My favorite spot in winter, in front of the sliding glass doors facing east. Doors that are also windows, let in the morning rays that warm my legs and give me a good dose of Vitamin D, which I understand is necessary for bones to absorb Calcium.
I look across the pasture, see the big brown horse about midway out. His name is Dooley, but from this vantage point that name doesn’t fit such an elegant creature. His long neck bends toward the grass, horses must be made for grazing. From here he looks like a Prince, a Victory, or even an Othello.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry. That was a song I remember Mom listening to on the stereo at our house on Glenarbor Court. The speaker had a wood lattice cover, like a cross-hatch pie crust, for decoration only. I liked to lie in front of the console and listen to Merle Haggard and Glen Campbell or the scratchy Marty Robbins album and watch Mom walk back and forth from the bedrooms to the washer, changing sheets.
My favorite spot in our last house was also in front of doors-slash-windows. Two French doors that opened out to the back yard. Top half of each door was a series of small boxes separated by white panes that had been painted so many times that paint chips and cobwebs and blobs of dirt had been sealed into the paint, like bees in amber. We bought new doors but even in their smoothness the corners of the panes were hard to keep free of dust and small spiders.
The east-facing windows in this house are hard to keep clean, too. I use vinegar and water one month, then the next try a window cleaner that on the label claims to leave no streaks. They all streak, though, so then I vary the rag. A soft paper towel that leaves behind specks of lint or an old sheet ripped into strips.
When I worked for a frame shop we cleaned the glass with newspaper. The owner insisted it worked the best, although it always made a high squeak that sounded like tree branches against a window. Plus the wet newsprint left black smudges on our hands.
Once the earth shifts this spring, the light will still come in these windows but the sun won’t. By summer the temperatures will cause me to seek out the coolness of my writing room, small and cave-like. It has a big window that’s shaded by a big old cottonwood and a couple of gigantic ponderosas. Ponderosas usually grow in the scraggly rocks of the Sandia Mountains, but these ones in the Rio Grande Valley hit the water table just a few feet down and soar to the sky. I imagine they’re decades old, gentle giants watching me watching them.
-related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC — WINDOW
Lovely, lovely writing. I am right there.
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I very much agree with Jo.
I am sitting here now with the windows open…it is in the 70’s. The river is still tonight, and I can hear the cicadas.
Thank you for sharing your world, YB!
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Thanks, Jo and Suz.
In the 70s, Suz! At night, next to a river? It must be lovely where you live.
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ybonesy, I liked the way you described Dooley in this Writing Practice, and how it lead to that Tom Dooley song. Now it’s stuck in my head! 8)
And cleaning windows with newspaper, I had always heard that, too. Newspaper and ammonia. Why is it that newspaper works so well?
I used to listen to Merle Haggard and Glen Campbell and Marty Robbins, too. At the time, my parents were really into country. Actually, the guy who wrote most of Glen Campbells’s songs, Jimmy Webb, was a great songwriter with songs like: Up, Up, and Away, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Lineman, Galveston, MacArthur Park.
I still love Wichita Lineman. And always sing along with it. I remember seeing Shawn Colvin at the MN State Fair a few years ago and she mentioned Wichita Lineman when she talked about her song Wichita Skyline. She’s got a couple of Marlboro guitar riffs in that song that are exactly like Webbs’!
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Here’s a YouTube link to Shawn Colvin singing Wichita Skyline (LINK). She even interjects a couple of Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell lines in the middle. And you can see the Marlboro guitar up close.
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Excellent, QM, thanks! I *love* Shawn Colvin. She’s one of my favorite folk/country singers, contemporary. Have you ever heard of Maura O’Connell [LINK]? I bought CDs of the two of them (separate, not together) around the same time. Maura’s more folksy, less country than Shawn.
I have one of Marty Robbin’s first albums, mid- to late-1950s. My parents gave it to me. About ten years ago I went to friend’s who had a stereo (rare even by then) hooked up to a CD burner, and I taped the album. Oh, I love that man’s voice.
Galveston is one of my favorite Glen Campbell songs. I didn’t know Jimmy Webb wrote most of them.
One of our two Albuquerque NPR radio stations, KANW-FM, plays “Country Classics” on Saturday night. It’s a beloved radio station because the rest of the time, when it’s not broadcasting programs like Morning Edition and Fresh Air, it plays New Mexico Spanish music.
Here’s a link to listen live to KANW [LINK]. If you remember one Saturday night, you should listen in. You’ll get a kick out of hearing the singers we mentioned and Patsy Cline, Freddy Fender, Tammy Wynette and George Jones (remember that they were married?), Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, Buck Owens (remember Hee Haw?)…the list goes on.
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I just listened to Shawn, QM. Really nice work on the guitar. Isn’t her voice soothing? Is the Marlboro guitar hers? The white guitar was pretty amazing too.
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ybonesy, it is a great link, isn’t it. Shawn Colvin is great. I also listened to a few versions of Wichita Lineman on YouTube last Friday. I really cranked it and sang along. Took me back quite a ways.
I’ll have to check out your KANW link some Saturday night and listen in. When Liz and I were driving home from Poetry & Meditation Group last week, we were listening to an oldies radio channel and singing along. I think the Boxtops came on (My Baby Wrote Me A Letter), Marvin Gaye, then we were cracking up to the Captain & Tennille.
I do like Oldies though. Liz says I’m also a hopeless romantic. But I think I’ve gotten a lot better with age. I’m not quite as sappy as I used to be. Experience teaches some of the pitfalls of romance. 8)
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BTW, Toni Tennille has quite an active website up (LINK). And it looks like she’s been quiet successful in the romance department:
The 1975 Grammy Award winners for “Love Will Keep Us Together”, Toni and her husband, Daryl “The Captain” Dragon, celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in November 2000.
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