Over the River and Over the Hill

You can get anything you want

At Alice's Restaurant.

You can get anything you want

At Alice's Restaurant.

Walk right in, it's around the back

Just a half a mile from the railroad track.

You can get anything you want

At Alice's Restaurant.

Is there another song about Thanksgiving? The only one I even dredged up from childhood is "Over the River," but it doesn't say a dang thing about Thanksgiving Day. Could be about Christmas. Probably is.

But not The Alice's Restaurant Massacree. Definitely about Thanksgiving. Well, at least it happened during a Thanksgiving holiday. Whew! Every national holiday should have a song or two. Some have jillions. Poor Thanksgiving. Guess it's a holiday turkey.

A cool thing happened this evening: the International Space Station flew -- and I mean hauled ass! -- over our house tonight. It was astonishingly bright. And it had a trailer. There was another, dimmer light moving right behind it; keeping up with its speed and trajectory; very close, relatively speaking, and...what was it? No idea. It was weird. Loved it! I'm wondering if we'll hear an explanation for it, because it had to be apparent to any viewer.

Anyway, thanks Arlo, for mentioning Thanksgiving in a great song...a long time ago, sure, but that's part of what makes it a classic.

Thanks!

Friends, family, and fun

Laughter, songs, and love

Life, liberty, pursuing happiness

These make living as good as it gets.

Got all these plus food, clothing, shelter, reasonably good health, and enough money to get by on? Yay! You're rich and can be grateful and thankful not just this week, but from now on.

Yeah, I get sentimentally sappy and preachy now that I'm old(er) and staring down the barrel of mortality. I have all those things today, and most people I know do, too. Man, are we lucky! The trick is to never forget it. The better trick would have been to learn it sooner.

For the Birds

They come in swarms each fall

In grayscale paisley swirls

Covering trees and the pastures

Of our five-acre world.

They land hard on the roof

Like pouring, driving rain

Looking like incoming bombers —

A thousand fighter planes.

Birds of a feather flock together. Boy, howdy! We get flocks of geese, flocks of ducks, and flocks of cranes flying over during the year. Nice. And in Austin, we had flocks of grackles; not so nice.

But we also get mammoth hordes of flying starlings that fill the sky, make the bare trees look like they've grown brown leaves when they land there, and make the ground look like an undulating life form when they land in the pastures. You can't see their heads; just their bodies moving. You'd think you were hallucinating.

But these birds are real, and they put Hitchcock's movie to shame. I was napping in a living room chair when they came, and the sound on the roof woke me up. I was disoriented at first, because it was not raining. Then I realized they were back.

I'm talking thousands and thousands of birds moving like an amoeba through the sky and then settling to peck at who knows what on the winter ground. The volume of their squawking defies description. "Noisy" doesn't begin to define it. It's unearthly.

When I sit in front of a window and watch them flying to land on the roof, it reminds me of the old WWII movies and shorts showing planes filling the skies, endless airplanes seemingly so close together you'd think they'd crash into each other...or the window. Neither ever happens.

Parts of this living cloud settles at slightly different rates, in different places. It's like being engulfed in fog; then it clears. The sight is mesmerizing and slightly terrifying. Then, as if of one mind, they all fly away in an eery, almost silent whoosh! You can feel the flapping of their wings more than see it; their departure sounds like a deep sigh of relief.

I Would Sing

Time changes many things,

Some simply to suit fashion.

I've learned nothing ever lasts

Except for deepest passion.

Some people write hit Broadway plays;

Some play upon their looks.

Some bare their skin in magazines;

Some bare their souls in books.

When I am asked what I would choose

If I could do just one thing,

I say, "I would sing."

I sing all the time, and I'm terrible at it. No ear; can't carry a tune. So what? It's fun, so I do it anyway. Jim just says, "Sing it, hon" and doesn't even laugh. Much.

I wish I'd pursued my piano lessons; I wish I could ride in a fighter jet; and I wish I could sing. It's such a freeing thing to do — just belt something out and let whatever you're feeling sail into the universe unfettered and unstoppable.

