As many of you know, my sister-in-law Cindy passed away three months ago on April 30th, 2018. It was not unexpected, but was nonetheless too soon. In February of this year she was diagnosed with cancer and given six to nine months to live. She passed away just over two months later in April.

I first met Cindy when she was thirteen, way back in the summer of ‘72. In all of the time that has passed since then, the one thing I’ve known consistently about Cindy is, as Cathy says, she has always marched to her own drum. She lived most of her life outside the box.

With my military and corporate background, I suppose I’ve lived much of my life inside the box. In spite of our different approaches to life, or maybe because of them, we loved each other in our own way, as you often do with members of your family, or extended family. I can’t say that I always liked what Cindy was doing at a particular time in her life, but I always loved her.

Her remembrance was held in Alabama on June 10th. We gathered together to celebrate her life. Friends and family were there, including cousins and three of Cindy’s four surviving uncles. Bonnie and Cathy both spoke eloquently about Cindy, her life, and their relationships with her. There was much story telling, some funny, some sad, and more than a few margaritas were drank that day in her honor. At Cindy’s request, Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” was played, allowing us to reminisce about our youth and leaving us with feelings of hope and redemption.

I think there is always an extra bit of sadness when someone dies young, as Cindy did. Having said that, at the remembrance enough time had passed since her death, and we were able to celebrate her life among us and our memories of her.

And now she has been gone for three months. For my part, I will remember the good times we did share over the years. And I will think of Ecclesiastes 5:18, both for Cindy, and for myself –

“Even so, I have noticed one thing, at least, that is good. It is good for people to eat well, drink a good glass of wine, and enjoy their work – whatever they do under the sun – for however long God lets them live.”

Peace be with you Cindy. Thanks for helping me remember to celebrate the good things in life.

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** This version of Ecclesiastes 5:18 came from the New Living Translation of the Bible.

Our dog, Carmen, and I have a morning routine that hasn’t changed in the past three years.  It’s pretty much the same, no matter the season, or the weather. It can be a regular day, Christmas Day, or raining cats and dogs, it doesn’t matter. This is what happens.

Everyday we wake up between 6:30 and 7:00AM.  Somedays I’m up first, somedays she wakes me, but always in that same timeframe.  (If I’m not home, she never wakes Cathy, but instead waits for her to get up). As I dress, she stretches a time or two and then sits and waits by the bedroom door.  I open the door and we head downstairs, Carmen leading the way.  I proceed to the back door, where she’s waiting for me.  I slip on my shoes, open the door, and out we go.  Interestingly, if I let her out, but then go back inside to do something for a minute, I’ll find her sitting just outside the back door waiting for me (“Let’s go dad, what’s up?”).

As we proceed to the barn, Carmen will do her business along the way.  Typically our barn cats, Stan and Ollie, will say hello and the four of us make our way to the barn for feeding time.  In the summertime, the horses have been out for the night and are waiting to come in (in winter, the horses have been in the stable all night and are ready to go out).  

At the barn, I fill each horse’s bucket with water and throw some hay in their stalls.  Carmen wanders the barn and checks things out to make sure nothing has changed from the day before, and also to see if the cats have left any food around their bowls.  We then walk to the feed room to get grain for the horses and the dry food for the cats.  As I am about to return to the barn, I look at Carmen and she sits down in the feed room. I close the door.  She knows that she’s not allowed out while I bring the horses in.

I put the feed in each stall’s bucket, give the cats their food, and then go for the horses.  Noggin’ and ‘Shendo come in first from the nearby paddock, and then it’s Sailor and Katie’s turn from the backfield.  Once all of the horses are in, I let Carmen out of the feed room and we head back up the drive.  

Instead of going straight to the house, I walk the 100 yards or so up the driveway to the mailbox and retrieve the Washington Post.  Carmen doesn’t follow me, but instead lays down in the driveway about two feet inside the invisible fence.  When  I come back from getting the paper, she is invariably waiting for me there.  I come over the hill, she stays put.  I walk down the hill, she stays put.  Finally, when I cross the invisible fence line myself, she jumps up and trots to the back door of the house.

We go inside, and I fill her bowl with food.  As she is munching down, I go to the kitchen, make my coffee, check email, and proceed to read the Post.

