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Music Topics for Everyone

Music is a frequent topic on this Forum. This includes all types of songs.

Our parents certainly had their music but I believe that our generation, the Baby Boomers, were likely to be the first to have our tunes in a more portable format, thanks to that marvelous invention the transistor radio. Yes, there were car radios before that but those little transistor machines, many with an ear plug, allowed us to listen to WCOL and other radio channels while walking, biking and lounging at Olympic Swimming Pool.

Of course there have been many changes to the portability of music that we have seen come (and go) over our lifetime such as Walkmans, Boom Boxes, cellphones, etc., but that little transistor radio started it all.

I recall evenings at our home gathered around the TV listening to Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller playing the tunes of our parents' era and Ed Sullivan bringing in some of our icons such as Elvis and the Beatles.

Yes, I think ours was the generation that really brought forth an explosion of music most of which started with Rock and Roll.

So, what effect did all this have on our lives? The words of songs are basically poetry put to music and those melodious words often reflected things and events that were occurring in our lives.

The chorus of the song "Killing Me Softly", recorded by several but most famously by Roberta Flack, goes:

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

I am willing to bet that those lyrics are applicable to to each of us somewhere, sometime or somehow during our 75 years of life.

Does anyone out there have a song or a stanza of a song that sung a part of your life? As I look back, more and more verses come to my mind, in fact, maybe even TNTC! (That's a little medical abbreviation used to describe specimens - usually urine - in regards to how many cells or bacteria are present when looked at under a microscope -To Numerous To Count ).

Jim

P. S.

I'll give two of the songs that sung to my life:

"I'd Choose You Again" by the Boothe Brothers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN6QoKHwNMk

" Rocky Mountain High" John Denver's signature song - the line that says " He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year, coming home to a place he'd never been before"

08/04/23 08:45 PM

#12969

And now some of my own political musings.

Last week Friday I filled the tankonourExpidition at $4.85 a gallon. At "Early Dawn Morning"(read 4:15 A,M. Saturday we departed headed towards Salt Lake City(approximately 750 miles to the East. Stopped outside of Fernley NV for gas at $4.25 a gallon Not much furtheracross the state we encounterd the first of the Orange barrels that close a lane of traffic on both sides of a nice Four lane highway. A few stops for fuel and lunch and we departed Wendover NV (Temp down to 100 degrees) and entered Utah and the beginnings of the Bonnevile Salt Flats (about 2 hours from Salt Lake City) the temp wentfrom 100 degrees up to 103 degrees. Stopped for gas then on to the motel. After checking in we went for a LATE dinner at Cracker Barrel; when we finished and returned to the motel it was 9:30 P.M. (8:30 our time because of the time zone at Wendover NV,

Leaving Salt Lake City the next morning at about 7:50A.M.we first headed to East on I-80 towards Park City, UT. It is roughlt an hours drive,UP Hill the whole way. This is where we encountered our first sad incident. I watchedd as a truck driver raced around his tractor trailer with a fire extinguisher. Sad that he was using itto put outthe fire on his brakes; there are numerous places where drivers can pull over to check their breaks for heat build up and sit if the brakes are hot. Sad because this driver thought the wait wasn't worth it. Continuing East on I-80 you pass through some of the most spectacular sight you will see driving on I-80. Eventually we entered Wyoming where you can see miles and miles of snow fence; and you thought Ohio received a lot of snow. Continuing past Laramie and Cheyenne ( where the annual rodeo days were taking place, we finally arrived (approximately 650 miles later) in North Platte Nebraska where we stopped at the motel and ran next door to an Applebees fordinner before they closed. Because of the time zone/hange we were able to get to sleep by about 9:45 P.M. local time.

Now I am going to get ready for bed.

08/04/23 09:38 PM

#12970

Jim,

Roberta Flack was one of the most underrated voices of our time. Her version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" wa just plain magic!

I had a small transitor radio that I took to school with me in High School - about the size of a large pack of cigaretttes. I had two classes where I sat in the very back corner. I could hook the ear plugs into one hidden ear and listen to the mid-day WCOL top ten countdown, in which the Beattles usually had 4 to 6 of those top ten songs.

-----------------

And Joe,

North Platte Nebraska is a VERY familiar stop on my way from Denver to Columbus with my three kids in the station wagon - several times.

