroken Chain-Petersen/Weir
As I look back, the years have flown by faster than I could have imagined. My journey with the Dead began with my ear to the radio in my bedroom in 1972 when I sought refuge in their music from a confused world of war, riots and generational strife. It continues now as the remaining Dead remnants finish up their last tour as Dead & Company. Not so surprisingly as they play these three last nights the world is mired in war, environmental strife and economic strife. Back then the music soothed me, intrigued me, moved me and made me sing along. Today the songs of the Grateful Dead are a nostalgic escape valve from what my brain reads as a world gone mad.
If I had been born of something other than the boomer generation maybe music wouldn’t have been so meaningful. But I am a boomer and the world has shifted, changed and moved again. From LP to cassette to CD to lossless streaming services, how music was delivered to me evolved. The world has shifted too. My globe from fourth grade is so out of date with its borders and boundaries and country names. Simple issues of life have changed, I mean we moved from rented black handset party line phones to me having a cell phone with two different numbers from two different countries (both mine) integrated with a tiny powerful computer where I can do just about everything. My days in the sun are ending. The Dead have been my musical friends and provided the soundtrack to my life for almost 55 years. Their day is ending.
I guess the Grateful Dead described our relationship with this lyric from Ripple.
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home
Ripple-Hunter/Garcia
I think my relationship with the Grateful Dead will end when they play Ripple at my wake.
There is something that my children will never know that I knew all too well. It was a portent of ill fortune. It was sign of waiting turmoil. It was the sighting of a lighthouse at a place where you were already on the shoals. It was the red glow of the old man’s cigarette as he sat on the back steps waiting for me to sneak into the house.
My brothers, my sister and finally me, we all had boundaries and curfews. There were places we should not go. There were times when we had to be in. Beyond this we had a lot of freedom. But those limits, they were not negotiable things with permeable boundaries. Rules were rules. We were allowed out, we weren’t followed, we weren’t told exactly where we had to be or who we had to be with like the current generation. We just had to be back by a set time and we were not to be seen in certain places.
Do kids these days understand the concept of freedom? I am not sure because their lives are so penciled in and booked and arranged. I just don’t know if they understand the concept of freedom to screw around.
I digress, as always. If you missed the curfew time by a few minutes there would be a short conversation. If you missed the mark by a lot Mom would go to bed but Dad would wait. This was especially true if the car you were driving was seen in a place you were not supposed to be. This was also true if he heard from a friend (and the old man had lots of friends) that you might have been up to something less than acceptable.
You would try to avoid confrontation by sneaking into the house. I know one of my brothers would climb up the roof and come in through a second story window. I was not that agile.
For me to get into my backyard, I had to pass through a gate. Our yard gates had their own nuances. You had to lift that horseshoe-shaped latch just right so it wouldn’t scrape or screech metal on metal. You then had to inch in so as not to make any other noise and then replace the latch quietly, really quietly. It was also essential to have your key out because jangling keys by the side door would alert someone that you were sneaking in. You had to get your night vision acclimated because mom would have pulled out different chairs around the dining room table and you dare not flip on the light switch. They would be awakened by that simple click. The chair thing was really a sobriety test. Nothing quite like whacking your shin and causing the chair to screech across the floor alerting everyone in the house to the exact hour you were returning.
But hell, you didn’t get this far if trouble was in the wind. Coming around the back of the house you knew you had better have your story straight if you smelled even a hint of tobacco in the air. Sometimes the wind brought that warning to you before you saw the red glowing end of the cigarette. It gave you a chance to bolster your story with details to make whatever lie you spun more plausible. But you should have worked on that before you got to the steps. When you saw that cigarette's glowing red light you knew judgment was come to be visited upon you.
I don’t remember screaming or yelling. However, I remember a commanding bass voice that would start out with a question “Boy, where have…what have…” you get the gist of the questions that would follow. His cigarette was held down now so he could smell for the scent of alcohol. He would be gauging your reaction time too. I don’t think he yelled because he wasn’t supposed to smoke and if Mom came down, he would have to explain that. But you knew there would be consequences.
I always thought I was alone in facing this situation until one night in 1975 or 76 I got to see Bruce Springsteen at the MSU Auditorium. He did a cover of “It’s My Life” that began with a long rap about meeting his old man in the darkened kitchen with the glow of a cigarette. Yeah, my kids will never know that.
