The Thing about Music....!

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:         The Thing about Music....!

Those Marvelous Turks make the Most Wonderful Music.. Oh and that's a Picture of Ataturk in the Background! Thank you...
(Can you Spot the Baglama?.... Or is that an Oud?)

That's Him...  That's
Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk!

    Reflection:   Is it a highly prevalent sort of contemplation, or         maybe meditation? A  practice among those who have entered     into the realm of, how shall I put this... GeezerHood, maybe?...  the     Age of "Greater Wisdom" or Elderlyness, perhaps, Historicalness     (could be?)...! Take Music, for example...

    I readily confess that my knowledge of and taste in music is         anything but exemplary, eclectic, or broad based, or extensive.  (Hope I'm not being repetitive or redundant or monotonous or     constant...   You may weigh in with your own observations about my     redundancy, if you wish!)  

   Where was I?!  Oh yes, the realm of music.  As a youngster, or an                   adolescent, I was eager to escape my home life, and thus I resolved to dash away, straw suitcase pre-packed, near at hand, or to seek and find a more propitious means of finding my way in life.

In the end, having come to my senses and having heeded advice from those brighter and perhaps more insightful than my, then, young self, I chose to enlist in the U.S. Armed Services.  You know...  ready availability of shelter, food, clothing, etc.    

Fresh out of secondary school, I reported to the local military recruitment center, swore

the appropriate oath, and before I could ask myself, "What the hell are you doing, you ridiculous bubblehead?..." I was on a Braniff flight, bound for a basic training center in Texas.  The weather was hot in June!  We did a lot of sweating.

Eventually, if we were well behaved (or our training leaders, perhaps, were sick of the sight of us!), we were offered what our lead Training Sergeant termed, "a Patio Break."  The music on its ancient jukebox was exclusively Country, not a standard nor an aria nor an R&R tune within ear shot.  I began to taste straw and alfalfa; I imagined tucking my thumbs into bib overalls, drawling and dribbling "Dixie Speak" and lots of Y'all's, Yonders, Reckons and fixins!

After suffering through the ear-piecing bellowing of training sergeants, calisthenics far too aplenty, "Attentions," "Forward or Backward Marches," and more insults than even my own dear father heaped upon me, I was dispatched to a training school in another

Texas location.  (Thought I'd never get out of Texas...), not to mention never hear another but a country ballad by George Jones, Buck Owens, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Bob Wills, Texas "Fats" Pimpslee...   Hell, even a quite young Willie Nelson?

Then, before I could ask my pal, Rex Winkle, who originated from an obscure village in Southern Utah, "Hey, y'all goin don to the boozy waterin' hole made just for enlisted trash...?" I was sent to a strange foreign land...  TURKEY!  That extraordinary land southeast of

Bulgaria, south of the Black Sea, southwest of Georgia and Armenia, west of Hellas (or Greece, to lots of Americanos!)...  where I listened to lots of Turkish music...

Dede Efendi, Serdar Yilmaz, Baha Yetkin...  and the beautiful tunes of the famous, Zeki Muran (two dots above the "u), including "Let's Tweest Agin Lak We deed Last Sooomer"!  Zeki was the Turkish answer to...  I don't know...  maybe Elvis, maybe Bill Haley...  

We listened to that and other of Zeki's fabled melodies whilst speeding along dark, narrow, gravely roads at night courtesy of our favorite taxi driver, Hikmet, his ancient cab fitted with a 45 RPM record player buried somewhere in the dash board!  He spent more time looking at us in the back seat recommending others of Zeki's modern tunes!  "Face forward, look at the road!!..." someone hollered, brow dripping with sweat!

I mean, the point of all of this is this:   I missed my teenage music years!  Had no idea who were the Beatles, Everly Brothers, Byrds, Doors, Stones, Who, Floyd Pink, Beach Guys...   Truth is, I am very fond of all sorts of music -- Rock, Blues, Standards, Opera,

Who the hell are these oddly
appareled guys again??

Classical stuff, Country too...   It's just that I missed the 60s!  (I was keeping the world safe for democracy after all!!...  something like that!!)

When at last I matriculated, that is, entered University Life, having been honorably dismissed from military service, I had no idea what the hell my classmates or contemporaries were talking about!   "Who the devil are the Shondells, the Rhondells, Pips, people Grateful to be Dead??!!"  I was lost, out of it, ridiculed, but I could sing "Merhaba," "Nasilsinez," "Bishey Deyil," "Teshaker Ederim," and of course "Let's Tweest Again......."   

I should of course mention that one of my military compatriots in Turkey (there were four of us to a barracks room!) had a boat load of 33-1/3 RPM recordings of Warbling Persons...   E.g.  Julie London, Frankie Sinatra, Dean-o, Sammy Davis Junior Junior, Perry C., Billie, Nat, Ray, Mario, Ella, Bing, Pat, Dinah, Judy, Tony, Louie, Eartha, Dorseys, Mills Bros., Woody, Sarah, Fats, Vaughn, Mel Torme (I just remembered his surname!)

