Gunnz and Mother's

There's a lot of nostalgia for an imaginary 50's of gee-whizz and golly-shucks, as if it were ever so pure and innocent, and girls never said "Yes!" till their wedding night. Gunn me down, daddy-o.


Henry Mancini, "Theme from Peter Gunn"


It's all class, the coolest hip and the hottest swing on the back side of the sixties. Man Oh Man. The cats are crazy and the chicks can dig it. Just down the steps, grab a table, pull up a listen to the jazz at Mother's. Waa-waah! Waa. Smooth jazz, easy and smart. The fifties: when guys had haircuts, wore suits and fedoras; the gals in tailored dresses, high heels and hairspray. The hoods were snazzy and sleazy and died in gun fights on rain-slick streets with the cops blazing justice; the homeless were hobos who guzzled Thunderbird by the gallon and died in ditches on the wrong side of the tracks on the far edge of town. What a happening time it had to be.

Father Knows Best? Ah, to be at Mother's with Peter Gunn.

Moon River

At night in the mountains the moon rises full and shines down into the valley where the river runs past the little village that twinkles houselights in the blackness. Way up on the roadside at the pass there's a wood-framed white clapboard church with a small gravel parking lot, the rest of the area being over taken by tall grass that sways in the wind, the grass blowing like a girl's soft, long blond hair. I sit there sometimes, (used to,) and I'd listen to the freight-train coming through the village, eight toots as it approached, the sound echoing up the valley and to the church and me. I stood there once, looking down a mile, and a giant rat ran between my legs, Colossus of Roads.

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.

Me and my dad used to go trout fishing some evenings, giving it up only after the bats came out of abandoned mine shafts, bats slamming into our lines, fouling our fishing. I would have stayed if only to sit by the campfire, gazing at the dancing lights, sipping coffee, listening to the hoot owls.

Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.

There were giant pines in the forest, and birds, like the wood-pecker who laid her eggs in a hollow; and we watched for days the eggs till they hatched and little wood-peckers chirped for mother.

Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.

Caught our limit of cutthroat trout one evening, a whole school going crazy for our flies, us reeling them in one after another, the fish jumping straight out of the water, and crashing back in and diving for freedom.

We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,

Slowly wandered off and came to this point all this life-time later. Never coulda, never woulda guessed.

my huckleberry friend,

Moon river, and me....


And there was me on the river in Africa, floating down in the moon-light. Such a lot of world to see.

Andy Williams, "Moon River": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Y2AmcfI6o