Blast From The Past: The 70s (Again)

I'm listening to 70s music tonight. Young'un got me started, with a quite unexpected gift! He found me "Seasons In The Sun" online. I'd told him several weeks ago, during one of our watchings of the "70s Music Explosion" infomercial, that I'd always liked it and wished I could add it to my online music library. I explained what the song was about, and admitted that it was generally considered annoying -- but it has memories for me, it has associations. It takes me back to early 1974, when I'd just moved back home after my divorce and was trying to figure out who I was after this shattering event, and where I meant to go from there.

I was 20 years old, and my state had just passed the 19-year-old drinking law, so I was legal to go to the neighborhood tavern in which my ex-husband and I used drink underage before we got married and moved out of town. Still in residence every night, aged anywhere from 22 to mid-30s, were the friends we'd been drinking with then -- actually more his friends, at least at first; he'd met some of them and they'd urged him to come down and bring his girlfriend. That kind of thing. Anyhoo, the atmosphere was kind of like "Cheers" but with a younger, mostly single crowd.

Where everybody knows your name... and they're always glad you came...

It turned out to be just what I needed. The girls there took me into their sisterhood, helped me to be philosophical and move on. I remember long, boozy conversations with them telling me sincerely that my ex-hub was always a dick anyway and I was much, much better off without him. Meanwhile, the guys fell all over themselves putting moves on me, which was absolutely marvelous balm for my wounded self-esteem. This caused resentment among some of the girls, but I took it pretty much in stride; I was a 9-days' wonder, and in 9 days there'd be another wonder and I'd be cool with that.

That was a magical time for me. I'd gotten my job back at the insurance company, where I'd worked before my marriage, and after being back a couple of months I found an apartment and moved out of my parents' place. I still ate dinner over there a couple of nights a week, and did my laundry over there instead of going to the laundromat; my relationship with my parents was the best it had ever been. And two or three nights a week I went down to the tavern and sat on a bar stool and drank Rhine wine and seltzer with a twist of lime, and talked and laughed with a great bunch of twentysomethings; played the jukebox, danced on the bar a time or two; fell in love...

That's an amazing story in itself, one I'll tell another time. Tonight I'm thinking about the jukebox, flipping the bartender -- "Flop for the box?" -- heads he paid for the tunes, tails I paid. Five songs for a quarter. I'd play my favorites, and my friends' favorites; whatever I wanted to hear or whatever mood I wanted to create. If I wanted to dance I'd play Elvis Presley's "Burning Love", or "Rock Me Gently" by Andy Kim; and if I was feeling impish I'd play "Seasons In The Sun". That was a major Chick Song; we girls loved it and would get all weepy, while the guys would groan and make fart noises.

We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun...

*giggle*

In the underbrush

Husband and I worked at our property down the road today. We've finally come to the conclusion that we'll never beat the wild mulberry trees, hedge apples, etc. by clearing the land by hand and following up with lawn mowers. It's just too labor-intensive. We can't use the garden tractor to mow because the hedge apple thorns would puncture the tires, so we have to use regular lawn mowers. When we don't get down there for a month or so, the trees start growing back up and the mowers won't handle them. So our neighbor's son is going to go back there with a bulldozer and clear it out.

He gave us a roll of flourescent pink tape and told us to tie it around any tree we want to keep. That's why Husband and I were clambering around in the underbrush today! I really like evergreens, so I tagged any evergreen tree that wasn't dead or dying. We also tagged the oaks, walnuts, and maples. We ran out of pink tape, so after lunch Husband went to the hardware store to get another roll. Meanwhile I took a bucket and trowel and went down there to dig up some ferns I wanted to transplant. When he returned with the tape, we tagged some more trees.

The property covers almost three acres and is five-sided. The side that faces the road is 120 feet long, and the two sides fan out from there. On the right it's 255 feet back to the creek, then a little over 400 feet along the creek. On the left it's 485 feet back to the stake in the ground that marks the property line. From that stake to the one in the hillside going down to the creek is 160 feet, and that's the only line that isn't marked with a fence, the creek, or the road. Several years ago I took a ball of string back there and tied one end of it to the stake on the left side, then hacked my way through the underbrush to the other one, and tied it there. Then I went back and adjusted the string where it went on the wrong side of trees or bushes, cutting and re-tying until it was straight. Well, my string had fallen down but we could still find it on the ground in places, and we decided to re-do the property line in our bright tape. When we were finished we could see where the line was from a distance away, which helped us orient ourselves within the property.

When we'd finished tagging trees and clearing paths, we headed back home. I re-planted the ferns next to the house, Husband watered them and the rest of the flowers, and then we called it a day. I was so ready for a shower! I had my hair up in a banana clip, but it was full of pine needles and little sticks and God knows what. And I'd probably gotten into plenty of poison ivy.

I'm not sure when the bulldozer will come in -- or how the place will look after it's through. I don't think it will all be bare dirt, but it may be that way in places. All the brush will be in a huge pile, which it is our intention to burn. We've got several piles of brush that we've cut down there, that we've never burned, but hopefully when it's all one huge pile we'll burn it and get it over with.