Wishin' I was knee deep in the water somewhere.....

“Load the car and write the note.
Grab your bag and grab your coat.
Tell the ones that need to know.
We are headed north.”

How funny is it that this song calls to mind a very clear (oddly comforting) memory of a balmy night on a back street in Key West with my husband? We love Key West. The lifestyle, the people, the location. We are, at heart, ex-pats from real life. Jimmy Buffett sold me the lifestyle when I was a small girl and I sold it to Vince hook, line, and sinker when we married. There is something in the tropical setting and the laid-back atmosphere that calls us. It had long been a dream of mine to drive a 64 ½ Mustang convertible over the bridges and into that little piece of heaven....probably never to return. I don’t remember that “leaving” part of the initial dream! Age and experience have changed the dream a bit. Now the goal is to one day drive my 65 hardtop Mustang over the bridge with Vince. We’ll get there....us AND the car!

“One foot in and one foot back.
But it don’t pay to live like that.
So I cut the ties and I jumped the track.
For never to return.”

Anywho, back to the story....
We had been out to eat...and probably to cruise down Duval Street....in this harbor town on one of our vacations. It was late at night and Vince and I were heading back to the hotel along a back street that parallels N. Roosevelt (Northside Drive, if you need to get your bearings) and happened upon a local who was, shall we say, rather inebriated. This song was playing on the radio and I was mentally waxing poetic on how the first part of the song so eloquently described our yearly trek to Key West. OK, so you have to change “north” to “south”. Picky, picky. We ended up following this guy at a distance....just to ensure that he made it safely at least as far as we could go. He tottered along, quite happily oblivious to the big blue F150 that followed his crooked path behind the dark shopping mall. I hope he got home OK, where ever home for him was that night. He’ll never know that two mainland refugees were watching out for him.

“Dumbed down and numbed by time and age.
Your dreams that catch the world, the cage.
The highway sets the travelers stage.
All exits look the same.”

Here’s looking forward to that time in life when Vince and I will be able to claim Key West as a second home and our exits will no longer look the same.
Ahh Key West, Key West take me in. Are you aware the shape I’m in? My hands they shake, my head it spins. Ahh Key West, Key West take me in.....

I'm still here.....

I've been absent....well, not absent so much as just not posting. Lots going on. First part of the month means budget, bills, and work. I've started clipping coupons. Yeah, I know. About time! Been married for nearly 17 years! Well, right now it's kind of a game. How much can I get deducted from my grocery bill at the register. Cashiers are going to learn to hate me QUICK! LOL! I'm just cheesy enough to let them ring all the crap up, then hand them the coupons, then hand them my store card! I saved $55.00 yesterday. Pretty cool! Well, I need to get back to work. Fear not! I am alive!

There's a town in Georgia.....

“They say 'Home' is a place you go where they always take you in.”

That’s a line from the song “Augusta” by Pinmonkey. Ironic, no? Well, OK, so I’m not from Augusta, I’m from Aiken…but Augusta is not but a few miles away. This song isn’t a hit. I don’t even know how mainstream it is. I’d be willing to bet it’s never been played on an Augusta radio station. It is a slow, country music type song which is certainly not my normal type of music. There’s not a bongo drum or a screaming guitar to be found in the whole thing! But how can you resisit a line like, "Savannah River from the overpass shining bright in the morning light like a fire in a whiskey glass?" I found it on iTunes after downloading the song “Graniteville.” I don’t think I’d even googled the band until just this second. They aren’t even FROM Augusta! Looks like they’re from Tennessee. Well, they sure knew enough about the town to name a place or two I recognized…like Sand Bar Ferry Road. Why anyone in their right mind would be standing on the side of it without a broken down vehicle in front of them I assuredly do not know. Sand Bar Ferry Road is a stretch of road that goes from the Broad Street terminus all the way to Beech Island where it ends. It’s not a beautiful piece of ground. Once Broad Street stops and Sand Bar Ferry begins, there are some scattered businesses in a lower income neighborhood. There is a junk yard over there I’ve been in….more than once. Mike loves the place! Anywho, the road becomes sort of uninhabited except in spots. There is one or two scattered homes, a factory, and an abandoned building or two until you hit Beech Island. Then it’s a low income neighborhood with gas stations, used car lots, etc. Not a lovely place. It does cross the Savannah River. I’m sure they looked at a map and said, “Sand Bar Ferry Road! Yeah that’s it!” But why? Why write about a place you aren’t from? The guy who wrote “Graniteville” isn’t from there either. He’s from Texas. He heard about the train wreck (I’m not talking about Graniteville itself, Debrine!) and decided that that sounded like a song that needed to be written. He fictionalized a lot of the facts about the accident but it still strikes a chord because it’s here. It’s Aiken. I have family and friends there. I have history there. The accident happened almost right in front of the mill. My grandmother worked that mill for years as a weaver. She retired on October 7, 1973. How do I know that? She retired a month to the day after my birth. Back to the music. In the song “Graniteville” Doug Burr writes from the prospective of a husband trying to get his wife to wake up after a chemical spill. Although the spill did take place about 2:40 AM, the song was fiction. 9 people died total, all were men. 5,400 residents within a mile of the crash had to evacuate for two weeks. My first reaction when watching the nightly news from my home in Virginia was, “THAT’S GRANITEVILLE!” The TV was muted and it was an aerial shot and I STILL recognized it. Thankfully, my Aunt Sara and Uncle Tommy were fine. They evacuated with everyone else. Grannie Rhinehart was fine also. She stayed with Debrine.

