Month: January 2025

Soulful Vaccination

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

“The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.”

— Stan Getz

Other than those found on my playlist, I hadn’t thought about saxophones until I chanced upon a beautiful, blond, Dutch saxophonist named Candy Dulfer. Where have you been all my life?  I admit her long legs and short skirt got my attention at first but then I clicked on a YouTube video, and not only does she look alluring, but she is also a damn fine saxophonist.

A version of “Pick Up the Pieces” led me to a cooperative effort with Glennis Grace singing Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” This in turn led me to a comment by a fan, “Just what I needed, a soulful vaccination.” I feel it. I needed one too.

I am prone to following pig trails in my mind and was led back to late 1950s or early 1960s to my mother’s living room. A large, cabinet stereo occupied one corner, and my mother was prone to playing Ray Coniff, Perry Como, or Mitch Miller…she did give me Johnny River’s “Live at the Whiskey a Go-Go” my fourteenth birthday, but rock and roll was a rarity for her.

She inadvertently introduced me to the saxophone with Billy Vaughn and his Orchestra. Vaughn’s trademark was harmonies with twin alto saxophones.  I think it was his rendition of “Red Sails in the Sunset” that got my attention, and I found myself attempting to play the sax in my high school band. They accepted all comers and honestly, I was no better at the saxophone than I had been at the drums, the first instrument I tried but failed to master.

Unless playing the cymbals, I didn’t have the manual dexterity to be a great musician despite my “want too”. More than likely, I would simply catch a body part between the two cymbals.

 More importantly I needed a “soulful vaccination” …or maybe a “soulful transfusion.” To quote my band instructor, “You’re just too tight assed.” He was correct and not just about playing the sax. It is a trademark of my life in general. Friends always comment, “I can’t believe you did that”, whenever I might step out of my comfort zone.

I played just well enough to join my college band, they accepted all comers too, and even spent a year as the second alto in the jazz ensemble… but only because we needed five saxophonist and five were all we had.

 I was no Cannonball Adderly or Junior Walker, but I had a great time and made great lifelong memories. I even got to play with Doc Severinsen during a jazz clinic. There was also a long night of partying with him but for some reason I don’t remember it as well.

I probably could have been better had I concentrated. I blame my small high school. Blame but in a good way. We were so small I was involved in everything from chorus and band to baseball and football. I was able to do it all but mastered none and would not take money for the memories.

Thanks Candy. Thanks for your sexy and soulful renditions. Thanks for the pig trail you sent me down. I’ll be adding you to my playlist. Thank you for the soulful infusion.

Don Miller’s latest offering is “Food for Thought” and can be purchased on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Food-Thought-Musings-Mad-Southerner/dp/B0CVFVVKZ3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JOR4JC665OYR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qHgZwjWZGMMWOAkFzZNGvUYxwSKDGldwLlh06k97FCmeZeq-pJC3KvlR9FJlvR50DyXu0dByDs0VDomtfuOpRw.4zi2lLYNri-Omdm8TQ4n4-aweXDLZEaozt9zQm83Ruk&dib_tag=se&keywords=food+for+thought+book+Don+Miller&qid=1737828043&sprefix=food+for+thought+book+don+miller%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1

Surviving the Spider’s Web, January 1, 2025

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

Surviving the Spider’s Web

“Sometimes the greatest tests of our strength are situations that don’t seem so obviously dangerous. Sometimes surviving is the hardest thing of all.” ~ Richelle Mead

It is my annual day of introspection. A day rife with questions but devoid of answers.

What did I accomplish in 2024? What do I want to accomplish in 2025…. It is the end of one year and the beginning of a new one. It is a jumbled chalkboard waiting to be erased, a fresh one waiting to be written on.

While I am desperate to erase the old chalkboard, I’m too invested in 2024 to even think about 2025. Loss will do that and 2024 was full of loss. Viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, 2025 seems to be filled with the reckonings caused by those losses.

Often, losses won’t allow you to turn loose or maybe you just don’t want to turn loose. I am a fly caught in a spider’s web of my own making and am battling the urge to remain there.

Sometimes all you can do is survive. When thinking about 2024 the best I can muster is that I survived. I accomplished nothing but survival.

What will 2025 bring? On a personal level, it will bring whatever I allow it to bring. I visualize a closed door, and I am fearful to what spiders are hiding behind it.

I can only control my personal space and the challenges the world poses to it. I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt external forces will throw curveballs causing me to frail awkwardly. The metaphorical “swing and a miss” followed by a graceless pirouette and faceplant.

As I struggle against my web, I wonder, “What do I want to do in 2025?”  My first thought tells me a lot about where I am mentally. “I want to sit in the dark and be left alone.” I want to lay on my web and wait for the spider to wrap me in insulating silk. I am in a dark place.

But I am a survivor. I am going to move forward into 2025. I’m not going to sit in my dark place. I will not allow the spider to devour me. Easy words to say, not so easy to carry out.

One lesson I learned from my losses is that I am loved. Deserved or not, family and friends have proven this, and if nothing else, I’ll not let them down. I will not let me down. I will continue to struggle against the spider’s silken trap and my own self-destructive tendencies.

I have a hole in my heart the size of the Grand Canyon, that will never be filled. I realize the crater will always be there. I also realize that there is nothing wrong with trying to fill it. Happiness cannot find me sitting in the dark. Somehow, the sunlight must prevail. Buckle up spider, the battle is on.

The Good Old Days

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“The only good thing about the good old days is they’re gone.”― Dick Gregory

The cold snap of the last few days have me thinking about the “Good Old Days” people wax poetic about. It is cold and windy and has me longing for the humidity and mosquitoes of summer.

Our good old days started when Linda Gail and I moved into the foothills of the Blue Ridge in 1987 just before a twelve-inch snowfall that kept us stranded for over a week.  Despite questioning our sanity, the old farmhouse became our “little piece of heaven.”

An old farmhouse sitting above the Cherokee Scenic Highway, built in 1892 that had no electricity, heat or plumbing until 1956 when the new owner, long time Methodist missionary and reverend, James Copeland and some of what he called his good “Baptist Brothers” installed it. It has never been updated and I admit I sometimes worry about how well the good “Baptist Brothers” installed it.

 Prior to 1956 this old house, with no insulation, was heated with a wood stove and five fireplaces, water was hauled from the stream located below the house and the outhouse was, and still is, located some thirty yards behind the house.

Would anyone like to explain to me the “Good Old Days” as it relates to the series of cold days we have experienced and the impending “Snowmageden” we are facing this weekend? I am reminded of the old childhood joke, “Have you read ‘A Mile to the Outhouse’ by Willie Makeit. The book was illustrated by Betty Don’t.”

I should point out that indoor plumbing was added in 1956 to an old porch that was closed in to accommodate it. We now have updated heat, two more bathrooms, a new well with running water and we only actively use one of the fireplaces. The insulation in the old part of the house needs to be redone but at least the old wavy lead windows were replaced.

 I spent some eight hours spread over three days, cutting and splitting two pickup truck loads of dead fall with a chainsaw, axe, sledge and wedge. I also had benefit of a tractor with a frontend loader to help keep me out of trouble. My back might disagree with that last statement and has me wondering how did the previous generations keep a woodstove, and five fireplaces fed without benefit from later technology?

 Hey, I’ll let you keep the good old days. I’ll take the toilet paper over the Sear’s catalogue or corn shucks any day.