Our days diverge after that and we both get on with our lives.  Sometimes we are doing things together, but other than our afternoon walk, often times not.  I like to think that we are comfortable with each other in our friendship.  I know both of us enjoy our morning ritual together.  It’s something we can count on and look forward to, come what may.

It’s a pretty good start to the day. What’s yours look like?

The vast majority of my blogs aren’t political. They are about my life, or the lives of my friends and extended family. After the recent events in Belgium, England, and Finland, I felt compelled to write this piece.

We can argue about the environment, abortion, trade, the economy, health care and any number of other issues, but as a veteran and a patriot, I’m embarrassed by the events of the past week. I don’t understand our current president and his views about Russia and our European allies. When did it become patriotic to denigrate our allies and embrace our enemies?

If you have studied history at all, you know that NATO is a major reason that we have had peace in Europe for the last 70 years. Is NATO perfect? No. Are there issues? Sure. But to belittle the organization is ridiculous. And then to specifically go after Great Britain (May) and Germany (Merkel), two allies that have stood with us not only in Europe, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan is nothing short of foolish.

Fast forward to Helsinki. The president’s comments at the press conference were distressing. First, he supports Putin, a man that wishes nothing but ill will not only for our country, but for all nations in the West. He has poisoned people, interfered with elections (not only ours, but others as well), caused issues in Crimea and the Ukraine, imprisoned internal opposition candidates and murdered Russian citizens. Then, our President takes it a step further and talks badly about our own intelligence agencies, blames the US for the poor relations between our countries, and again supports Putin in his allegations. The press conference could not have been more favorable to Putin, if Putin had scripted it himself. And this is our great deal maker?

I am glad to see politicians of both parties have called our president to task for his poor performance in Europe, but that’s not enough. We as citizens all need to express our concerns and ensure our voice is heard. Write your elected officials, write the White House, talk to your neighbors, protest peacefully if you are so moved, but above all, vote.

As an American and a veteran, I’m embarrassed by our president’s performance in Europe, When I was in the Army, I spent almost nine years in Europe as a part of NATO defending this country. I understand that times change and the “Cold War” ended many years ago. For our president to not understand that these times are equally treacherous and that history repeats itself is not only unfortunate, but could prove tragic for us.

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I’m not sure why, but the burial of our horse Arthur has stayed with me in greater detail than many human funerals. This came to mind recently as I was bush hogging our back field and hit a rock I forgot was there. It was the stone we had put in place to mark where we buried Arthur many years ago.

Arthur made the transition with us when we moved from the suburbs to the country. I suppose you could make the argument it was because of Arthur that we moved to the country. He had a good life at the stable in the ‘burbs, but I like to think he enjoyed it a bit more here at Rohan Farm. Cathy still competed with him, but he and his pal Red had plenty of green pasture to roam when not working.

Cathy rode Arthur for a few more years, but he finally got older and was having some problems. Cathy bought Tucker to compete with, and we retired Arthur. He spent his days grazing with Red. Eventually, his problems worsened and the arthritis in his spine was causing significant pain. Another vet visit, and we decided it was time.

The day we put Arthur down was a pretty fall day with a vivid blue sky. The gravedigger, Larry, arrived and I showed him where we wanted Arthur buried in the back pasture. He offloaded his backhoe and started to work.

Maybe half an hour later, our vet, Tena, arrived. Cathy put a halter on Arthur and we started for the back field. There was no talking. We crossed the dike by the pond, and for some strange reason our trek reminded me of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover. We were in single file at that point with Tena in front. Cathy came behind leading Arthur, and I brought up the rear. I know it’s weird, but whenever I see that album cover now, I think about Arthur. It’s strange how the brain works.

In any case, we kept going and crossed the little creek that marked the entrance to the back pasture. At that point, you could hear the backhoe operating. As we crested a small hill, Larry and the grave came into view. Larry saw us and pulled the backhoe off to one side and shut it down. As we approached, he stood and took off his hat.

Larry made the hole in such a way that there was a ramp going down about eight feet to the bottom of the grave. When we arrived, Cathy led Arthur to the bottom and stood there stroking his mane. She gave him a last carrot, which he slowly munched, and then it was time. Tena gave him the shot and after a few seconds, Arthur slid to the ground. Cathy was holding his head and I was petting his side. A bit later, the life left his eyes and Tena checked his heart. It had stopped beating. We stayed with him a while longer, tears in all of our eyes.