In the song, Mr. Burr uses the line, “We were always watching, watching the train go by.” Honestly, that is all there is to do in Graniteville. He also calls it “a quiet little city.” Hardly. Quiet, is right but Graniteville isn’t a city really. Not in the normal sense. It’s more of a village but we don’t really use the term "village" here in Aiken County. The term “City” makes it sound like it has a grocery store and a police department. Er, no. "The whole town dies while it's still sleeping." As much as I hate to admit it, this was a bit prophetic on Mr. Burr's part. After the crash and chlorine spill, the town did die.....not literally but for all intents and purposes. Know what chlorine does to stuff? It destroys it. It literally ate the mills from the inside out. Machinery was destroyed. Pipes too. Wiring, everything. Gone. The mills were struggling as it was but staying afloat. The accident killed them. The company who owned the mills could not afford to repair the damage the chlorine gas had done. Jobs were lost. The doors simply closed. They had the mills up for sale and a company bought one or two but it wasn't enough to save everyone's jobs. "It's a black train rolling through the middle of the night. Finds us sleeping. There's no where to hide."

I'm still here. I got busy and was waiting on inspiration to hit and was off killing spammers on another board, and blah blah blah. Back soon I swear. I can still see the bottles off-shore.

I’ve started playing Sudoku. Yeah I’m a big old weenie and am still doing (and having issues with) the easy puzzles. I got sick of Mahjong and Solitaire got old many years ago. I need a puzzle to keep my brain active. I can get through about half of a Sudoku puzzle before I start scribbling out numbers. Vince is a little amazed that I am messing with this. Truth is, I’m kinda concerned that as I get older, I will lose some of my mental dexterity. Contrary to popular belief, I’m pretty darned smart. I think the puzzles will help keep my brain from melting into ooze and sliding out of my ears! HAHA! I need to keep myself sharp to keep up with Vince and Jeff!

*Hack* *Cough*

Freaking cough. I’ve had this freaking cough for months now. It isn’t a constant thing. For quite a while I wouldn’t cough until I went to bed, then I’d cough my head off. Not that that would wake me up, me being the Olympic sleeper that I am. It did bug Vince who would wake me up and tell me to TAKE SOMETHING. Now it seems to hit me in the mornings after I’ve gotten to work. It’s not a chest cough where I’m coughing something up. It’s just an annoying thing that hits me about 8:45 and lasts for a short time. Vince keeps telling me to go to the doctor. I suppose I’ll drag myself over there soon. What the hell do you tell the doctor? “Hey Doc. I’ve got this cough that hits about 8:45 in the morning. I sound like I’m going to hack up a lung and lasts about an hour then I’m fine the rest of the day?” I somehow don’t think that’s gonna work. Oh well. I’ll figure it out. Maybe a big fat bag of peppermints will do the trick. I hate going to the doctor. Can you tell?

Island, I see you in the moonlight...

“My garden is filled with papayas and mangos. My life is a mixture of reggaes and tangos. Taste for the good life. I can't live it no other way. While out on the beach there are two empty chairs That say more than the people who ever sit there. From under my lone palm I can look out on the day.” – Jimmy Buffett

A great person (Acidman…RIP dude) once described blogging as “an exercise where I stuffed notes in bottles and threw them into a vast ocean where I hoped someone would find the bottle and read the note. But that's not really what I was doing. This blog was my lifeline that towed me to shore when I was totally shipwrecked. It kept me alive for more than two of the worst years I've lived in my life. I wasn't stuffing notes in bottles. I was standing on the shore and shouting frantically for rescue. People came. I WAS rescued. And I will always appreciate that fact.” I agree. Although I am not shipwrecked, I do see this blog as my way to stuff a note in a bottle. I am on this island of my own accord. Self-imposed exile, let’s call it. So far, I can see the bottles not far off shore. But I’m in no hurry. I’ll just sit here under my lone palm and wait for the tide to go out…