Colorado Buffalo fans used to ask 2 popular joke questions,

1) "What is the best thing to come out of Nebraska?" Answer - Interstate 80

2) "What does the "N" on Nebraska football helmets stand for?" Answer - "Noledge"

08/04/23 09:40 PM

#12971

Joe McC.,

Be safe!

Let me guess - one of your life's songs has got to be Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again"!

Jim

08/04/23 09:57 PM

#12972

getting back to your question Jim,

There is one duo and one song that is thee single best of all time. It should be writen in stone and I will accept no arguments on this point.

Not Elvis. Not Dion and the Belmonts. Not the Four Tops. Not Brenda Lee or the Shirrelles. Not even the Beattless or Simon and Garfunkel.

Just two brothers from Kentucky

08/04/23 10:19 PM

#12973

On the prior matter;

The voting is closed.

My mind is made up.

I will accept no substitutes.

** (Not even The Band, Procul Harum or Strawberry Alarm Clock)

(Don't make me insert my own slate of substittue delegates)

08/05/23 11:55 AM

#12974

Mark Schweickart

Per Jim's music lyrics challenge -- the ending lines of Bob Dylan's My Back Pages, jumps to my mind. I think these lines have especially aged well. I feel this wisdom as I totter along in my 70s while often looking back over my shoulder at my younger self. (I should add the disclaimer that the rest of this song is filled with, for my taste anyway, far too much of the surrealistic gibberish Dylan indulged in during this period of his writing, but thankfully he snapped out of it for these closing lines.)

"Good and Bad," I defined these terms, quite clear no doubt somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

08/05/23 05:34 PM

#12975

In case anyone is put off by my frequent mis-spellings, I though it would be more economical if I waited and did my corrections every fifth post, and then worked my way back through the previous five. That way I think I get a bulk discount on the use of corrections.

08/05/23 08:03 PM

#12976

Dave do you use white-out or correction tape? Do you purchase in bulk?

Fact that stuck in my head when I printed that - If my memory serves me, White-out was developed by some litlle organnization in Columbus named The Battel Memorial Institue.

Jim I do like Willie Nelson's On The Roadd again, but I also like his Rider's in the Sky and Gene Chandler's Duke of Earl.. Also, please note in my earlier posting that II SPECIFIED I-80 when talking about my drive andthe sights. If one travels on I-70 the portion from twenty miles East of Denver to the Utah border has some fantastic sights/scenery. From theutah border to Sacramento, CA I always liked to continue West from I-70 by following Hwy 50. My niece lives in Leedville, Colorado. Enough for now.

08/05/23 08:03 PM

#12977

Dave do you use white-out or correction tape? Do you purchase in bulk?

Fact that stuck in my head when I printed that - If my memory serves me, White-out was developed by some litlle organnization in Columbus named The Battel Memorial Institue.

08/06/23 12:02 AM

#12978

Joe McC.,

Only really old folks repeat their posts on this forum (Posts 12976 and 12977), probably due to short term memory loss. So, don't forget on your trip to keep heading east!

I actually worked at Battelle for two summers (after BWHS and first summer affter freshman college) coding spread sheets for the computer data entry clerks in the Defense Metals Information Center. It paid $1.27 per hour! After that I did summers at various truck docks loading and unloading semi trailers from midnight to 8 A.M. for $4.03/hr.

Jim

08/06/23 12:14 AM

#12979

Joe,

LEADVILLE! Really? Wow!

Home of Leadville Johnny Brown and his bride, the Unsinkable Molly Brown. (survivor of the Titanic, and central figure in thr Broadway play named for her.

We lived in Denver for 17 years and I never once visited their houes on Capital Hill in Denver. I seem to recall they turned it into a museum.

As you also know, Denver is widely known as the "Mile High City", but Leadville is known as "The Two-Mile High City". And I think it is the site of the single largest vein of Silver or Gold (?) ever found in North America.

What, prey tell, brought your daughter to Leadville of all places?

08/06/23 02:01 AM

#12980

Dave, et al,

Although others may debate it, Leadville has claim to be the highest incorporated city in the country.

That set up the perfect place for Dr. Charlie Scoggins, a U of C pulmonologist, to establish his lab to study the pathophysiology of high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE, one of the end results of altitude sickness) in the 1970's. Many new discoveries were made because of his work, one of which was that people living in high environments who went to lower places for vacations, etc., could develop HAPE upon return.

