50+ Lifestyles

Just Saying…

Summertime When the Living is Easy

By Q.C. Jones

Remember the old Porky and Bess musical? While it was first performed back in 1935, the George Gershwin inspired American Opera made a dramatic comeback in 1942. My guess is my parents’ first heard songs from it as teenagers, and it stuck. When a recording of the soundtrack of a subsequent movie came out in 1959, my parents bought it. The first song on it bares the same name as this month’s installment from your pal and sometimes correspondent, QC Jones.

Here’s a little refresher…

Summertime when the living is easy,
The fish are jumping, and the cotton is high.

For reasons known only to my dear old dad, he loved to hear the song as our family waited for dinner in the summer.  Extending this further, he also did a solid “a cappella”
version to the rhythm of his fuel truck bouncing down the rough country roads of central Illinois. I liked the song but always felt it belonged to another generation – at least until Janis Joplin released her version in 1969. I scraped up my hard-earned cash and bought the 8-track tape. In the summer of 1970, I listened to it constantly. On a side note, my band still occasionally dusts off that song, and my musical partner in crime, East Side Wheels, belts out a version which would make Janis and George proud.

Why bring all of this up?  Well, a couple of reasons.  First, obviously, it is summertime. Secondly, I took my young grandson fishing down at the little pond on Credit Island, and the fish were jumping even if not biting.  Finally, as we were making our way home from our localized version of “The American Sportsman,” I found myself following in my dad’s footsteps and singing along with an imaginary band.

I got to the second verse, which according to my recollection, goes:

One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing.
Then you’ll spread your wings, and you’ll take the sky.

I can’t help but notice I naturally get up earlier in the summer. And, when the days are bright and fair, I find it impossible to not be in a soaringly good mood. The birds chirping, the sun raining down bright early morning colors.  Even with the windows closed a person can sense the air is rich in oxygen.

Again from the song:

Oh, your daddy’s rich, And your ma is good-lookin’

It was near the end of one of these easy living summer days, that I had the opportunity to once again rendezvous with my friend the Kentucky Kid. He fills the bill on the last song quote except it seems both traits skipped a generation.  Any way, the Kid is one of the most interesting people on the planet – could be he reminds me of me. We struck up a friendship by accident a half dozen or so years ago and discovered a connection which may extend into other lifetimes. We look, think, and act alike. Further, we both enjoy delving into deep conversations on a broad range of topics.

Blissful summer nights on the patio and sips of aged Kentucky spirts serve to lubricate conversation. My pal summoned up his position as the Founder of the Wayward Son’s of Harlan Sanders and pulled up a comfortable chair and took me along on a two-hour tour of old-fashioned conversation.  Along the way, I made mental note of the topics. Here is a quick overview…

Metaphorically speaking, we dove into the conversation like Pharaoh’s daughter straight into the Nile.

It seems my Kentucky pal is enamored with a band called The HU. This is a band from Mongolia that blends heavy metal and traditional Mongolian throat singing.  The band’s name is the Mongolian root word for human being.  We paused for a moment to sample their music. The band plays electrified versions of the traditional Mongolian instruments, the kind often seen hanging on the wall of fancy Asian Restaurants.  While I have not developed an opinion on Mongolian Punk Music, I couldn’t help but notice all their videos showed mountains in the background.  This may explain why the Kid liked their music. His roots are 100 percent hillbilly.

It was the mountains in the video which took us on a journey down our shared ancestry. Both QC Jones and the KY Kid track their linage to Scotch-Irish and assorted other Euro-billy tribes. This turned into a book review of Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. We decided we had to be related somewhere, hence our common attraction to hillbilly music and Kentucky Bourbon.

The conversation went on to cover the following list topics. Genetics, human-neanderthal cross pollination, ankle degeneration, lap steel guitars, Sacred Steel gospel music, bank robbing relatives, and being mature enough to drive a Buick. Because every conversation should involve politics, we discussed the formation of a new political party where the presidential candidate would be either a Harlan Sanders or Ming the Merciless look-alike.

Thinking about it, Ming and Harlan both had amazing beards. Summertime conversations. Just saying…