StraightAhead

I was in Galveston day before yesterday.  I love going down there to get my dose of Florida you might say.  I was born in the panhandle of Florida and moved away from there when I was about 3 to Tennessee.  My family took vacations back to the Pensacola area quite often when I was young and I loved it.  I loved going to the beach and learning to know old friends of my mom and dad.  My dad had been in the Navy there and that’s why I was born in the area.  There were kids of my parents friends and I really enjoyed getting to know them, especially the girls.  Anyway I always wanted to get back to the gulf coast somehow and I guess Texas is as close as i’m going to come to getting back to Florida.  Anyway to make a long story shorter, when I was a 7 or 8 year old kid in Tennessee my parents sent me to this voice teacher in the little town that we lived in in West Tennessee.  She brought out this sheet music of a tune that was a sea chanty about Galveston.  It wasn’t an easy tune to learn, or maybe for most people it would have been hard.  I don’t remember having too much trouble with it , though.  It has some very strange intervals.  As we were heading back home from the island a couple days ago , I began singing it as I have many times for my kids and wife.  It hit a very funny nerve of nostalgia or something else, i’m not sure.  I got to thinking about the little town in Tennessee and my voice teacher and how she wanted me to go on a tv show in Memphis to sing this strange song about Galveston.  At the time I had no idea about where Galveston was or even what Texas was like or exactly where it was, for that matter.  Might as well been Kallamazoo Michigan.  But, there I was on Galveston Island thinking about this song and singing it again and having all kinds of feelings about my life and how I got to where I was at that moment.  And I said to myself, this is a good place to be. I wish I could let that voice teacher know that I used that good ear I have to play the trumpet for many years in many contexts.  Funny connections in life and cross roads and coincidences, and the people you get to know, that’s what make it all so amazing.