Beautiful Sunday afternoon in Middle Tennessee. Gentle breeze, puffy white clouds, 78 degrees and the promise of rain later tonight and heavy rain tomorrow, which we need again really bad. This time of year, Autumn approaching, and the hot summer about over, nature seems to pause to reflect on the year that is quickly passing. The hummingbirds are spending more time at the feeder, fighting for the good stuff with each other, to build up their strength for the big flight to South America for the Winter, I saw my first V shape of Geese circling overhead, to eventually get their bearings and head due South, the Squirrels are busy stocking their storehouse in some hollow tree and the deer are growing bolder and coming up close to the house at night to eat the good grass in the yard and succeeding in driving Buck The Collie nuts and keeping him up all night chasing them out. It's about my favorite time of year, and always was, growing up on the farm near Pleasant Hope, Missouri, when the crops were pretty much laid by, corn cut for sileage, oat hay baled and put in the barn, all the vegetables brought out of Mom's garden and canned for the Winter. High School would have been going, in 1953, my Junior year, and my social life would have picked up considerably. This year I would have a crush on Loretta Noe and taking her out about every weekend, in my 1948 Chevy Fleetline, Candy Apple Red dream car, with my new J45 Gibson, for which I had traded my Gretsch flat top and a couple hundred dollars of hay field money, safely tucked behind my driver's seat and leaning against the back seat, ready to be whipped out at a moment's notice to break into song. This breaking into song was a habit of mine, while parking in the moonlight, on the gravel bank of one of the creeks that ran into the Pomme De Terre river a few miles away. Now I thought I was creating a scene of romance, but the girls had been going to those dang California beach movies where the young dreamboats were playing guitar to the girls all right, but not singing, "Wabash Cannonball" at the top of their lungs, like I was. It took me several years to realize that my choice of musical material needed to be worked on if I wanted to score with the beautiful young Polk County maidens that inhabited those Ozark hills. By the time I came to the understanding of "mood" setting songs, it was too late, for I was overseas in some South Seas Islands, being a sailor and learning a whole new set of romantic rules to live by. Yessir, timing is everything, and choice of songs like Webb Pierce's " I'm In The Jailhouse Now", no matter how passionately it might be sung, is not conducive to passion on the creek bank. So, you kinda learn as you go along, a goof up here, a slip up there and occasionally you fix on a song that is guaranteed, you think, to do the trick...as you lean in close, puckered up and ready for the big moment....only to hear her pop her gum and say, "Let's go to the drive in and get a root beer float, I'm hungry!" Oh well, that was life on the gravel bank in 1953. -Stan
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