Also, near Leadville, was Camp Hale, where soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division trained in mountaineering warfare and skiing to successfully fight the Nazis in the mountains of Europe during WWII. Some of those troops came home and developed Vail and other Colorado ski areas. Camp Hale was designated a National Monument in October, 2022.

Leadville also is located near the west end of Weston Pass, one of my favorite photographic areas:

"ScenicSelfie" Weston Pass, 24 September 2020

And no, I have never developed HAPE ... at least so far 🙄!

Jim

08/06/23 02:44 PM

#12981

Jim,

I was aware of the history of Camp Hale.

My Dad had hoped to go there because he thought he was being sent to the 10th Mountain Division (the legendary "ski troops"). But his plans were altered and I will touch on that in a new post coming up. He had been intorduced to skiing in New Hampshire a few years earlier while serving his internship at an old Catholic hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. Some of his "classmates" took him to North Conway to take skiing lessons under the famous Hanness Schneider - who had fled the Nazis to come to America and open the first "ski school" in North America. This was sometime in the late 30's I think.

As luck woukd have it, Dad took my cousin Jim (Watterson '63) and I to Vail in 1962 (the first year) to ski for a week. He met Pete Seibert, the former 10th Mountain Divison soldier who formed the corpporation that developed Vail, and almost bought into the initial Debentures (for $10,000) that would have been worth millions by now - maybe tens of millions. Dad was a poor investor and got cold feet. But he did end up buying two lots upstream from Vail for about $3,700 each. Sold them in a few years for a bout $22,000 and $24,000. We tought back then that he had made a killing. That would not make the down payment nowadays.

But I was not aware of the famous Doctor, nor his High Altitude research. I have driven through Leadville a time or two, but it has been over 40 years since my last visit.

I'd love to know what it's like now?

08/06/23 02:47 PM

#12982

Joe,

Stil curious to know what brougth your daughter to Leadville of all places. It's a pretty out-of-the-way corner of the earth.

08/06/23 03:59 PM

#12983

Augsut 6th

World History and a small world Columbus connection.

In 1943, at the age of 32, with a wife and two little girls, and a full-time medical practice with his older brother - my dad received one of those letters from the Department of the Army that began with the words "Greetings".

Dad was being drafted into the old "Army Air Corps" (before those two branches were seperated into the present Army and Air Force). He went through basic training near Spokane with the ski troops, but was then sent to Salina, Kansas (Note; the geographical center of the United States!) to becoma a Flight Surgeon with a B-29 Squadron. I think all the B-29 instruction was held there. They needed doctors badly - thus the 32 year old married man.

After dealing with a lot of mechanical issues with the new B-29s, they were ready to go overseas. They made their way across teh Atlantic and then North Africa to a base outside of Kharagpur, near Calcutta, India. From there, they flew missions that were usually those southeast asian targets like Bangkok, Singapore etc. They then then had to build a base in southwest China in Szechuan Province. That enabled them to reach tagets closer to Japan's coal mines an steel mills in Manchuria and Mongolia.

NOTE: They lost more planes due to crashes from the high winds crossing the Himalayas, than they did to enemy fighter planes or ground fire.

As the war progressed, and we gradually tightened the ring aroud Japan, they were relocated to the Marianas - an island chain in the pacific, (Guam, Saipan, Tinian etc.). From there, they could reach the "home islands" of Japan. Their base was on Tinian.

Sometime in 1945, a new "wing" of B-29s arrived at Tinian from the States. They parked at the opposite end of the airfield, and built their own tent village for barracks. But oddly, they would not venture up to the other end of the airfiled where Dad's group was located - not even for a polite "hello". And when members of Dad's group (the 468th Bomb Group) would try to wander down to that other end of the airfield - to say hello, or start any conversation, they were met with armed guards, and forbidden to make any contact.

Dad knew the name of this group's Commanding officer becuase that guy was also from Columbus and well known by now. Dad tried to send a message down to say hello to this Colonel, but never got a reply. And Dad's commanding officer sent a written note down to that Colonel to invite him and his senior ranking officers up for a drink in their crude little "officers club" tent. He actually got a written refusal!

All this resulted in a bit of wonderment, and all of Dad's group were thinking "Who the hell do these guys think they are? What a bunch of damn Prima Donnas! They just got here! And what the hell is all this secrecy about? We didn't have to use all this security when we were in India or in China".

