Born to Retire

There is a great quote from Dave Prine in Tom Piazza's book LIVING IN THE PRESENT WITH JOHN PRINE. Dave is John Prine's older brother, the one who taught him how to play guitar and in December of 2022, Piazza interviewed Dave and Dave described what his daily life was like.

"Now all I do is play the banjo and the fiddle, and once in a while noodle on the guitar and enjoy life. I've been retired since '06, and I think I was born to retire. My day is mine, totally. I do what I want to do when I want to do it, and if nothing else, I take a nap. I'm eighty-five now, and I'm not as mobile as I once was."

Dave Prine is a very wise man. When I read those lines to Christine, she agreed with me that they sure echo our experience. I don't play music, but I'm pretty much living my life now in accord with Dave's principles. I think I was born to retire.

The news I care about isn't news on TV, it's mostly what is happening in my back yard. I read my local paper (electronic version) and I talk to local folks to find out their take on things. The big news at KD's this week is that we have a reptile shop opening here in town.

The big news from my back yard has been the fact that several Blue Jays are hanging out, juvenile squirrels are racing around, and new baby bunnies are taking their first cautious steps into the world. That's the news I find fascinating.

Living in the Present with John Prine

Life has a way of not going the way you planned. In February of 2020, John Prine told Tom Piazza, a musician and writer he'd been friends with for a couple of years, that he he was ready to work on writing a memoir. The weekend of February 27th, 2020, Prine and Piazza sat down with a tape recorder for what they figured was the first of a series of discussions about the book. Unfortunately, there were no follow up sessions. In March of 2020, the Covid virus shut down the world. On March 26th, John Prine was admitted to the ICU with COVID symptoms. He passed away on April 7th, 2020.

Remarkably, Tom Piazza took not only that too brief interview and combined it with his recollections of their also too brief two year friendship as well as interviews with other folks who knew and loved John Prine and has crafted a book that is not so much a memoir of a dead man, but something more powerful, a book that feels like the living spirit of the man himself. Reading the book feels like hanging out with John Prine, something that is a very worthwhile thing to do.

John is a great story teller and boy does he tell great stories in this book. And folks who know John tell great stories about John. John tells about meeting Bob Dylan at Carly Simon's apartment in 1971. John's first record isn't out yet, it's still two months away from release. So John is the new kid but he's hanging out with Kris Kristopherson and Steve Goodman at Carly's place and Bob Dylan shows up. Bob has a new song "George Jackson" which he plays, and Goodman, who's a smart Aleck, leans in and says "That's great, Bob, but it ain't no 'Masters of War.'" Bob is cool and doesn't smack Goodman (something I probably would've done) but then Prine to kind of defuse the tension starts playing "Far from Me" one of his (Prine's) new songs and Bob joins in after the second chorus! Jerry Wexler at Atlantic had sent an advance copy of the record to Dylan. Another buddy there, Eddie Olson, (Carly Simon must've had a huge apartment) says "Hey, Bob, there's some people back in Chicago that think John Prine sounds a lot like you. What do you think?" Bob looks at Eddie and then looks at Prine and says "The first time I heard your record I thought you'd swallowed a Jew's harp." Of course Prine cracks up as he recounts this tale.

Prine is always telling stories, like the time Sam Cooke entered a Sam Cooke sing-alike contest because he and his touring band needed gas money. The first prize was fifty bucks. They came in second and won a set of jello molds!

But the book is much more than just fun anecdotes about famous people, it's about John Prine being in the moment, whether he's buying shoes, eating hot dogs (John loved hot dogs), hanging out and loving life. John Prine connects with people in a way that is made vividly clear in the pages of this book. Prine doesn't try to direct his life, he's too busy living it.

Piazza copes with the grief we fans share at the loss of John Prine by giving us a book that feels like the conversation with our friend is ongoing. We'll always have the songs and the knowing smile. This book is like one more road trip with the top down, the radio playing an old song and John saying "You know, this reminds me of..."