We trudged back out of the hole and made our way across the field. Larry put his hat back on and sat down on the backhoe . As we crossed the stream at the edge of the field, I heard him start the backhoe again.

Arthur was 25 when we put him down. When Red died a few years later, he was 31. We put him in the back field next to his buddy Arthur. Both graves have turned green with new grass over the years. The stone markers have sunk into the earth and don’t protrude much anymore. When the grass gets higher, I can’t see the stones and occasionally hit one with the bush hog.

Over time, we buried other horses, dogs and cats here on the property. While I remember the others, it’s Arthur’s burial on that pretty fall day that has stayed with me. Larry’s sensitivity and Tena’s compassion were a part of it, as was Cathy’s and my sadness. And Arthur himself? I suppose it’s strange to say it, but his dignity was with him to the end. He was a good horse.

It was dusk turning to dark on July 4th, 1976 and Washington DC’s Bicentennial fireworks would start at any moment. Cathy and I were stuck in traffic on the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac. It looked like we were not going to make it in time.

I’d travelled to DC from West Point a couple of days earlier to visit Cathy for the big Bicentennial weekend. Events were going on all across the country, and our nation’s Capitol was having one of the biggest firework celebrations. We didn’t plan to miss it.

July Fourth dawned, and it was a beautiful day. We hung around Cathy’s, as we did not want to arrive downtown too early. There was a protest that morning, and a parade later in the day, and we planned to avoid both. Instead, we had a picnic at Cath’s with grilled steaks, and some of her world famous potato salad. Finally, we decided to drive to DC from her place in Alexandria.

Being young (and maybe foolish), I hadn’t realized how heavy the traffic was going to be in a pre-metro DC. The traffic was at a crawl as soon as we left Cathy’s apartment complex. We joined the throng, and slowly made our way towards DC. Time passed. More time passed. Finally we approached the Potomac River and everything came to a standstill. We were stuck in traffic on the 14th Street Bridge, and dusk was turning to dark. Suddenly, the first fireworks went off. What should we do? We obviously weren’t going to make it.

A car ahead of us made the first move, but soon there were several of us doing the same thing. We pulled out of the traffic and onto the median of the bridge and parked. We’d watch the fireworks from the bridge itself. It turned out to be a great vantage point to watch the unbelievable show taking place in DC. The Jefferson Memorial was in the foreground, with the Washington Monument behind it. I’ve since read that DC set off over 30 tons of fireworks that night and there were a million people in attendance. The display lasted a long time and was worth the drive to get there.

As great as they were, the fireworks weren’t the highlight of the night for me, or for Cathy. That was still to come.

The fireworks ended. We jumped in the car, did a quick u-turn and drove back towards Cathy’s apartment ahead of the traffic exiting DC. On the way, we decided to stop in Old-Town Alexandria and party some more. We tried to get into one of our favorite places, The Fish Market, but it was wall-to-wall people. As we were standing on King Street, we heard music coming from an upstairs bar across the cobblestone street and made our way to the entrance. We climbed the stair, and literally as we were opening the door to the bar, we heard –

“Good morning, America How are you?

Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son.

I’m the train they call the city of New Orleans

And I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done”

Arlo Guthrie had recorded the song “City of New Orleans” in ‘72 and everyone knew the words. Or at least everyone in the bar did, and we all joined right in. There were probably 70 or 80 people, all singing along. We may not have been in perfect harmony, but we made up for it with volume and enthusiasm. When the song ended, there was a huge amount of cheering, clapping and hugging, and people calling out Happy Birthday to America. Cathy and I both remember the utter joy in the bar that night more than anything else about the Fourth of July that year. Everybody truly was celebrating the 200th birthday of our country. It was amazing.

I’ve been thinking about that evening in 1976 as our Independence Day celebration approaches this year. The country went through a rough patch in the early 1970s leading up to our 200th birthday. Vietnam, anti war protests, Kent State, Nixon and Watergate, race issues, the assassination attempts on Ford, and multiple drug overdoses, including Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison, to name just a few of the issues of the day. And yet, to me on that Fourth of July, it felt like we were all in one boat pulling together. We weren’t Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, young or old, black or white. We were just Americans, and it seemed our differences were set aside, at least for that night.

