(Published June 23, 2009)
Brazen morning light greets me as I drive north on US 53. I’m on my way to Virginia, Minnesota to lounge in my EZ Up tent and sell books at the Land of the Loon Festival. The tires of my Pacifica slap blacktop. Each ridge, each seam in the roadway sounds a discordant beat; a rhythm at odds with the music of the Three Dog Night tune playing on the radio. As I drive, I ruminate. I remember my first real date with a lovely little girl named Kim. I always liked her. Still do. She was a friend, someone I could talk to. Except, of course, when I became interested in her. Then things sort of fell apart. Not just the relationship, as brief as it was, but our friendship too. I didn’t understand that a man and a woman can be involved and still be friends. In fact, that’s what keeps my thirty-two year marriage to Rene’ alive. Why am I thinking about an isolated date with a girl (now a woman and a middle-aged one at that!) I haven’t seen in twenty years? Three Dog Night. That’s what Kim and I did on our first date: went to see Three Dog Night at the height of the band’s career in 1973. I don’t normally listen to old 70s pop-rock but the band happens to be on “Tent Show Radio”. The band’s sound seems less rock and more pop-maybe to cover up the fact that the boys can’t hit the high notes like they once did. Who can?
Anyway, thinking about Kim and visiting with folks in my booth reminds me that we are, despite the song lyric at the heading of this post, never truly going it alone. Each of us, whether we sing stale old rock ballads underneath a canvas tent in northwestern Wisconsin in the company of aging hippies, or try to hawk books to strangers who meander into the shade of our EZ Up, stands upon the shoulders of every person who loved us and encouraged us along the path of life. I try to remember this at the Land of the Loon as Mark and Nancy (longtime friends), as Colin (the musician), the Sale girls from Aurora and others from various facets of my life stop in to support me. I stand on their shoulders, and those of many others, my head above the water, breathing the fresh summer air in a little park in Virginia, Minnesota.
Thank you.
Peace
Mark
