The first car may frequently be more important in a young man’s life than the first sex. Sometime in the first two weeks of May 1969, my dad bought me mine, a well-used blue Chevrolet Nova. The car finally necessitated that I get a job, in order to pay for insurance. The following Monday I was at the gate of the Grove Street plant of the Ford Motor Company.
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For the funeral, his daughters put together a tape of short excerpts from songs the man had loved. We were freed up to love him again in a way that would not have been possible without this aid. Damn straight we were celebrating his life! Do I think God felt slighted or envious? Do I think God was worried we were focusing our attention in the wrong place? Uh, nooo.
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Posted on September 2, 2010, 10:21 pm, by Jack L. B. Gohn, under
Theme Songs.
Have I been defending my youthful tastes a little by portraying myself as a sophisticate-in-training with a yen for the challenging hidden within the mundane like a diamond in the rough? Probably. But with this next item, Lawrence Welk’s version of Calcutta, there is absolutely no making that argument. However intelligently constructed, it is musical kitsch, and one has to start with that.
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