Chapter 138

11/27/2006

Ch 138 Harlem Nocturne gittin stoned in the ADK's

It was an inviting warm summer evening at camp, the kind that brings neighbors out on their back porches to luxuriate in the Balsam splendor of Adirondack life. And so it was, that Warren called over to me after a hard day of Kayaking on beautiful Piseco Lake, beckoning me over for a Budweiser in the tall Iridescent Blue designer can.

No, we didn't stop at one neither. We drank till we got our fill. After several, with darkness settin in like a boar bear retreating to his cave for the winter, Warren, a gravel-ly Ossining Town Highway Department retiree, loosened up (he's always loose). He began spinning those same tall yarns about the good ole days when he used to stand up to that Superintendent boss-man. Warren wasn't the kind of guy to take no crap from punks like that. It was about this time that he began to rant that he had the world's best song collection and was rattlin off song titles like a teenager in heat. I challenged him to produce a few examples, so he slammed thru the back porch screen door and shuffled back with "Axes and Saxes".

Don't know if it was the night, the exhaustion, the spirits, or whatever, but we played "Harlem Nocturne" for about 36 times straight as his squeeze Joanie joined in with cocktails, lighting some candles that flickered in the breeze. You just gotta listen to that haunting saxophone on this beautiful sultry blues piece. It was the one modified into the theme song for Mickey Spillane's - Mike Hammmer Private Eye series. We were just settin around talkin, and it seemed that Joanie had some "secret memories of that song playing and the glory days while back at high school", she said with a wink of her eye. As the night wore on Joanies cute granddaughter, another recent SUNY Grad, pulled in with friends who couldn't wait to get away from our music and went on down to dockside on the lake to make their own music. I was trying to act swave, but ended up fallin off the porch in a pile of dog crap. Their old dog, "Stoner", he's got to go somewhere. Hey, it's nature but these things can't be avoided.

That brought out another story about the time the nosey neighbor down the street, the building inspector's shrew wife, had come by as was her routine. This time, no one was home- she stuck her head in the door and got nailed by Stoner. They got a good laugh out of that one. "That son of a bitch will keep her nose out of our camp now. She's got that pointy snout on her such that she can eat a tomato thru a tennis racquet.", Warren chortled.

Joanie was looking forward to when her daughter Julie, hubby fisherman Bill, and the rug rats would next be able to come up. Was feeling pretty mellow by then and as I heard the call of the wild Loon out on the lake, time grabbed my by the wrist and directs me where to go. It was time to head back next door. It was just one of life's fleeting moments of time, but that will forever be our song.

Come to find out the song was written way back in 1939, there are over a hundreds different recordings of it. I like the Johnny Nocturne version and am sending a copy of it to Warren & Joanie. I burned it from my slick new IPOD music, as Key Bank gave me this terrific free Nano for opening an account. Click for the amusing Nano drop/ thrown/ run over by a Volkswagen mangling test, while the music played on.