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Tag: Bixby (Page 114 of 116)

Music for life.

December 7, 2012 /

We were on the Barren River in Kentucky. It was Thanksgiving Day and it was snowing lightly.

I was standing astride a steel-and-concrete mushroom-shaped anchor, balanced atop a rectangle of Styrofoam the size of a king-sized bed. There were two of us riding anchors, pulled by a johnboat into the deepest area of water.

The thick steel cable attached to the anchor would allow the boat marina to be winched in or out according to the river level. Our crew had a single wetsuit. I had ridden an anchor before, my coworker hadn’t. He got the protective suit.

There wasn’t much wind, but the steady pace of the boat made the cold air feel breezy enough. I was in a tee shirt, swimming suit, and tennis shoes – which would protect me from the elements only if I went in the water. No bulky warm coat to get waterlogged and drag me to the river bottom.

Once the boat had pulled the cable taut, I was to count to three and the two of us were to simultaneously roll our anchors off the Styrofoam, then leap down on the rafts as they popped up from the release of the weight. I sounded off: ONE! TWO!

At which point my buddy pushed his anchor.

Before the word ‘three’ could get out of my mouth, the weight of his sinking anchor began to drag my raft backward. Between the two mushrooms was perhaps twenty-five feet of steel cable. His anchor reached that depth in nothing flat and began dragging mine down, jerking it free of the Styrofoam, which shot into the air like a missile. I went the other direction.

When I surfaced, I looked back, expecting my coworker to be in the frigid water with me. He was kneeling on his flotation, reaching out to drag me from the water.

Me: Could have used that wet suit…

Him: Should have stayed on your foam.

The marina anchors were not set exactly according to the blueprints, but they tested fine later. I got the rest of Thanksgiving off, to try to get warm again.

That weekend, one of the locals let it slip that he was driving in to Bowling Green, a sixty mile beer-run from the dry-county forest in which we were working.

I hitched a ride and persuaded the driver to find a music store, where I bought a guitar to keep me company in the evenings. I was eighteen and had not developed any sort of taste for beer at all.

Today, a customer asked about the guitar, which is propped on a stand near the cash register. He wanted to know the story behind it and I just explained I’d had it for years and – although I have several other guitars – it is the most comfortable. He left and I did the math out of curiosity.

It was forty years ago at Thanksgiving I took a brief swim in the Barren River, and came away from that weekend with a long-term musical friend.

Top of the world. The ladder, anyway.

December 6, 2012 /

You didn’t volunteer to climb up and change my dead light bulb, so I’m dragging you along with me. I love the light fixtures in the shop but when one goes poof the thought of ascending that ladder brings back childhood fears.

In truth, in my childhood I was pretty fearless. The fear came around in later years when I realized I probably should have died during one of the neighborhood-crazy-kid stunts. Like the giant firecracker we made, emptying the powder from a pack of Black Cats into a single cardboard tube – stuck a fuse in it and ran.

Whoooooomph!

The deep-kabooom echoed off every house in the neighborhood. Needless to say, we made ourselves scarce.

No one even asked us about it, although it was such a mighty explosion that it had to have been heard inside – even those houses at the far end of the block.

Then, there was the tree house. It was little more than a platform built across the gap in a Y-shaped branch. It was probably thirty feet off the ground in an old oak. A climbing kid could get to the platform by way of the tree trunk, where tennis-shoe sized pieces of wood had been nailed into the bark. Or – there was the long pipe.

It was probably a natural gas pipe, long dark metal, from one of the several houses under construction, no doubt, held to a fork in the tree by a short piece of rope wound around and knotted. Strong-armed kids could shimmy up the pole directly onto the platform.

That’s what I was doing and I had just reached the top when the knot came untied. Right in front of my eyes. Literally. I remember staring in disbelief as the last trace of the knot came loose and the rope slowly unwound. One loop, two. Three.

At that point, I was like a pole-vaulter at the apogee of the leap, somehow stopped in place. I was balanced on a long, long pole, hanging on with a hands-and-legs-death-grip, afraid to even take a breath.

Balance doesn’t last long if you aren’t a circus employee. The pole began to lean and I rode it down, finally giving that pole-vault push off ten or fifteen feet above the ground.

I landed flat on my back and – immediately – expelled every square inch of air that had been in my lungs. I was knocked so flat that I couldn’t draw the air back in. It was like a fish out of water, pursing and puckering lips in hopes of a breath, but getting nothing.

Finally it came in with a rush and I realized the worst was over.

Until my Dad came running up. I found out later that one of the gang had run to my house and hammered on the door, yammering that I was dead, having fallen out of a tree. When my father came racing up to my still-prone self, I believe he was more out of breath than I was.

Climbing up a ladder reminds me of how it feels to smack the Earth with the backside of the human body. Hard. I’m cautious as I reach those top rungs, climbing one-handed with a fresh lightbulb in my grip.

On the highest rung that is legal, I can stand on my toes and extend my arm and fingers just high enough to catch the bulb and unscrew it. Don’t like to look down, but it is worse looking up. That requires leaning back over that empty space called air.

The bulb is changed – once the twisting starts it is a pretty quick fix – but just so you can share the feeling of that top of the ladder excitement, you can click on the image for a bird’s eye view of the shop.

I’ll climb back down for you.

Brubeck. Jazz great. Gone.

December 5, 2012 /

Today the shop is filled with violins and cellos, but on other days you might hear pianos and saxophones slipping among the book stacks. Music can set the mood or suit the mood, and a man who was good at both was Dave Brubeck.

Jazz music has always intrigued me, although I can’t claim to be one of those finger-snapping, sunglasses-wearing aficionados. I could always recognize Take Five, the Dave Brubeck standard that seemed to be extremely simple and daringly complex at the same time.

Mr Brubeck died of heart failure in Boston today, one day before his 92nd birthday.

Since WWII, the pianist has been a fixture of the modern jazz scene, but I couldn’t say whether his would be considered a household name. Certainly anyone who has dipped into the jazz genre to any depth would have come into contact with his work.

His 1959 album (that’s what they called CDs back before they got small and shiny and cased in plastic) entitled Time Out was the first jazz record to sell more than a million copies. Brubeck was the first jazz musician to appear on Time magazine, in 1954.

He played before presidents and smoky-jazz club audiences and received Kennedy Center Honors just a few years ago, reminding people (and introducing new listeners) of his unique style of music.

During the Second World War, Brubeck served in Europe under General George Patton, although he wielded sheet music instead of a rifle. His group was called the Wolfpack Band and was the only racially integrated unit in the military.

More than sixty years of music and most of those years as an active player. The likes of him won’t be seen again soon.

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