Jack wrote this in July, 2005:
Went down to Bernalillo a bit ago to get my tickees for tonight… found myself talking with a guy about my age sitting outside with a bicycle… two wheel thing with pedals… with a pack and all manner of water jugs. Guy had a helmet shaped like a horizontal teardrop he wears… point facing backward, along with a stretchy black short legged suit made of something that might have been a tailored wetsuit. Distracts from the conversation a bit, talking to a likeable sort of person wearing something like that, wondering what the hell THAT’s all about.
He’s gearing up to ride that two wheeler from Newfoundland to Mass in a couple of weeks… old guy. Put some chin whiskers on me, take away my cavalry whiskers, make me a bit uglier and longer winded, hell, the guy might have been me.
Anyway, I’ve wandered off the purpose of this entry. Coming back up the hill leaving Bernalillio I was stopped at a red light…. car on my left had it’s window down….(incidentally, that car resembled a 1947 Dodge sedan scaled down to maybe 2/3 size…. we used to call the trunk of the car the ‘turtle’ because of the looks of those post WWII sedans)… A spanking new futuristic looking 1947 Dodge sedan is how I’d have described it if the guy turned out to be some kind of whatchacallit, drive-by shoe salesman and I had to give a description to the law…. anyway threads of music coming out the window nearest me sounded to be strangely familiar, though it had a chipmunks ring to it.
Then it struck me…. this song was popular during the Berlin Crisis of 1961 when I was a bootcamper at Fort Jackson, SC……. no chipmunks in those days…..”I’mmmmmm just a soooooldier…A loooooonely sooooooldier, so far from home with no something of my ooooooown, etc”.
Whew. I haven’t heard that song in 40 years or more, haven’t even thought about it. Coming out of a brand shiny new 1947 Dodge sedan. The chipmunk sound made it even eerier.
I’m enlisting next week in a parallel universe.
Jack
So Far From Heaven 