Which brings me back to this year’s Fourth of July. It appears we are less united now and I sometimes wonder if we can bridge our differences any more. We have a seventeen year war, a drug crisis, race issues, and politicians, some more than others, who divides us. Hatred grows. I know we have gone through similar periods in our nation’s history, but online media accelerates and exasperates the situation. I try and think what the future might hold for this great country of ours, and the answer isn’t always clear.

Good morning, America how are you?

We had the good fortune of being invited to our neighbors for a dinner of steamed crabs last night. Not just any crabs, but Maryland Blue Crabs that were in our cove yesterday morning.

I love crab and Maryland is a great place to get it. There’s wonderful crab all across the country, whether the North Carolina coast, Gulf crab in Louisiana, or Dungeness crab out in California. But there’s something special about crab that comes out of the Chesapeake. It’s a little sweeter, I think.

We’ve been on the Eastern Shore for the past week celebrating our anniversary. During this time, I’ve made crab cakes at home twice, and had a soft shell sandwich at lunch one day. I suppose I may be a little obsessive about it, but when the crab is so fresh and local, it’s hard not to be.

Our neighbor had a trot line out in the cove yesterday morning and he and another friend gathered a bushel of crabs in about three hours. Later that day, they invited Cathy and I over for steamed crabs last night.

Steamed crabs, are wonderful in a restaurant, but having them in your neighbors backyard with friends is something else. I think the best part is the communal nature of picking and eating fresh crabs. It’s a time commitment. You don’t work your way through a bushel very quickly. I think most people get a little tired of the work involved, before they actually get full of crab.

Last night, we gathered at our friend’s home and had a couple of beers while the crabs were steaming. The butcher paper was already on the picnic table. As he finished cooking the crabs, Jim dumped the first load from the pot straight onto the table. While he reloaded the steamer with the back half of the bushel, the rest of us started eating. They were oh so good. The conversation fell off a bit, but it didn’t stop as we were picking. A while later, the second load was also dumped on the table and we soldiered on, although perhaps slowing a bit. Finally, as it neared dusk, we finished up. The tables were cleaned and we adjourned to the porch for another drink or two and more conversation.

Cath and I finally left and walked home in the dark. It was a great evening of food and friendship. Jim gave me a small going away present as we left – six or seven leftover crabs. I’ll pick them later today, and with a bit of luck we will have enough crab meat for a couple more cakes. Life on the Chesapeake is pretty good.

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** The title of this blog was borrowed from Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song “Down in Mary’s Land” .  Give it a listen if you haven’t heard it before – I think you will like it.

Forty years… it sounds more like a prison sentence than it does a wedding anniversary. “That’s right Max and Cathy, your sentence is 40 years to life”. Forty Years… That’s how long Cathy and I will be married on Saturday, June 16th.

It’s not so hard to look at Cathy’s face now and see the sixteen year old girl I started dating in 1972. We were so young. It didn’t feel like we were young at the time, but looking back, my God. All of that future together, and we didn’t yet realize it. Maybe we started to sense it when I left for West Point. I still have the letter she handed me that day, making me promise not to open it until I was in the car and on my way east –

“……Next year is going to be hard on us, but I have a strong feeling that we’ll make it….when it starts getting hard or you feel down, or something goes wrong just remember that I love you….”

She was talking abut my first year at West Point, but the words turned out to be a covenant for our next four plus decades together.

We’ve had mostly good times over the past forty years, but we’ve also had our share of challenges and hard times. There has been “better and worse, richer and poorer, and sickness and health”. In times of trouble, Cathy has been my rock and my strength. We’ve dealt with illnesses, separations due to military deployments, family deaths, tough times at work, people telling us what a marriage should look like, and any number of other challenges both big and small. We needed to learn how to make our marriage work through all of that and we did.

Over the past few years, as we’ve achieved “senior marriage status”, folks have asked me “What’s the secret? How do you make marriage a success?” I’m usually a bit dumbstruck by the question, because I don’t know the answer. Having said that, there are two things I do know. First, marriage takes constant work. Second, you have to figure out what will make your marriage a success. Not what makes generic marriage a success, or what will make someone else’s marriage a success, or your friend’s marriage a success, but what will make your marriage a success. It may be something quite different from what works for other couples. You have to decide what is best for you two, and I don’t think anyone else can tell you that.

