Author: GEaston

Choice

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20190101_170847As I mentioned before, we here in the EPHFL have experienced an unusually long period of rain and fog — dense fog and heavy, soaking rain. Started around mid-December 2018, and lasted until last Friday (January 4, 2019) when Mr. Sun finally came back — along with the dry, cool air. You don’t know how good that felt.

You have to understand that the EPHFL just doesn’t have long periods of inclement weather. We just don’t. It doesn’t happen.

Just before the weather broke, I had a short window of no rain. This is important because I had a yard of pecan leaves to rake. Those leaves had been sitting in my front yard lying there, taunting me, since the day after Thanksgiving.

Finally, on New Year’s Day, I had a small window of opportunity.

I rake the leaves. I know there must be some vacuum device out there that would allow me to suck all of the pecan leaves off of my lawn and into a big bag — but I don’t have such a device. I have me. Two rakes. And a lawn cart.

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So, on January 1st, I raked up what 2018 left behind. I called it “The Leaving of 2018.”

Unlike the past, the future is there waiting to be made. You can change your future, rearrange it — you are not tied to your past. Rake it up and be done with it.

The older I get, the more I realize just how much we (as individuals) are in charge of our future. It’s all about the choices we make. And not just the choice or choices, but the quality of that choice or those choices. Beyond that, you can also change what particular choices are brought before you. How? By voicing it. By thinking it. By putting that desire “out there.”

Make the choice to be future-focused, positive, and “leaf” (sorry) the past behind…

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Fog

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We here in the EPHFL have been experiencing an extended period of rain, fog, rain, and more fog. The fog has been usually thick. At times the homes across the street from our Family Compound appeared to be half-finished sketches. After dark (which is very early this time of year) they disappear completely.

In the EPHFL we are connected by bridges. Most cross miles of open water. Fog adds a layer of mystery to the trek — what lies ahead? Is traffic at a dead stop? Is someone approaching head on? Is the rest of the bridge still there?

here-be-dragons

Tonight, or so the weather gurus say, we will have another inch of rain, heavy at times, with wind and some thunder — but nothing serious. Then, in the morning, Friday morning, the sky will clear, the temperature and humidity will drop, and Mr. Sun will be back. No rain predicted for nearly a week. About time…

Any longer and I was going to ask Florida to refund all of December.

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Alt Christmas Music

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It begins in November and is an on-going battle until January 2…

My battle, my attempts to avoid all Christmas music.

Those sappy, insipid tunes that we rightly ignore all year long, until November, when all logic and good taste is set aside for the likes of “It’s A Marshmallow World.”

Or David Bowie singing a duet with Bing Crosby…

I am repeatedly and roundly criticized for my outspoken distaste for Christmas music. All it takes is one disparaging remark about a Christmas tune and I am labeled “Scrooge” or “Grinch” or, in response to my opinion that the unintelligible vocal aerobics of Mariah Carey are NOT all I want for Christmas, I get a “Bah! Humbug!” Instantly I am relegated to the ranks of those who are haunted by Christmas Past, Present and Future.

When you strip Christmas music down to its component level, what really irritates me is the enforced happiness – the repeated insistence that I be joyful, merry and full of cheer. Those people that get depressed during the holidays? I think they are the normal ones.

But, there is no way to avoid Christmas music. Believe me. I have tried. This year, I have already failed. My favorite Smooth Jazz FM station slipped one in. Since I have no hope in succeeding, I have come up with alternative Christmas music. Music that gets me off the hook with the Christmas Music Fascists and yet doesn’t overtly offend my musical and lyrical tastes.

Vince Guaraldi Trio

The first thing that came to my mind was Charlie Brown – specifically, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

But it’s not really the animated cartoon characters or the TV special’s plot — it’s the music.

As a kid, I used to love the opening sequence and the song used in the soundtrack, “Christmas Time is Here.” I guess what drew me to the music was its jazz trio sound – a piano, bass player and drummer – reminded me of Brubeck.

A Charlie Brown Christmas Vince Guaraldi TrioIt was during a South Florida Christmas in 1985 at the Dadeland Mall in Miami, where I found a small record store near Burdines that carried a few cassettes (no vinyl) of the music soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

And it was that cassette (I paid too much for) – that became my ’80s & ’90s Christmas Soundtrack. But not just Christmas. I used to pop that cassette in during all times of the year – the music is that good. I still have the cassette (most of the labeling has worn off) but the cassette was long ago replaced by two CDs – one containing the original Charlie Brown soundtrack, the other contains Vince Guaraldi’s most popular tunes (like “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”), as well as, alternate versions of the Charlie Brown tunes.

Elton John

Elton John Step Into Christmas

“It doesn’t sound very Christmasy.”

That’s the number one complaint I get with this tune.

I grew up with Elton John’s music, from making fun of “Bennie and the Jets” on my school bus to listening to my kids sing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from The Lion King. So, in a way, it’s only natural that “Step into Christmas” is my favorite “Rock-Star-Does-Christmas” tune.

