My dear wife, Carrie, and I were on Lake Erie yesterday morning after two days and nights not far from Cleveland and at a usually very tranquil spot.

Yesterday morning we found it more Lake Eerie than its proper name.

Ideally, this is what you have to look forward to when you head up to this peaceful little Lake House built for two in Willowick.  The place can be as peaceful and calm as any place you can find.  But, on occasion, you can also hear Deep Purple singing in the background.  The song Smoke on the Water certainly comes to mind.

This was not fog.  This was smoke rolling in Tuesday evening.  It came on in a hurry.  Leaving the next morning was like something out of a Twilight Zone episode.  The was an apocalyptical feeling.  Nasty, I tell you.  Our disdain never let up on the way home.  Yes, the air quality did improve.  But this old boy and his breathing troubles never got out of the house even today in good old Southern Indiana.  It has to get better.

On a lighter note, it dawned on me this morning that it was 30 years ago that my dear friend Malcolm “Corner King” Lincoln and I saw the Moody Blues at Deer Creek in Noblesville, IN.  They played with a full orchestra that night.  The first of many orchestra shows I was able to witness.  The last being in September of 1999.

Corner King and I had so much fun together cruising down the road listening to The Moody Blues.  When we threw around a baseball in the yard, we always listened to The Moodies.  The last thing we did together was to cruise up to Fort Wayne two months before he passed away.  That night The Moody Blues were playing with an orchestra in the Allen County Memorial Coliseum.  We got home in the wee hours of the next morning, glad we had done it.

Last week I was in Brownstown on assignment.  While there I stopped at the Brownstown Elementary School and spent some time strolling through a school building that opened up a month or so late in the 1973-74 school year.  The first six years the building was open, I spent kindergarten thru the 5th grade there.  Great times I can tell you.  Anyone who spent time with me in the North Harrison 6th grade classroom I was exiled to that year will tell you, after looking at this photo of our school library at BES, they understand why I felt like I was experiencing a “Back to the Future” moment in the antiquated North Harrison Elementary School at the time.  I was there before Michael J. Fox.

The library above was empty, as new carpet had been laid recently.

In this gym, I was the captain of one team in the 5th Grade Volleyball Tournament.  I named the team The Bengals.  I wanted to win.  When it game to choosing players, I didn’t pick my friends to be on my team.  Put 6 squirrely 5th grade boys on one side of the net and you’ll spend a great deal of time chasing the ball.  It starts to look like popcorn flying around.  No, this time I knew what I was doing and that was new territory for me.  I didn’t choose my friends to be on my team.  I chose girls whose mothers played league volleyball at the town park across from the little league baseball field I was playing on.  We didn’t lose a game.

Finally, after using this facility, I told my friend Adam Disque that the last time I used that room Carter was in the White House. It was a long time ago.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

The man is an artist.  He sees what the rest of us do not.  The finished product you and I see is not the finished product he sees.  We will admire one of his masterpieces and he will think of what could have been better about it.  That is what an artist does.  There is always something else for an artist to chase down.

Being a songwriter I understand some of this.  I believe I understand Jerry Brown more than most.

Jerry Brown is the owner of a prominent commercial signage business called Celery Signs in Medora, IN.  Jerry started the business in 1989.  He and his wife, Tammy, have worked hard and harder.  In time the sign ball got rolling.  Rolling so strongly that Jerry decided teaching art in the middle and high schools of Brownstown Central would have to be on someone else.  Eventually he added his business minded son, Clay, to the fray.  When I learned that Clay’s creativity was being infused in the business as well, I shook my head in part awe and part happiness for my friend.  Both of these guys coach football at Brownstown Central in the process.  That is another column for sure.

Jerry Brown and I have been friends for fifty years.  We went to elementary school together.  In 1979 I left Brownstown.  Leaving Jerry Brown was the hardest part of that for me.  What can I say?  We still got it.  When we turn up together, we carry on.  These times are far and few between.  Doesn’t matter.  We carry on.