When anniversaries happen, it’s easy to look to the past and remember the good times you’ve had. On this anniversary, what I’m really excited about is our future together, and what new promises, joys and challenges await us. I know there will be family, old and new friends, adventures, challenges, and yes, heartache and sadness. Our future together starts tomorrow, and I can’t wait to continue this wonderful partnership.

I love you honey…..

Our fortieth wedding anniversary is coming up, and that started my thinking about the taxi that interrupted our very first anniversary. It was June of 1979. Cathy and I were stationed in Germany and living in the small town of Helmstadt. The night of our anniversary, we were sitting outside on the patio drinking Sekt (German champagne) and celebrating the one year mark. I planned to put some steaks on the grill, and we had a fun night planned.

While talking, we saw a cream colored taxi coming up the hill. Hmmm we thought, one of our neighbors must have some rich visitors arriving – the nearest city with taxi service was Würzburg, and that was fifteen miles away. The taxi kept coming and turned onto our street. Wow – a local neighbor. And then it stopped in front of our house. What!?! The back door of the taxi opened and out stepped my sister Roberta and her friend Debbie.

Roberta and Debbie had stayed with us earlier in the month, but now, they were suppose to be on a Eurail pass (a train pass for all of Europe), somewhere in Austria, or France, or Italy. Yet, here they were. Hugs all around and what the hell is going on?

Well, their travels had started out great. Eventually, they made it to Rome, where besides getting pinched, they met the mysterious Giorgio who was quite nice and showed them some of the sites. After spending a few days in Rome, they left town on the train, and were promptly robbed. In fact everyone in their train car was robbed. Roberta and Debbie lost all of their cash AND their passports. What to do?! They left the train at the next station, and then boarded a train back to Rome, where they planned to go to the embassy for new passports.

Arriving in Rome, they realized they had no money. Interestingly, they still had Giorgio’s business card and a few lire in change. They called Giorgio and miraculously, he picked up the phone. No problemo….he would be happy to help. He arrived at the train station, picked them up, and checked them into a hotel not far from his home. For the next couple of days, he squired them around to the embassy for passports, American Express to pick up money being wired in by parents, and several other local sites. One day they were sitting at a small cafe and he bought them cappuccinos. In the America of 1979, pre-Starbucks, nobody knew what a cappuccino was. As they sipped their coffees, Roberta asked him “Who are those guys that are always with you? Can’t you get rid of them?” His answer – “Those are my bodyguards. They go with me everywhere.”

Eventually, they received their new passports and the additional money. Rather than travel around anymore, they decided to return to our house. They said farewell to Giorgio, and took the train north. In Wurzburg, they obtained a taxi at the train station, and make their way to our home.

Now this was an incredibly interesting story, but IT WAS our one year anniversary. We had Sekt for two, steaks for two, dessert for two, and….well you get the idea. So, after chatting a bit more, we mentioned to them that a bier fest had started in town that day, and perhaps they would like to walk to it. They happily agreed and departed a few minutes later, while we went back to celebrating our anniversary.

The next morning over coffee and breakfast, we asked them how the bier fest was. It turned out the fest hadn’t started yet. As a matter of fact, the huge tent was empty, except for about 20 guys. The local soccer team had helped get things ready for the fest and they were now relaxing with a few biers. They saw Roberta and Debbie enter the tent and called them over. Roberta and Debbie spoke no German, and the majority of the team spoke no English. This small impediment caused no issues and they spent the next several hours together becoming the best of friends, drinking biers and eating bratwursts.

At some point in time, Debbie disappeared to take a motorbike ride with one of the soccer players. He was going to “show her the route of the next day’s Volksmarch”. While in the woods, the bike got stuck in the mud, and in order to get it unstuck, Debbie had to follow the cycle on foot until they were out of the muck. As Deb told me later “It was a little eerie to be stuck in a forest in Germany at midnight with a complete stranger. For a moment I questioned my sanity and if it would end well. Fortunately it did.” Eventually she returned, and Berta and Deb made the walk back to our home, arriving some time well after we were in bed.

Debbie and Roberta left for the States a few days later. Time passed and they both became wives, mothers, and eventually grandmothers. I laugh to myself when I think about the story and the passage of time. I know my sister and Deb are around my age, but I can still see them as the young women who met Giorgio in Italy and the soccer team in Helmstadt. We should all know how to have such fun.

