Waking up to Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, June Tabor and Gram Parsons

Waking up to Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, June Tabor and Gram Parsons isn't a bad way to wake up if you have to be in the hospital. Found a free service that has a wide selection of music. There are 25 free plays per month, but it keeps resetting my remaining selections to the upper teens or low 20s. I'll take it. Just finished listening to Banks of the Guadalupe and am about to listen to Red Chevrolet. All hospital rooms should come with this rather than the television. At $13.00/month for individual subscriptions, they should be able to work a deal with the company that would likely be a fraction of cable television, the full menu of which is blacked out here, anyway. It is a much more relaxing way to write this.

Listening to some of what I refer to as "my music," that is, music that instantly calls up a time, a place, a mood, I realize how much this stuff means to me. In my "lost years" from December, 1966 to June, 1986, I remember always being around music one way or another, whether it was at a concert, live music or the jukebox in some bar, or at someone's house or in a car or truck, music always seemed to be playing, although there are those who argue that it's just the road buzz in my head from 19 1/2 years of turning down just one more highway, following one more lead to Utopia. "And I saw my devil and I saw my deep blue sea; and I thought about a calico bonnet from Cheyenne to Tennessee." That's from the Flying Burrito Brothers' song Return of the Grievous Angel.

It took me nearly 20 years to find that calico bonnet (and she didn't even have the decency to be wearing one, but I recognized her anyway) and I had to go further from Cheyenne to Tennessee. Had to go to Washington, D.C. and let her find me sitting on a park bench at about 6:00 in the evening of June 25, 1986. She was from Connecticut and I was from the road. After making a rubbing of her brother's name off the Viet Nam Memorial for her, I walked her to a free concert on the Capitol lawn. Later we went for a few beers and then I walked her back to her hotel. She asked me to meet her there for coffee in the morning and I agreed. We met for coffee and then she was on her way back to Connecticut after giving me her phone number and telling me to call her if I ever got up that way. Nine days later I was in Connecticut with everything I owned.

Now, that was July 4, 1986 and "everything I owned," consisted of a change of clothes, a razor and a toothbrush, along with a spiral notebook and some kind of reading material, the name of which I forget, all of which was packed in a gray cordura bookbag. A more disreputable looking person never graced the bar of the Stamford Marriott from which I called her, only to discover that I was not in Stratford. My ears had not been attuned to the loudspeaker on the commuter train on which I was riding and I mistook Stamford for Stratford, only a 20-mile error. She came and picked me up, anyway. From there, it took me three years to get her to marry me and even then she had people telling her not to do it. I don't bear them any grudges, however, since I was cut pretty rough and the first eight years of our marriage were hell for her due primarily to my drinking. Once I got myself cleaned up, we still had another eight years and a few months, not enough time, to be sure, but it was all good time. We were married for 16 years, 8 months and 5 days. That one song, Return of the Grievous Angel, sort of replays my whole life until I met Mary. It signifies the end of one time and the beginning of another. Good stuff.