One Particular Harbor In the Shelter

You knew summer was upon you, and the annual beach trip was kicking off, when mom reached for the battered and much abused tape "Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude" (Nothing Remains Quite the Same). The famous B side? "Alice's Restaurant" with it's famous eponymous song, and that other well known ditty "I Don't Want A Pickle"...possibly, one of the only songs in the world with the word "pickle" in the title. And circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.

I guess you had to be there.

Every summer of my childhood that we would head to Jekyll, MidSis, LilSis and I would be singing Buffet in the back seat of the car. We would hit the turn off from I-95, and just as you could start to smell the sulfur from the paper mill, insist on rolling down all the windows and turning off the air conditioner so we could smell the salt in the air. All of our hair would come down, and I swear if our parents would have let us we'd have hung our heads out of the car window like small dogs and panted into the wind.

As a family, we are that much in love with the ocean.

So when I hear things like "mother, mother ocean...after all the years I've found...my occupational hazard being....my occupations just not around"...it really resonates. If you listen to early Jimmy, when he and his life were an absolute mess, you can hear all his happiness and pain resonate in his lyrics. Lyrics are poetry...and the most valuable contribution that I think the written word leaves for anyone, regardless of form, is that you end up knowing that someone, somewhere, at some point in time felt the same way you do.

Anyway, the show was great. Jimmy is an entertaining performer. It's been almost a decade since I've seen him last; he hasn't changed but the audience sure has. Or maybe I have? Now the audience is full of teenagers and people much older. Parking was entertaining. We parked at a lot run by (no shit, the sign said this) "Fat Man's Parking", and that was no exaggeration on his part. He was enormous. And charged twenty bucks! But we parked in his front yard, and walked about three blocks to the show. I won't talk about the cost of everything else....but the one beer I did have was twelve bucks. For a Bud.

The sky was clear, the stars were out, everyone sang, and even the really intoxicated people were in a good mood, and if they passed out, they just rolled over into a corner somewhere and went to sleep.

And I sang every damn song at the top of my lungs and danced like a fool. And beer makes me cry, even when I'm happy (another reason not to drink it).

So for your weekend, I leave you with this parting thought:

"Where it all ends I can't fathom my friends,
If I knew, I might toss out my anchor.
So I'll cruise along always searchin' for songs,
Not a lawyer, a thief or a banker.

But a son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor.
Son of a gun, load the last ton
One step ahead of the jailer
I'm just a son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor.
The sea's in my veins, my tradition remains.
I'm just glad I don't live in a trailer."