The NFL certainly has the right as a business to do what it wants in administering it’s business. Personally, I have mixed feelings on players kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner. It’s something I would never do, and I’m not sure it helps the cause(s) they are advocating. But, I do believe they have the right to do so. And of course, people have the right to watch, or not watch NFL games.

I think it’s interesting to see what the Supreme Court said in 1943, while our country was in the middle of WWII. The Court held, in a 6-to-3 decision, that it was unconstitutional for public schools to compel students to salute the flag. The Court wrote that any “compulsory unification of opinion” was doomed to failure and was antithetical to the values set forth in the First Amendment. The Court stated:

“To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

The Supreme Court announced its decision on June 14, Flag Day.

I was cleaning out the truck, when I came across this gem – a cassette tape labeled “Party – Slow Mix”. I had an instant flashback to New Year’s Eve, 1987.

At the time, I was a Captain in the Army and we were on our second tour in Germany. We lived on the economy in the small town of Rheindurkheim, just outside of Worms. In December of ‘87 we decided to have a New Year’s Eve party that year and started getting ready.

One of my jobs in “party prep” was to make some music tapes. We had started converting our music library to CDs, but also still had albums and cassette tapes. The problem was, if you wanted to mix your music up for a party, you had to make tapes. Making a mixed CD wasn’t yet possible, and no one had even heard of downloading music, or having your own private station on iHeart Radio or Spotify. That was still a decade or two in the future.

I made four ninety-minute cassette tapes of “Party Music”. I tried to keep it at five or six loud/fast songs to one slow song for a mix, with the tapes planned for later in the evening changing the mix to a bit more slow music. Four tapes would get me from 8:00PM to about 2:00AM. Then I decided to make one more tape – the “Party- Slow Mix” tape. By 2:00AM, most folk would be gone, and we could just have some mellow stuff to listen to.

The night of the party came and we had a great time. German friends, local American military friends, out of town friends who were crashing at our house for the night, and Cathy’s sister Bonnie, who was visiting from the States were all there. There was lots of food that everyone contributed and plenty to drink – Bier, Wein, Sekt (German champagne)and homemade Schnapps from a neighbor. There was also plenty of dancing. At one point, someone started a conga line that snaked around the house, out the front door, down the Strasse (street), and finally circled back through our back door. Things went on at a dull roar until sometime well after midnight.

Sure enough, around 1:30 or 2:00AM the party thinned out and the only ones remaining were those spending the night. The night slowed down, and I put on the “Party – Slow Mix” tape and it seemed to fit – nice, mellow, and good in the background. People were mostly just hanging out, sitting around and sipping on this or that. Slowly, folk slipped off to bed, and I think Cath and I retired around 4:00AM.

The next day was a bit rough. Eventually people were waking up and moving around. We cooked a big American breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, fried potatoes and toast. The kind of breakfast that has a bit of grease in it to help soak up the previous night’s activities. After that, everyone pitched in and we started cleaning up the house. Someone found a half case of Sekt outside that hadn’t been opened, and someone else suggested mimosas might be in order. The mimosas made the cleaning go a bit quicker, and soon enough we finished the cleaning, but not the mimosas. Those continued for quite some time. In fact those mimosas started a tradition that we ended up having off and on for the next thirty years – our New Year’s Day Hair of the Dog Party.

All of those thoughts flashed through my brain as I looked at the tape. I wondered how well the tape had survived the passage of time – both physically, and aesthetically. Our truck has a tape player, so I decided to find out and popped it in.

Louis Armstrong’s “Summertime” filled the cab, followed by John Lee Hooker’s “Whiskey and Women”, and then The Stones “You can’t always get what you want”. ….this isn’t bad…. Next came “Nights in White Satin”, a couple of Sam Cooke songs, and Madonna’s “Crazy for you”. Hmmm… this stuff is holding up…. Two German songs, a slow version of “99 Luft Balloons” and “Uber Sieben Brucke (Over Seven Bridges) added some local host country flavor, and then came “Take my Breath Away” from Top Gun. I was enjoying the tape quite well, thank you very much.

What happened next is what always eventually happens to cassette tapes. No music and a funny sound. Nooooooo! Yep. The cassette player was eating the tape. I hit the eject button and pulled the tape out. Rutro. I tried to save it, but to no avail.

What’s on the rest of the tape? I don’t know. Part of me wants to try and re-spool the cassette, and part of me says let it go. That was one damn fine party, but you can never go back……