Frozen Memories

Ah, an icy, cloudy, windy, January winter day. I'm feeling as moody as the young Jesse Winchester says he feels in one of his first musical albums written and sung when he was an anti-Vietnam War expatriot living in Montreal. And I'm listening to what I think is one of the most beautifully, romantically sad songs I've ever heard: Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country," but being sung in this c.d. by Johnny Cash's daughter, Roseanne Cash. If you're ever able to hear the song, note the batch of strong verbs which Dylan uses (in one line, unfortunately, Roseanne substitutes "has a coat" for Dylan's stronger "wearing a coat").

January also reminds me of my newspaper route in winter in my youth. At the tail end of the route on the outskirts of town was a new bakery, and it became my new customer. The bakery was opened by a family team of four from North Carolina, people who in those days struck us locals as redneck hillbillies. Nonetheless, they kindly would have me end my grinding, cold route by giving me two free cups of freshly brewed coffee and three or four free doughnuts. But, ugh, those "foreigners" didn't know how to make good coffee; they dripped it in a large old pot, and the result was a greenish brew with grounds floating atop the served cup. More welcomed than the "coffee" were the two-dozen or so tasty doughnuts which they insisted I take home, because such doughnuts were misshaped and thus unattractive to their customers.

God bless people from Minnesota and North Carolina!

-Old Gargoyle