Then, on this day in 1945, that same Colonel from Columbus Ohio took off in a plane named after his mother - Enola Gay and dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Before they were back from their mission (about 6 or 8 hours each way - I forget?) the word was out all over the base. That pilot was Colonel Paul Tibbets, from Columbus, Ohio.

Some time after returning from the war, my dad had a new allergy patient from out near Reynoldsburg - Colonel Paul Tibbets.

08/06/23 04:22 PM

#12984

An additional small world note:

Although I heard this story from my father, I had once found (and have since lost) a letter to him from one of his old Army buddies. It detailed and reinfored the part of the story about how they were all so curious and upset about these "damn prima donnas" that "just got here". The letter was from a man in New Jersey who had been Dad's first "tent-mate" at their new base in India.

Dad explained that this was a wonderful long-time friendship from a guy who was a young Lieutenant that Dad thought, at the time, would "never amount to anything". After Dad's unit had begun having reunions their frienship was rekindled for the rest of their lives.

This guy who "would never amount to anything" was a certain John Hechinger, who had looked forward to going to work for his Uncle's hardware store in New Jersey when he got home from the War.

Yes,, that Hechinger. who would go on to build his uncle's single store into a huge hardware chain worth billions, before Johns sons or nephews would drive it into bankruptcy years later. The growth of Lowe's and Home Depot helped drive Hechingers into the ground.

08/06/23 05:55 PM

#12985

Michael McLeod

All my respect for public school teachers.

My beloved is a Montessori first/second/third grade public school teacher - in Florida, no less.

She's been preparing her classroom for weeks and tomorrow is first day for the kids and the real show to start.

I swear she trains for this mentally as professional athletes do physically.

I can see it in her eyes. They've gone away. She is with me and not with me these past few days. She has more guts than I ever will. Dealing with parents, dealing with kids, dealing with a bureacracy, a particularly judgmental and delicate and beleagured one given recent political pressures, dealing with her own perfectionist dedication to those children -- and her impatience with colleagues that do not take it all as seriously as she does. This is not to mention her fierce and protective disgust at slapdash parenting.

I've never asked and I never will but I'm sure she's the best teacher in her school. Certainly the best trained. Moved down here from d.c. where they take the Montessori lineage seriously.

I've spoken to her on the phone today but I know better than to go and see her. She's not nervous, just focused.

It may sound like I am overdramatizing but I've seen this in her for years now. Most people her age would have moved up in the bureacracy but not her. Still on the front lines of the battle. It's just how she is.

She''ll be up and gone by 630 and won't be home until 5.

Her dedication is enormous. If you met her you'd see it in a heartbeat. She humbles me.

08/06/23 06:22 PM

#12986

Mike,

All of my daughters and daughter-in-laws have been grade school teachers.

Inner city "project" kids in East LA - Montessori teacher to handi-capped kids inside the Medical School at Univ. of Cincinnati - Special reading teacher to pre-teens in Porltand, OR.

When my kids were young, I always told them that being a teacher was the "second most important job in the world".

When they asked what was the "first", I always answered, "being a mom".

08/07/23 02:38 AM

#12987

If any of you saw the video of Phllies star Bryce Harper helping this lost 7 year old find his brothers in the stadium crowd - it's just too cute for words.

Wish we could load vieos (other than You Tube) on here.

08/07/23 01:23 PM

#12988

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

I am one of the lucky ones who has had the pleasure of meeting Michael's significant other. She is truly special and her dedication to her students is both heartwarming and mindblowing. Her boyfriend isn't so bad either.

08/07/23 03:10 PM

#12989

Dave, I would have answered you sooner, but Ihad to go back and re-read both of my posts to be sure that I had said my NIECE and not my daughter. Couldn't help myself about that, but I am sure the "AI" in your computer changed niece to daughter.

After my Niece graduated from college with adegree in geology she went to Aspen area for some skiing and snowboarding. She ended up teaching snowboarding for awhile, but the housing costs (rent) was getting to her..She moved to Leadville and started working with EMT's for awhile. Met a wonderful guy, now her husband, who worked at the local mine. Now she works at the mine working the computers and I think analyzing specimens. She loves the area.

08/08/23 06:21 PM

#12990

Joe,

Are you heading for Columbus by any chance?

08/08/23 08:55 PM

#12991