Al Stewart

Al Stewart Time Passages

Al Stewart’s Time Passages is probably my favorite album of all time. For me it’s one of those albums where I love every-single-song. The title song, “Time Passages”, has a line in it that always conveys the post-Christmas feeling of another year gone…

“It was late in December, The sky turned to snow. All ‘round the day was going down slow. Night, like a river, was beginning to flow. I felt the beat of my mind go drifting into time passages. Years go falling in the fading light…”

Steely Dan

Steely Dan Gaucho

In December, 1980, I was leaving a church “pot-luck” Christmas dinner in Greenup, Illinois and it was a typical Illinois winter evening – dark, cold, with pellets of wind-blown sleet stinging my cheeks. After starting up my 1968 Galaxie 500, I turned on the radio only to hear the Steely Dan song “Hey Nineteen” for the first time. I was immediately hooked. From that time forward, I still associate “Hey Nineteen”, “Time Out of Mind” and the rest of the Steely Dan album Gaucho with Christmas.

Barry Manilow

Barry Manilow Because Its Christmas

Manilow’s Because It’s Christmas was not a discovery I would have made on my own. My wife purchased the CD back in the early 1990’s and it quickly became a hit with me and the rest of our household. One song in particular, “Silent Night/I Guess there ain’t no Santa Claus”, still cracks me up…

“Sugar plums in my head, Only me in my bed. I guess there ain’t no Santa Claus”

Gives a whole new meaning to silent night.

The album is a mix of appropriately joyful Christmas tunes, sprinkled with lonely Christmas melancholy, all combined with original compositions by Manilow. A couple of highlights are Manilow’s duet with K.T. Oslin “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (with extra unwanted harassment, but, hey, it’s Barry Manilow) and “It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve.”

Michael Franks

Michael Franks Rendezvous in Rio

The tune “Under the Sun” from the 2006 album Rendezvous in Rio that reminds me of why Christmas is always best spent in the EPHFL…

“Down 95, We’ll come alive And by the time we get somewhere Near Savannah.Give Winter the slip, It’s well worth the trip To be together Under the sun…”

Don’t listen to the White Christmas propaganda. Christmas is much better when it’s sunny and 70°.

Walter Becker

Walter Becker 11 Tracks of Whack

“Book of Liars”, a track from Walter Becker’s 11 Tracks of Whack, seems an unlikely Christmas song but, as our circle of friends widens and we all age, sometimes relationships break down and dissolve. Homes are lost, kids are shared and holidays become a tremendous source of distress.

“Santa Claus came in late last night, Drunk on Christmas wine. Fell down hard in the driveway, Hung his bag out on the laundry line. There’s a Cobra Gunship for his golden boy And there’s a Hello Kitty for his pride and joy…And a silver star in the book of liars by your name.”

Four80East

Four80East Nocturnal

The only instrumental in the line up, this tune from Four80East’s Nocturnal called “Bumper to Bumper” brings to mind the frustration of fighting Christmas traffic, on the road, in the parking lot, in the airport, and in the stores. Yet, at the same time, I find the piano and the groove of the song relaxing.

Christmas should never be what other people say it should be. You have to take control and make it your own. Like all of us here in the EPHFL…

Dare to be different.

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The Gateway

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It’s perfectly normal here in the EPHFL to begin many, many miles away. You can’t really help where or when you were born. The odds are you (or I) would never be born in the first place. The fact that we actually exist on this Pale Blue Dot defies all odds. A billion things had to happen just to allow you and I to exist. And I would call a “billion” a conservative estimate. We’re probably talking googleplex here.

For me, all of those nearly infinite pathways that led to my birth merged into one path — one “gateway” — that was my primary route to the rest of the world.

It was a pathetically narrow strip of north-south two-lane. My Grandpa called it “The Slab.” Its official name was Illinois Route 130 —

Route130-gatewayTo me, Route 130 was my Gateway.

The Slab was the first bit of named road I encountered while riding in the car with my parents. Turning north would take us to where my Dad’s side of the family lived — turn south, and that was my Mom’s family. Almost all of my friends lived off of or near The Slab. I was baptized in a farm pond just a few miles east of 130.

Later, and following the consolidation of the rural county schools, Route 130 would be part of my two hour bus ride to and from school in Newton. Later still, 130 would be the highway on which I learned to drive while taking Driver’s Ed in high school. I remember the new 1976 Chevrolet Impala four-door seemed way too wide for such a narrow road. My knuckles whitened everytime I met a semi-truck in the opposing lane.

The Illinois winters were never kind to Route 130. The seasonal freeze-thaw cycle would cause the highway to buckle. Road repair crews would line the road with slathered black tar that would (temporarily) fill the gaps, but would soften and become sticky during the brutally hot summer months. A few sections were always smooth — my Dad’s 1971 Ford Galaxie 500 two-door managed to bury its horizontal speedometer somewhere south of Rose Hill…

Route 130 was also the last road I traveled when I left Illinois for college. Following 130 south to Grayville takes you to Interstate 64 where I (more than once) would turn east and travel to points beyond.

The Slab is still there. Virtually unchanged. Thankfully, it is overall, a bit wider (like me), but not so unchanged as to be unfamiliar.

All of these decades later, when I drive Route 130, and see the familiar sites — the farms, the lights, the signs, the towns — time seems to move in reverse.

Good to know The Gateway still allows me passage.

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