Joy Behar squinted. Her remaining few neurons seemed to be undecided, wishing to be told if they should jump into the outrage or shocked bin.
Not waiting to find out , I turned my back to the TV, and headed out the door. Even if it was sleeting, outside was better than watching The View in the car dealership waiting room. Good thing warranty work is free. (The folks at Kia of Lynchburg were exceptionally nice, for the record.)
There, by the side of Old Forest Road, stood a bench. It faced strangely out to the street. There was no bus stop, and I had no box of chocolates, but like Mr. Gump, I took a seat, and begin to peer at the drivers as they zipped by. Ah, now this is a good change of pace.
Down the street, an excavator scooped dirt. Biscuitville would be closed for a bit. It was currently a pile of rubble, waiting to be reborn a phoenix…with gravy. The operator was deft. I’ve been moving firewood with a mini-excavator lately. If I were at the controls, the neighboring gas station would also be undergoing an unplanned renovation. Directly across, the flags flew at half-mast. God Save the Queen.
Katy said it would be about ninety minutes. It was time for a roam.
Past Dunkin’…past the radio station, low and forbidding. Wal-mart waved, but I kept walking.
It had been a minute. Driving and then walking brought back memories of learning mechanics. Fortunately, this time, an auto-parts store wasn’t the destination. (Emergency cooling fan fixes are usually a lost cause, anyway. “Don’t ever cook a cylinder head that bad again” machine shop Bill had admonished. And he built race car motors.)
Shaking off the creeping feeling of having blown something up, my shoes carried me past Subway. How many subs have I eaten? This time, I didn’t have a guitar on my back. It wasn’t a wander through a strange city, playing street music and making videos, all aboard a train in the wee hours. Gosh those rail tours were fun, and Subway the fuel for the trip. I keep hearing whistles in the distance, and they seem to be calling. But then the authentic Mexican restaurant and tire shop distracted me, and I wandered on.
A shabby palace graced the parking lot with the warm smell of Chinese food, Emperor MSG benevolent in the September sun.
Mmm….Food. The shopping center didn’t have any other options. I walked on. Gracious walnut, sycamore, cherry, and locust trees hosted the late summer crickets.
What was it about this day?
Ah!
If the height of Summer was a brilliant youth, these September days are a high school reunion. The trees and clouds gather, mellowed in their 40’s, smiling bittersweetly about their antics at 17.
“Do you remember that July evening when it was a million degrees, and all the cicadas showed up to play the gig?”
“Or how about those Sunday afternoons by the river?”
Summer reminisced. I was content to stroll, an object of only slight suspicion in a blue shirt, with a notepad.
Today’s Beethoven
Continuing the new Friday tradition of sharing a gem of humanity, and working our way through Beethoven’s symphonies, here’s Symphony No. 2. Andres Orozco-Estrada leads the Frankfurt Symphony in this 2016 performance of Beethoven’s 1802 composition. Not everyone liked it at first. “One Viennese critic for the Zeitung fuer die elegante Welt (Newspaper for the Elegant World) famously wrote of the Symphony that it was "a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death."
Tough crowd. People have come around since then…
Happy Friday!