Y is for (Misspent) Youth

So we washed the Mustang night before last, and yesterday morning was cool and partly cloudy ... perfect weather for taking pictures. Drove over to the Park, to the lower Muny lot, put on the hubcaps, got the camera out of its bag and started walking around and around the car, the viewfinder pressed to my eye, my fingers finding the optimum focal length on the zoom lens .

It felt maudlin, funereal. I found myself thinking of Victorian death portraits, of the death masks of Abraham Lincoln, of piled bodies in Civil War battlefield scenes. I felt like I was photographing the end of my youth, wrapped in skylight blue sheet metal.

X is for Xanadu

First it was ELO and Olivia Newton-John and roller skating and romance. Zan-a-dooooo-oo-oo



I was enthralled. I was 10, and it was the perfect combination of all of my favorite things. I bought the soundtrack with my allowance one Saturday afternoon at Kroger. It might have been my first album purchase, I don't really remember.

A few years later, hanging out with my uncle and some of his friends on a summer weekend at the lake. A different version, an earlier version, caught my heavy metal mind ...



but I went home and found my old cassette, almost forgetting the chords except as a bit of trivia.

A few more years, into the mid-1980's and I finally learned

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measurelss to man
Down to a sunless sea.

in Pre-AP Junior English, and that same semester, found myself listening to Frankie:



and this was the version that captured me, that accompanied me through architecture school, where I was always dreaming ...

That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!

W is for Words are Weird

This morning, standing on the sidewalk watching the kids get onto the bus and the traffic back up behind them onto Kingshighway as the light changes. This stop location for summer school doesn't work for anyone, I thought. Gotta call her again and get them to reroute the route.

And then I thought about the words. Reroute, pronounced re-rout. Route, pronounced root.

English is just a plain weird language.

V is for Vacation

Westbound Interstate 30 between Little Rock and Dallas seems to be maintained by the City of St. Louis Streets Department, which is to say maintained intermittantly at best. It's strange that the Eastbound lanes are so much better. Are that many more people going to Dallas than are coming back?

I love our friends in Dallas. I love holding their babies (my godchildren), talking late into the night, sitting with on the edge of the pool with our legs dangling in as we watch kids swim. I miss them terribly for weeks afterwards. I cannot imagine living in Dallas. I cannot imagine driving that much, every day of my life.

Four days in a minivan with two extroverts is a little more than I can handle, especially when the last day of the trip I'm suffering with a horrid drippy summer cold which makes me feel even more surly and snappish than usual.

It is possible for a family of four to take a 10-day road trip in an RX-8, if they pack sparingly for 4 days.

My husband's great-grandfather designed some really cool buildings. More on that later.

The Girl bears a remarkable resemblance to her namesake's sister, or at least the one photograph of E at a similar age.

I could be more creative about how I say it, but it's just really nice to be home.

Unknowns

1. The location of the RX8 keys with the working key fob remote thingie. They're in Baltimore with the Husband, I suspect.
   
2. Bureaucratic St. Louis commissions Master Plans, Strategic Plans, etc all the time, for everything from neighborhood planning to downtown amenities to right-sizing the school system. They write the check and then shelve the plans. Are they simply trying to understand what the best practices are so they can do exactly the opposite?
3. How is that I can take photographs of everything I need for a project, but get back to the office to find every picture I took except the one I remember taking of the things I need??
4. Will the mechanic be able to rebuild the Mustang's half-melted carburetor? Or do I get to start a new wild goose chase of a parts chase?
5. How long will it take Sprint to respond to my emails regarding the technical issues with my stupid smartphone?

Edited to add Bonus! Is it really so hard to let parents know a performance time has been moved before they arrive???

T is for Train

The Husband's parents were in town over the weekend, going to various railroadiana sites with their model train club.

Saturday night, after a long day of Girl Scouting, I looked up from my book when the Husband laid down in our bed. So, what's on the slate for tomorrow?

Well, Mom & Dad are going out to that steam railroad in Pacific, and I thought I'd take the kids along to spend a little time with them. And it's kind of fun, we haven't been in a while.

Steam railroad ... all I could think of was the one down near Cape. A long way for a day trip. This morning I figured out he was talking about the Wabash Frisco & Pacific Railroad in Wildwood, so I tagged along as well. As soon as we got off the freeway, I realized the folly of this decision as I looked into the acres and acres of oak-hickory forest on the hillsides between the oversized vinyl-sided homes.

A few miles down 109, turn right, turn right, and the road dead-ends at the railroad. And I realize how long it's been since we were out here last: was the Girl even born yet? Neither of us remembers. We remember the Boy, tiny and excited, trying to find Thomas. He's a little bigger now ...

(two generations of S men ... the Boy & his grandfather)

And the railroad has changed. There are teenagers helping run the operation, as well as the middle-aged and elderly men you'd expect.

The County built an extension of the Ozark Trail that wraps around the tracks along the river, and the bicyclists alternately pass the train and stop at the crossings and wave.


I sat on my bench, watching the Meramec flow muddily towards the Mississippi, wondering where the time has gone.

S is for Satanists

I saw it in the Riverfront Times, and couldn't quite believe it.

Judas Priest, with Special Guest Whitesnake, playing at the Family Arena in St. Charles.

The irony of it took me back to seventh grade, to a lunch conversation with a new friend at the junior high in the small town I'd just moved. I mentioned the Eagles and Queen and Journey, and stopped because my companion had a look of abject horror on her face.

Why, you know the Eagles are Satanists, don't you?

No. I was puzzled. Why do you say that?

She smiled, spoke firmly, as if assured that she was saving a lost soul. Just listen to Hotel California. That line about not having the spirit here since 1969 is that Jesus hasn't been in California since the Satanist church opened in 1969. You'll go to Hell if you listen to that.



Really? I asked. I was amazed by the concept that my favorite band, my father's favorite band, were a bunch of Devil-worshipers. I rode the bus home that afternoon, popped the cassette into the deck, and listened very carefully.

A month or so later I walked into a church other than my own for the first time in my life, invited to what turned out to be night one of a Southern Baptist revival by my friend. The youth program focused on the evils of rock music. The speaker spent a great deal of time playing tracks forwards and backwards on a specially modified turntable. A couple of songs by AC/DC, Stairway to Heaven, two or three times. I could almost hear what he said it I should. He spent a lot of time talking about the bands that were so blatant that they didn't even bother to say it backwards. Queen was, of course, trying to lure us all to Hell through homosexuality. Black Sabbath, publicizing their worship of the Dark One. And Judas Priest, so very proud of of being Hell Bent .... we shouldn't listen to any of them, lest we be led down that path ourselves.



I went home, looked at my cassettes--the vast majority by bands I'd heard in the presentation, thought about the woman I'd spoken with after church who looked at me like I'd said "Satanist" instead of "Episcopalian" when she asked Honey what kind of church do you go to? as she was patting my hand .... and decided I didn't think that the God I knew, who spoke to me in the quiet spaces in the Eucharist and in the whispering wind among the trees in the woods, would sentence me to barbecue forever based on my choice of music.

Needless to say, I didn't hang out much with that girl anymore.