2003-02-15 - 11:40 a.m.

Blue, blue day

It's been a blue, blue day

I feel like running away

I feel like running away from the blues.

My love has been untrue

He has found somebody new

It's been a blue, blue day for me.

It really is a blue day. The third in a row of grey days, but no rain yet today. I keep remembering old old songs. Marty Robbins, Jim Reeves, Don Gibson (he did Blue Blue Day) and my teen age favorite, Sleepwalk by Johnny and Santos, no words just a crying steel guitar. I learned to play the guitar when I was 16. And when I was in Spokane that year at the dentist I went down to the street by the river and looked in the pawn shops for a used guitar. I found a beautiful Customcraft archtop with narrow neck and cutaway and paid $100 for it. I took it home on the bus and have had it ever since. I never learned to play it like it deserved and I didn't have a case for it either. Mostly I have kept it in a pillowcase all these years and it has suffered accordingly. When I learned to play I spent 3 or 4 hours a day practicing and consequently I have never forgotten the fingering positions even when I have put it up for long times and now especially when my fingers just do not move quickly enough. If I had been a few years younger, I would have learned to pick and do arpeggios like the hippies when the guitar came into vogue, but in my time, I just learned to strum an accompaniment while I sang. My teacher, a boyfiend's uncle, knew lots of old country and jazz songs and I picked them up.

Jada Jada, Honky-tonk Angel, Blackbottom Blues (also known as the Deep Elum Blues), Foggy Mountain Top, Lulu's back in Town, Under the Double Eagle, Martins and the Coys, Red-headed Stranger from Blue Rock Montana, Rag-time Cowboy Joe, Come a Wing Way Waddle Come a Jackstraw Straddle and many more. Long after the boyfriend and uncle were ancient history, the music lingered on and even after many years of only playing hymns and choruses, out of the blue the old songs I learned so many years ago sift into my memory like a wispy fog.

800 never liked me to play the guitar. It reminded him too much of the life I lived before we married. Even the kids never wanted to learn any chords altho I told them that whoever learned to play could have both my guitars. The grands aren't interested except for d, who, even tho he can't carry a tune in a bucket, proved remarkably adept at knowing when to change chords. I'm reluctant to turn either the arch-back or the electric over to him to learn on. The arch-back is so fragile and I fear the electric would prove a bad temptation. I guess they will just stay in the closet with the banjo and the autoharp for a while longer.

EE's devotional

newAutumn Leaves

previous - next