The Littlest Voyageur

 

Hauling Stuff

I spent a couple of decades working in the bike business and I used to say that I was good at selling bicycling and bad at selling bicycles. One of my beefs with the bike industry is that they always want to sell you something new and I am big on keeping old things going and adapting what you have. Bike manufacturers in general (companies like Rivendell Bicycle Works are the exception) like to sell you a machine specialized for a specific purpose. Hell, one of the biggest brands in the bike world is called Specialized. So you should have a road bike for riding on the road, a mountain bike for riding in the mountains, no wait you should have a couple of mountain bikes, one optimized for downhill riding and one for cross country. And maybe you have a touring bike for, well, touring. But if you're going to be riding on gravel, you need a gravel bike. And so on. Every year there is some new thing you need.

A few years ago cargo bikes were the big deal. A lot of bikes aren't made to haul stuff, but that's the whole idea behind cargo bikes. I worked in various shops that sold cargo bikes and I've lived for decades without a car. You would think I'd be the target market for a cargo bike, but dedicated cargo bikes tend to be big and heavy and a pain in the ass to store. Now days most of them are also electric. But I always set up my various bikes to haul a bit of cargo and when I needed more carrying capacity I use this amazing device called a trailer. It works really well.

When our sons Peter and Eric were little, they got hauled around in bike trailers. When they got bigger they graduated to a thing called a Trail-a-Bike, which is like half a tandem that attaches to the back of a bicycle. That let me put their leg power to work. And then before too long they graduated to their own bikes.

Today, as part of our spring cleaning and downsizing, I hauled a bunch of records and a typewriter to the Northland Estate Store and then I hauled another trailer load of stuff Christine no longer needed to the Goodwill. My little trailer was all I needed.

Spring Cleaning

 

For The Birds

I take pictures pretty much every day. I always find something interesting and for the past two years I usually take my Sony camera with me when I leave the house. When I'm home the camera hangs on a hook by the window that overlooks our back yard. We have a couple of bird feeders in the back yard, as well as a very small pond. We have some resident bunnies and squirrels and a rotating assortment of birds. Since my camera is digital, I don't have to worry about film costs and while I don't bother to count how damn many pictures I take, my camera does track such things and today it told me I've shot my 12,000th picture. Obviously, I've taken some lousy pictures, but even I can't manage to take 12,000 bad pictures and today I got a real good one.

Some folks online have commented that the various birds and critters seem to pose for me, but the truth is that I'm a patient man with a lot of time and a camera with a fast shutter. And I usually don't post the lousy pictures.

Today, like a lot of days, I got out on my bike and over at Barker's Island and the Osaugie Trail I got some OK shots of geese and ducks and Red-winged Blackbirds. But it was back at home that Christine and I were thrilled to see a couple of Blue Jays engaged in courtship behavior. I got a really good shot of the pair on the back fence.

Downsizing

A few days ago I got a nice little CD player at Northland Estate Services. I have a pretty good sized CD collection and I often find CDs at thrift stores and yard sales for $1. I also have a USB CD drive that lets me rip CDs to MP3 files so I can store and play them on my laptop. So CDs are a music media that makes sense for me. I have never gotten into streaming, I like owning stuff.

Since moving to Superior, I have been collecting records but recently my cheap turntable crapped out and it doesn't seem to be made to be fixed. New turntables are either cheap and crappy or pretty damn pricey. While I like vinyl, I'm not one of those audio purists who can go on and on about the "warm" sound and vinyl records do take up a lot of space. And old records are starting to command high prices, it is getting harder and harder for me to find deals. I started looking for a good old turntable to replace my broken one and by golly those have gotten pricey as well. All of this got me to thinking that maybe this is the time to sell off my records.

I am going to be selling my records through Northland Estate Services and I will also be selling some of my typewriters through them as well. I really have way too many typewriters! I think this will work out well, I'll get more space and some cash. I'm sure I'll use the cash to by other, different old stuff.

Some folks are appalled that I am getting rid of the vinyl records, but I think it is the right move for me.