is not something I’ve ever personally resisted, I enjoy learning and doing new things, and my gig is always an adventure. <\/p>\n
OTOH, I like some things to be the same, if I can get them.<\/p>\n
The town in the frozen north where I now sit is the town that the Ogwife grew up in.<\/p>\n
But, then again, it isn’t.<\/p>\n
She notices it, I notice it, and we both feel a bit strangely about it. Her because her memories are gone; me, because I miss the town this once was. Here there once were the hard and the rugged, men and women who came here and carved life and living out of the granite escarpments, dealt with harsh winters and rough seas and all manner of hardship. When I first came here over twenty years ago, those people were still here, and a lot of them were still living in the same way, hunting and fishing and trapping. The Hudson’s bay company still had an outpost, where you could buy point blankets with beaver pelts. Some roads were summer roads only. And snowmobile wasn’t a means of recreation, it was winter transport. <\/p>\n
Now the town is more like Broad Ripple than Ketchikan. The old trading post now rents plastic canoes and kayaks to vacationers, the local stores replaced by walmart and each empty storefront filled with a used bookstore, an art gallery, havens for hippies and buskers playing artifically distressed musical instruments more out of tune than their singing. <\/p>\n
I miss the raw smell of it. The knowledge that you might see a moose or a bear in town. Now it smells like patchouli and dope, and the most dangerous thing you see is the daisy-duke shorts and full length blue support hose on Al, the septuagenerian meth addict. He himself is harmless, but his clothing is lethal both in appearance and aroma. <\/p>\n
So for my own twisted nostalgia here’s the lyrics to one of my favorite showtunes, by Lerner sans Lowe. If you haven’t heard Lee Marvin sing this in “Paint your wagon” you have missed something special.<\/p>\n
God made the mountains
\nGod made the sky
\nGod made the people
\nGod knows why<\/p>\n
He fixed up the planet
\nAs best as He could
\nThen in come the people
\nAnd gum it up good<\/p>\n
The first thing you know<\/p>\n
They civilized the foothills
\nAnd everywhere He put hills
\nThe mountains and valley below<\/p>\n
They come along and take ’em
\nAnd civilize and make ’em
\nA place where no civilized
\nPerson would go<\/p>\n
The first thing you know
\nThe first thing you know<\/p>\n
They civilize what’s pretty
\nBy puttin’ up a city
\nWhere nothin’ that’s
\nPretty can grow<\/p>\n
They muddy up the winter
\nAnd civilize it into
\nA place too uncivilized
\nEven for snow<\/p>\n
The first thing you know<\/p>\n
They civilize left
\nThey civilize right
\nTill nothing is left
\nTill nothing is right<\/p>\n
They civilize freedom
\nTill no one is free
\nNo one except
\nBy coincidence, me<\/p>\n
The first thing you know<\/p>\n
The boozer’s in prison
\nAnd the criminally isn’t
\nAnd only the rascals have dough<\/p>\n
When I see a parson
\nI gotta put my arse in
\nA wagon that follows the tail of a crow<\/p>\n
The first thing you know
\nI pick up and blow!
\nThe first thing you know<\/p>\n
Updated to add: only in this town would you see a smooooking hot broad in yoga pants and a gadsden shirt having a smoke with a gesticulating sunburned scarecrow of a man in flipflops and mismatched socks, and hes the business owner, and shes the street bum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
is not something I’ve ever personally resisted, I enjoy learning and doing new things, and my gig is always an adventure. OTOH, I like some things to be the same, if I can get them. The town in the frozen north where I now sit is the town that the Ogwife grew up in. But, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}