Rockin' the House

Thursday night at our house is a different kind of night for us (Hobie and I).  On Thursdays my wife gets together with one of her sisters for a few hours, leaving the dog and I to our own devices. 

Tonight’s example, I’ve got coffee brewing in the Chemex and Elk Pot Roast going in the oven.  Now I’m not going to put on a fur suit and go running around the neighborhood with a spear or anything, but we’ve got a definite routine for these Thursday evenings.

Once dinner is done and the dishes are tossed out, it’s off to the living room for our special evening. The living room is carpeted, with a large soft couch and easy chair. It’s got the old popcorn ceiling, which is great for acoustics. It’s also home to …not a big screen TV, or any other visual device, but, the dreaded stereo.  I’ve been hearing “you gotta turn that damn thing down,” since I was 16.

Amp, receiver, CD Player (there is a turntable, however we’re not fully functional with vinyl yet, but one of these days), and a beautiful set of original, reconditioned, full size Advent speakers. 

Thursday nights Frank Zappa, Mountain, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, The Beatles, Chicago, Stephen Stills, The Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings, The Grateful Dead, Thursday nights they take over the living room, they play loud and long and I sing along and play along with them. Hobie howls!

I kind of wish that when I was a kid, that my parents had gotten me guitar lessons instead of the accordion. I’m learning to play the guitar on my own these days,  but, I could have been light years ahead. There has never been too much of a demand for accordion players, Polka bands and so forth. Weird Al Yankovich was able to carve out a niche, but that’s about it. I think Lawrence Welk may have played the accordion as well.

In 5^th grade I moved from accordion to trombone, I don’t know why. Maybe because the school band didn’t have a need for an accordion player, and the trumpet section was already full.  So, I invested 5 or 6 years into the trombone, again, maybe not the wisest choice. But, it was fun and I was a pretty mean trombone player, 1^st Chair, Second Trombone to those of you in the know.

One of my brother-in-laws and I have been getting together and playing music the past few years, (guitar, not accordion or trombone), and it’s what it’s supposed to be, fun.

Still, once I crank up the old stereo and get going, there is always the thought....if it had only been the guitar….

Rock on everyone! Happy Thursday.

What's that up there?

Last week’s Blood Moon, officially known as a partial lunar eclipse was pretty cool, which oddly is officially known as, pretty cool. There is synchronicity to that isn’t there? 

To put the Blood Moon in its place, there weren’t any earth ending events, no werewolves or vampires, not even much howling by the coyotes. It seems that it is simply what it was, a partial lunar eclipse.

What’s interesting, and sad in some aspects, is it’s been 43 years since Apollo 17 made the last manned lunar landing.  A lot of people around today weren’t even born the last time that happened. Kind of like LP albums, dial phones, slide rules, the internet, manners (oops, that was some kind of a psychological slip), which have all disappeared.

Growing up the entire space program was an incredible story to see unfold, being a kid at the time made it all the more exciting. In 1961 President Kennedy made the commitment to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. I’m sure most people thought he was crazy, but by the next year we had our first flight.

July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon!  Eight years from a speech to reality.  Here’s how cool the entire deal was. That summer I was at Camp Betz, Michigan, for Boy Scout summer camp. Bill Steiner, (we called him Mr. Steiner), rigged up some car batteries and who knows what else, to power a portable black and white TV so that we could watch the landing live.

 

There was a thrill in frequency of flights. Astronauts returning home were treated to ticker tape parades; 600 million watched the live landing. There was the tragedy of Apollo 1, which nearly derailed the entire space program. In spite of it and partially because of it, the Apollo program became even safer and better.

Apollo 13 is a true story and accurate movie. These guys did the nearly impossible, took a spacecraft that had exploded and got the astronauts home safe.

Next time you look up at the moon take a moment, we’ve been there.