Monthly Archives: April 2021

Music on the Walk

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Ten songs I most enjoyed on Amazon random soundtrack as I walked today:
Barbara Streisand: The Way We Were… As the years go by I appreciate this lady’s voice more than ever!
Train: Drops of Jupiter…Reminds me of my Granny.
Mickey Gilley: Fool For You Love… Music was great in junior high school.
ELO: Can’t Get It Out Of My Head… Always reminds me of the beach at Topsail.
Danny Johnson: Thanks for Loving Me… It is a song I wrote for dear wife, Carrie, and was glad to hear it. Reminds me of Topsail with my sweetheart. And it made me .0013 cents!
Van Morrison: Coney Island…Spoken words I can listen to over and over again. Hooked the first time I ever heard it.
David Gates: The Goodbye Girl….How can a guy in love with a good guitar solo find his world at a stand still when he hears a great piano intro?
Phil Collins: Against All Odds…Read explanation for Goodbye Girl.
The Moody Blues: The Voice…Lord I love this song. I heard it live so many times and I miss that. The best thing is knowing I knew what I was experiencing was special. No regrets with The Moodies. That helps to keep the heart warm.
Eric Carmen: Boats Against the Current… The references to The Great Gatsby hooked me in a hurry. A song I can listen to three times and enjoy.
Speaking the music rights…
Danny Johnson

Some Days Material Just Presents Itself

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Wow.  I had no plans of writing a post this evening.

I felt fortunate to survive my drive home from Paoli today.  It rained cats, dogs, the kitchen sink, most of Patoka Lake seemed to be displaced over the top of my car on the way home.  Add a little lightning and a great ddeal of wind and you have to tell Aunt Barbara in Mississippi you have to hang the phone up and hope to make it home and hope to somehow call her later.

From Paoli to the English golf course the temperature dropped 18 degrees.   That would be about 17 miles to the south.

I lived to tell the story and actually called Aunt Barbara back to let her know I survived.  I was never in doubt, though peril found a way into my consciousness.

So I went for a walk this evening.  By the time this posts it will probably say April 8 even though it is not quite there yet.  I think I am headquartered in the old country.  Honestly, I don’t care.  I just write.

During my walk I was motivated to write and share a few pictures.

You know Thunder Over Louisville Air Show Practice is going on when you see three planes from the southeast, two from Charlotte and one from Atlanta, flying overhead south to north 40 miles from Standiford Field in Louisville where they were to land.  I pay attention to planes and often look at a Flight Tracker app on my phone.  That is how I figured out where they were from and where they were going in such an odd direction.

First snail spotting of the year.

The colors are coming together on the old walking trail.

I was pleased with the light and could not turn this shot down.

If you look close to this picture you may be able to find a rainbow.  I saw two of them on my hour long walk.

This one you can probably make out a little better.

I had to take one more from a little farther up the hill.

I enjoy how the trees provide a tunnel effect here.

I’ll save the best for last.  Jarrett and I went fishing yesterday in Blue River.  We caught google eye and small mouth.  It was a wonderful time I usually only dream about. He won’t be home long.  But we have had a good time.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

BEWARE THE EASTER BASKET

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So many great things happened for me as a six-year-old kid living at 204 South Jackson Street, the last proper street on the East side of Brownstown, Indiana. We had a front yard that looked to rolling hills in the not too far off distance glaciers had worked their way around. Blessed I was with a good old-fashioned swing hanging from a sturdy oak tree at the corner of Jackson and Cross Streets. I had a purple Sears bicycle in the garage on its kickstand when darkness sat in over the hillside that was the West side of town.
In the daytime that purple bike was my primary mode of transportation in a peaceful town of less than three thousand folk. Pedal power got me to the town pool, baseball practice at the town park, both of which were a short downhill coast to my great-grandmother Ivy’s house that had fourteen-foot ceilings in three of its six rooms.
Around Easter time, my Mom and Dad were in their places for choir practice as some of the men tried to out-loud one another. My Dad was a high school football coach. He had some friends with equally booming voices in that choir who made trying to get dust to fall from that even higher church ceiling an Olympic sport. A thunderous rendition of “Up From The Grave He Arose!” took on a whole new life of its own when five or six guys were drowning out the ten ladies in front of them, as the men were trying to raise the roof not to mention the dead.
It was that Easter Sunday in 1974 when our idyllic small-town tale takes a twirling twist.
As was the custom of the day, my sister, two years older, and I would enjoy the spoils of a visit from the Easter Bunny. Baskets with candy, books, eggs, that useless artificial grass that always seems to hide everything, and maybe even a toy would be left behind. For me that year, one “gift” was one of those paddles with a ball attached to a string. It is what we called a paddle-ball. Maybe this was a clandestine way for my football coaching father to see to it that my hand-eye coordination was improving.
I assure you; this paddle-ball toy was not for me. It almost killed me.
Always on the move, it wasn’t until I was about forty that I started walking slowly anywhere except to the bathroom. Running in the house was the only way to get to another point in the house faster. With that paddle-ball deathtrap in my hand, I was running from the kitchen to the breezeway in our house. There was a step down to the breezeway and I tripped.
How do I describe this?
I fell forward like a tree. In an effort to soften the fall, I put my hands out in front of me. This meant I had turned loose of the paddle which landed straight up and down with the wide side down and the lethal oversized tongue depressor side up. I landed on this thing head first mouth wide open and the back of my throat caught the brunt of the small end of the paddle. Blood was suddenly everywhere and it was Easter Sunday. That made no sense at all. My Dad grabbed what seemed to be a case of Charmin and stuffed it down my throat to stop the bleeding. For a moment if I thought I was going to die, I was now certain of it.
I’m still here. I still love Easter and everything it is about. I still don’t trust the Easter Bunny. And I run the other way when I see a paddle ball!
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson