Music Is An Old Friend

I know I have mentioned music a lot, but for most of my life it has been the one thing that could always take me back home again. When you leave home as little more than a boy you grab at anything familiar because you're so homesick, and music was the first and best way I had of doing that, no matter if I was across the country or on the other side of the world. For example, even today when I hear "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel, I remember the day walking along Commerce Street when I first realized I knew all the words to it, and when I hear Percy Sledge sing "When a Man Loves a Woman", I'm sitting in a booth in Richesin's Drug Store drinking a cherry Coke, and when I hear "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf I can still hear my grandma yelling "Turn that stuff down!!"

It's also funny how some song are presented one way, but sung another way. An example of this is "Coal Miner's Daughter" by Loretta Lynn. If you look up the lyrics on the internet they will be written one way, but Loretta sang them another way --- just the way my grandma talked. The opening line is written, "I was born a coal miner's daughter", but Loretta sang it as "I was borned a coal miner's daughter". Later on it says "The work we done was hard, at night we'd sleep 'cause we were tired," but that came out as ".... at night we'd sleep 'cause we were tard". Only someone from our part of the country can rhyme tired with hard.

Anyway, that's what I mean by music being such a friend. Nothing else I know of has such a firm grip on my memories and can bring any one of them racing into my mind, quicker than a song can. I can't help smiling when I hear "I Want to Make it With You" by Bread, because it reminds me of someone, and I even today I still cry a little every time I hear "Amazing Grace" because I think I heard it at every funeral I ever went to when I was growing up, even my grandma's.

I bought a guitar once and was going to learn how to play it, but found out I was too tone deaf to tune it by myself. I still can't play any musical instrument, but I can play a really mean radio! ;)