I wonder if musicians feel this way about the notes they play?

The Reason God Made Caller ID

I hate to hear the phone ring;

Too often it's the same thing —

It's you again, and I don't want to hear it.

I wait to hear the caller's voice,

And this gives me an easy choice:

I let you leave a message, then I clear it.

I think it's time I changed my way

Even though I'll have to pay

A monthly charge of ten or eleven dollars.

I'll be able, then, to see

The number and identity

Of every single one of my phone-callers.

Please get the message and just let me be.

You're the reason God made Caller ID.

Dear friends and family, this is NOT directed at you. Callers — strangers — asking for my time or money, intruding into my home, and thinking that if one call doesn't get results, more will....can go to hell.

We used to answer our phone whenever it rang, confident that the person on the other end was somebody we'd be happy to chat with. Those days are gone now, and to me it's another erosion of our civil right to not be harassed at home.

I've had to add a monthly expense.

Caller ID has become self-defense.

At least my blood pressure is down to 110 over 60. My doctor said people would pay for that BP. I told her I am. Ten or eleven dollars a month.

A Whole 'Nother Country

I'm heading in the southbound lane

Away from all I know

To find a brand of happiness

That I can call my own.

I'm heading in the southbound lane

To chart my life's new course

But I keep meeting my heart head-on

'Cause it's going back north.

Almost 40 years ago — man! I can't even believe I can say things like that, much less realize I was already 21 then — in 1971, I moved. Vietnam War protests on campuses everywhere had shortened the semester; we'd shut down the college. Chris and I had gone to Padre Island with four of our Columbian Connection friends for spring break. I'd done my student teaching in Spanish at Lee's Summit High School, under my old Spanish teacher. I graduated from MU but skipped the ceremony, thank you.

It was time to go.

This was maybe the first time I did something truly nutty — at least that I remember — and it was big. As big as Texas. I decided I would move to Austin to live. I had grown up on horses and wanted to be able to ride more than 6 months out of the year, and I was sick of Missouri winters. I had no car, no job, no money, and didn't know a soul in Austin. But Mom did. At least she had a car and a good friend, PK, whom she'd gone to college with at UT. And I guess she had some money, because she and Dad paid for everything. Not that I gave that a thought then.

So for some weird reason, they let me go. Maybe they figured they couldn't stop me. I'm not sure. Anyway, she drove me and LL, a college friend who decided she'd go spend the summer with me in Texas, to Austin. With my dog, Sadie. I remember that drive very clearly, and writing that chorus above. I was torn, because everyone I loved was in Missouri, but I was also determined.

It must have pained Mom greatly, but she left us there in an apartment with a beagle to feed and no jobs. They shipped my stuff down to me on a moving van. I tried to get work teaching Spanish, but they had lots of native speakers; who needed me. Besides, I don't think I was overly motivated. So LL and I drove an ice-cream truck. Transportation, income, and meals all in one! What a deal.

That was the beginning of my huge, long, enduring love affair with Texas. Chris says it started when we drove through on spring break; she's probably right. She has a much better memory about things than I do. All I really remember about that is it was the first time I saw an "ocean," and I learned I don't like them. We had fun...among the jellyfish and tar and constantly blowing wind and sand. The Gulf of Mexico is a sewer.

Sorry; I digress. I'd gone from Minnesota to Missouri to Texas — a line drawn south that has repeated throughout my life. From Texas I went to Colorado; back to Missouri; back to Texas; to Kentucky; to Missouri; to Texas; to Colorado. I'm telling this because if you trace those points in sequence on a map, it ends up looking like a giant arrow shooting straight into Texas.

It's a magnet for my soul, and I expect I'll go back someday to stay. Maybe just as ashes. My dad's ashes are there; some of Mom's. Lots of people I love still there. I'll be in good company. I'll be home.

But not for at least 40 more years! The ashes part, I mean.

Oh. I never got a horse again.