Along Pancake Hollow Road

Dropped my little one off at school and told her to “show em’ what you got.”  There is the same wainscoting on the walls that was there when I attended school here.  I can see my high school mates in my mind, bouncing around that room, cutting out from class to escape back up to their dorm rooms.  A strange setting then, we share, separated by nearly forty years. 

Left at the stop light, down towards Kingwood park, past a remarkable row of silver maples that must be two hundred years old each. The leaves don’t turn as early or as remarkably as sugar maples or red maples, but they are now a lovely canopy of yellow that have finally begun dropping their covering.  Fiddling with the radio I default to WFMU.  The Clay Pigeon is on, with his program: “Wake and Bake.”  He’s wonderful.  I don’t necessarily like every song he throws on, but its as if someone where culling from my old record collection and pulling out things like The Fall and The Misfits and things I never would have claimed like what he’s just thrown on now from Black Sabbath. 

And it doesn’t sound so bad, forty years on from when I would have died before before suggesting I enjoyed such a song.  He treats the remembrance of each member of the band so thoughtfully and genuinely, that he softens my heart to this plodding rock dirge with its long reptilian tail.  And he plays a little Covid alert update, and once again, his concern for people is genuine and his advice poignant and appropriate. 

 

Later driving along Pancake Hollow Road, the long way home from 44/55 back over towards 299, there are trees that are ablaze with impossible color.  These iridescent reds and electric oranges are some common that we become anesthetized to their marvel.  There are trees along this road that stand out even among all the shocking colors.  The Pidge has thrown on The Stranglers.  I don’t know the song but it sure sounds like the Stranglers, it's that same aggressive base and whirling organ.  Strange to be reminded of the time, when I was my daughters age, trying to figure out who they were and how they fit in to the Punk Rock pantheon.

 

 

 

Tuesday, 10/20/20