Jerry’s work?  Yes.  That is why we are here right now. 

Look.  What I am going to share with you what constitutes less than a thimble of an ocean of art that dots Southern Indiana.  I can tell you I enjoyed every minute of this journey.  I thought about old times we had together.  We were in each other’s weddings.  His parents, Tom and Gleda, were my parents away from home.  The laughs and tears we have shared are one reason this was a fast day.  These photos are the best I can do to share the work of my friend and true artist Jerry “Celery” Brown.

Jerry and I spent our early years of school at Brownstown Elementary School.  Today I walked into that building and was met by an entrance that was so welcoming and true.

Inside the school is this sign.  This is a personal favorite.  The “Be Nice” part was inspired by our elementary principal, Harry Spurgeon.  I adopted “Be Nice” and shared it for 15 years at Medora Schools. At Medora, “Be Nice” was eventually the post script after the daily announcements over the school intercom.  The current principal at Brownstown Elementary School is Marty Young.  Marty was a young elementary school teacher at Medora when he got his start.  And now, every morning the last thing Mr. Young says to end the announcements is “Work Hard and Be Nice.”  This kind of full circle stuff is better in real life than anything Hollywood can try to muster.

Down the road from BES, on Highway 250, is Brownstown Electrical Supply.  I not so sure this is not my favorite Celery Sign.

The Peoples Bank in Brownstown.  It’s all about the GREEN.

On Bridge Street, not far from where my great-grandmother, Ivy Nowling, lived for 53 years, I found the Street Department sign.  That it includes the Courthouse is spot-on.

I fell in love with this the first time I saw it.  I thought long and hard about climbing one of those poles and claiming one for myself.  As a child, I lived four blocks east of the courthouse and a corn field away for the Jackson County Fairgrounds.

Many of these line the length of the town’s main street.

This is the courthouse.  I lived down the road from where that white SUV is parked.  The last proper street in Brownstown, Jackson Street.

I believe this belongs to Brownstown Electrical Supply, hence BESCO.  The property was originally a bed and breakfast (I think).  I ate lunch in the place once.

If you know anything about Marion-Kay Spices on Highway 50 just west of town, you know this sign did it right.  Classic design and wonderful detail.

If my hound was sick, I would look for this sign!

Located next to the old barber shop, Studio spf (stretch, pray, fit) has a welcoming soothing sign.

Crothersville knew what they were doing when they called Celery Signs.

This is a nice place to eat.  The Cortland Diner.

Oh my!  What a great sign.  Grant and Mark better be happy!  I guess those guys are still around.

If you drive from Brownstown to Seymour on Highway 50, the road that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean (Maryland) to the Pacific Ocean (California), you know this sign.  Trees and shrubs as far as the eye can see.

Heading into the football locker room next to Blevins Stadium?  You can find Celery Signs there too.

And on the side of the locker room.

The BC Admin Building.  I hear this one is due an update.  Looks good to me.

On Highway 135 will find a great nine hole golf course.  This sign was a great addition to the place.  As it should be, Jerry plays here regularly.  I played this course when I worked at Medora.

The last two stops today were most personal for me.  

I spent fifteen years working at Medora Schools.  I looked on from both sides of this sign today.  The visit was good.

The last stop.

To have this in the building where I work is special.  In August I will begin my 8th year at North Harrison.  This is the place I went to high school.  Like I said, this is special.  There is a great deal of unspoken feeling that goes with this wall.  Kids and parents and staff can look at it and admire it.  I can admire and appreciate and thank the artist in a way they can never dream of.

For me, that is the problem.  Jerry’s work is so good and so all over the place that it will never find the appreciation it deserves.  I get it.  He gets paid.  I’m not talking about that.  One artist to another, Jerry, this never ceases to amaze me.  I am proud to call you my friend.  Keep chasing it down.  It only gets better.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

My fascination with poetry came long before I had the chance to admire the works of William Wordsworth, William Blake, Geoffrey Chaucer, James Wright, Harryette Mullen, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney, John Keats, Donald Justice, Millard Dunn, or Dylan Thomas.

