Memory

I had a cool memory today. My friends Fred and Laura have introduced me to the web site http://www.pandora.com/. If you've never checked it out - I HIGHLY recommend it. It's the coolest website I've ever visited. I am addicted! I've heard so much great music, and I've been introduced to artists that I've never heard before. Go check it out!! It's amazing!

I wanted to share this site with a friend of mine who works here at the hospital. He and I had a discussion back in January about how hard it was to find good music on the radio these days. About how much trash there was out there plus you have to listen to all that yacking, which drives me insane. So I wrote down the link and some artist recommendations to kind of get him started and took them down to my friend. It was cool - he hadn't ever heard of the site either, so I actually got to introduce it to somebody else!! He got to telling me about an AM radio station that he used to listen when he was working in Kentucky. It was out of a university and was kind of a cross between a student-run station and an NPR station. He talked about how much great music he heard on that station when he could catch just right and tune it in.

And this memory came to my mind so clearly and so powerfully, it was like yesterday.......

It was at Christmas time in 1978. I had just finished my third semester at Appalachian State University and promptly dropped out, much to the profound dismay and disgust of my hard-working parents. My father's rule was our college experience was a one-shot deal and if you quit - that was it, his duty was done and we were on our own. And he meant on our own!! We were welcome to come home to visit but not to live. My father always meant what he said. Always. Six years later, when I returned to college, it was on my own dollar and I found myself wishing I could have had the benefit of foresight.........

I had just dropped out of school and was working at the ski slope on Beech Mountain. I was not quite 20. My father bought me a car!! I was floored. I was so surprised. He certainly saved me from a lot of struggle!! He told me that if I was going to drop out of school and work full-time I was going to need a car. It was his seeing-me-off-into-adulthood gift. It was a 1966 Volkswagon Beetle. It had a six-volt battery, dim headlights, and the automatic defrost was opening the window! Somtimes the windshields wipers worked, sometimes they did not. I loved that car. I had that car for 3 1/2 years. I drove the hell out of it!! I drove it everywhere!! It could go anywhere in the snow. It could go miles and miles on a gallon of gas. It had 135,000 miles on it when I got it, and I put another 135,000 miles on it before an obnoxious rich kid in his dad's station wagon pulled out in front of me on Highway 221 and totalled it. I cried for days. I grieved over the loss of that car.

The particular memory I had today was about the night I drove home to the mountains in that new-old car. I was only in Raleigh at my parents for two days because it was Christmas time and I was working at the ski slope - a busy time at the ski slopes. My mother made me a rust-colored wool poncho that year for Christmas with a hood on it and a big pocket on the front. Very hippie-ish, I loved it. I thought I looked very cool in that poncho (plus it was very warm which I would soon learn was quite important in that little VW for all parts of your body except for your feet - which tended to cook). So I loaded up my stuff and put on my new poncho and headed back to the mountains. It was the first of hundreds of drives I would make, alone, and then later alone with my children, between Raleigh and Boone over the next 15 years. It was that night that I started to realize how much I love to travel. Short distances or long distances, places known or unknown, it doesn't matter to me - I just like the adventure.

When I was coming up the mountain from Wilkesboro to Deep Gap, I got a radio station on that little AM radio that was being broadcast out of Ohio or Kentucky or Missouri - somewhere in that part of the country. It was coming a LONG way!! It was a folkie station and they were playing some great music. Some I'd never heard before, some that was as familiar as the songs I played myself on my beat-up Yamaha classical guitar. It was an absolutely crystal clear night. The stars were blazing over head. They were breath-taking. And I remember, more than anything, that I was filled with the great gift, the great sense of "possibility". I felt like I could do anything, go anywhere, be whoever I decided to be. And there was no hurry in making the decision. Not then. I had time and youth and that lingering adolescent sense of immortality that would stay with me until I became a parent myself!

I remember coming across the mountain and looking back over my shoulder and down into the valley below. The sight left me breathless, overwhelmed, in love with my new home - the beautiful western North Carolina mountains. And the music - that clear, lovely music from the heartland of America - my own personal soundtrack - folk music as ever and always.

I hadn't thought about that night for many years. It was a wonderful, small gift my mind gave to me today. Left me smiling, with an inside smile that's lasted all afternoon.

Pretty cool, huh?
Peace.