In the 70s and 80s I caught up with Willie, Waylon and the boys, having been indoctrinated by them on the aforementioned "Patio's"...  State Fairs, Summerfests, other concert venues!  I'm still a bit dense about popular music.  I constantly ask SweetHeart, Tad, and others, "Who's that?"....  Who sang, "Norwegian Wood Floors...  Do I like that one, SweetHeart"...? 

And thus, to end this foolish reminiscence, I apologize to music purists, to those with encyclopedic knowledge of modern tunes and their composers and singers of songs!  I apologize to Bob, John, George, Ringo, Paul, Norman, Tad and SweetHeart...  (Was there a Norman?)...

(Special Note of Dedication:  For SweetHeart, Tad, Alie, Bethie...  and for those four "insect guys," Zeki (who's probably dead), that saloon owner in Okauchee, and all others dedicated and devoted to all manner of music and to keeping memories alive and tunes warbled when lyrics and melodies or wandering notes wafting on the winds of time enter their thoughts!)

Humbly Submitted 07-16-2025 -- Joel K.

 

   

Good Gosh!... Canals??!! Have We Been Spirited (Moved?) onto a Narrow Boat?... Ridiculous??!!...

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:           Good Gosh!...  Canals??!!  Have We Been Spirited                                                (Moved?) onto a Narrow Boat?...  Ridiculous??!!...

What is it about relocating in the Age of Geezerhood that's strange, almost ghostly, like a haunting!  I look about myself and I'm on the stern, tiller in hand, ploughing resolutely on a slender canal, slowly, as if having just having acquired my own narrow boat.  Have to reach my destination...  many canal miles to navigate!!...   

Its predominant color is dark blue, the boat, that is.  "Geezer One -- Destination Unknown!" painted boldly in brilliant white, emblazoned on the side, in unmistakably large lettering!  "Not for Hire"!  I recognize the font!  It's "Shrikhand Bold."  I'm quite certain...  

(I think I acquired this font during one of my recent attempts at fashioning a logo design for a client...  Good Grief!!  Was the client a British narrow boater??!)  

Very strange indeed, eerie.  I awake in the night gripping the tiller, knuckles white, bulging.  My hand cramping!  I cannot seem to release my vise-like grip.  My thoughts

So many tunnels in the
canals!  Scary sometimes!  

slip from sloshing water, bleating sheep, honking and quacking geese and ducks.   I moor along the tow path side, tied up to a bollard, sweating profusely...  I pad to the kitchen and check the batteries, walk cautiously along the gunwales to check the elevation of the solar panels at the top of the boat...    

Wait a minute....   What!!??  I'm in the bathroom.  I grip the sink.  Turn on the faucet and splash water on my exhausted

mug.  Still, I rock back and forth as if the motion of the narrow boat and those passing on my left cause a wake and an uneasy loss of balance! A passing captain, right hand on his own tiller, waves with his left!  Smirking!  Who was that?  Someone I know?...,

Insane! bizarre!  It's the move, the relocation.  Odd dreams?  Panic?  Maybe it's "Narrow Boat Journeys"?  Television programs show them on certain, strange streaming channels!  Maybe that's it...   Channels, Canals...!!!  Is that the catalyst??!!

I must get back into bed.  I must sleep.  I must focus my thoughts away from Narrow Boats and thousands of miles of British canals.  Realign dreams!  In another incarnation,

Ghost Canal Boat?  Was it actually 
lost under the turbid ripples?  Does it plow
aimlessly, Haunting the canals
to this very day?

perhaps?  Transporting coal to foundries and iron works!?  That damn steam train!  It's destroying our haulage business...  We'll lose everything...  Wait, I'm awake again.  It's that "alarm-like" freight train just south of our building, across the river!  Couple of hundred noisy freight cars and oil tankers, clanking along steel rails!...  Making a hell of a racket!!

The steady clacking of the narrow boat engine.  Four miles an hour...  I'll never get to wherever the hell I'm going...   More sheep!  Swans dart across my bow, paddling furiously for the safety of the other side of the canal!  DRAT and BLAST!  I drop my windlass into the canal.  I must don my snorkel and sea goggles and execute a search.  I hate plunging into the filthy canal soup!  I must recover the windlass!!...  Without it I cannot raise the paddles, cannot allow water to flood the lock chamber!!...  

I'm submerged in the liquidity of the dream.  A length of rope is caught in the propeller,

something else....   trapped...  weeds, snarled, waterlogged, putrid, immoveable...  I must raise the weed hatch, stare below, remove the tangled mass...  Can't motor forward...

Obsessed?!  Alas!  Most likely!  Watching too many Narrow Boat adventures.  "Cruising the Cut," "Great Canal Journeys"...  others perhaps?...  That's the trouble.  They invade my dreams...  Hypnotic images!  Those darn things are taking over my usual fantasies!!  I'm drowning in them!  Waterlogged!  That's the whole trouble.  I must start watching mountain climbing adventures...   No...  I might sleep walk, climb, trip...  fall off the balcony!!  HELP!!

Humbly submitted 07-10-2025 -- Joel K.