Putting words together in one way, shape, or form is a joy that grabbed me at a young age.  Recently I had a shiver up the spine whilst recording some songs.  There we were.  Me, a guitar, and a sheet of lyrics and chords were hanging out.  Embedded in one particular song were lyrics that I borrowed from poems I had written in 1985 and 1986.  A fifty-five year old was borrowing from his seventeen year old self.  That was a good day, however you wish to quantify.

Those poems I wrote more than three decades are in a bound book that, in earnest, I have not added anything to in a few decades.  If I was compelled to add something to it, I did not get the memo.  Perhaps this was by providential design.  Maybe.

When this book filled with poems from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, written long before I picked up a guitar with knowledge of how to mold words and music together, opens up, there is steadfastness about it.  The words never left.  They still have meaning.  Otherwise I would never have transposed some of these words with music.

Music.  Oh yes, that evil device!  

It was 1985.  That was then and this is now.  Some things never change.

When I think about the political bluster that is working its way around America in the form of book banning…AGAIN…I just shake my head.  This copy and paste political whimsy we suffer through today just looks for reasons to be mad.  Seems happiness in the form of complaining has become an art for some.

I can hear Ronald Reagan now looking at this unpleasant landscape, “Well, here we go again.”  

In 1985 it was that dreaded music that was polluting our nation.  Amazing as it was, there were Senate Hearings in Washington on the evils of popular music lyrics on the same day Bob Geldof was collecting 15.7 million pledge dollars that represented half of the money pledged during the LIVE AID CONCERTS in London and Philadelphia rockers put together to combat world hunger.  Their parents couldn’t stop Elvis from shaking his pelvis and now it was their turn.  Tipper Gore (Al), Susan Baker (James), Pam Howar (Raymond), and Sally Nevis (John) formed the Parents Music Resource Center and shook their finger at nasty lyrics.  One of these ladies found something her daughter was listening to objectionable and all music lyric hell at the Cotillion Society broke loose.

Not unlike what we are dealing with today in the form of book banning, I point to this time in my life when this was going on and all I could think, as a seventeen year old, was my parents taught me to stay away from music like that and they didn’t give a flip about Tipper Gore’s committee.  Oh yes, it was a simpler time.  My family’s values were in practice and we didn’t know what talking points were.

I recently looked at a list of fifteen songs that were targeted by the PMRC.  None of the artists listed have sat on my shelves at any point in time over the years.

I was there.  I have been there.

I will tell folks the same today.  If you can’t parent your kid, don’t blame the song.  If you can’t parent your kid, don’t blame the book.  And surely don’t blame someone else in the name of political bluster and the pursuit of intellectual welfare in the form of bigger government.

On September 19, 1985, John Denver, the musical equivalent of Mr. Rogers, said this:

“I suggest that graphic lyrics and explicit videos are not so far removed from what is seen on television every day and night whether it be in the soap operas or on the news.  That we should point our finger at the recording industry while watching the general public at a nationally televised game chant in unison ‘the Blue Jays suck’ is ludicrous.”

It was a simpler time.  Thank you, John Denver.  Glad I was there with you.

The aforementioned PMRC folded its tent eventually.  Given them credit, though.  This party was made up of both Republicans and Democrats.  It was a simpler time.

Examining the last point of John Denver’s statement makes me think of an ever popular slogan these days.  You’ve heard it.  Some of you have said it.  Some of you wear T-Shirts with it.  Some of you have bumper stickers on your vehicle sporting it.  You know the one.  It is a popular chant among some these days.

“Let’s Go Brandon!”

Not exactly a chant from the Cotillion Circuit.

Be it music or books to complain about, we know that some folks want to have their cake and eat it too.

We also know that not all nuts are grown in California.

We got a long way to go.  God help us.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson