Episode One - Summer
[Ezra sings first verse of James Alley Blues.]
Okay…[chuckle]…old dog, new trick…[chuckle]…oh, I don’t know…it, you know, it’s not like I got anything special to say, but, uh…but I’m, just kinda feelin’ this urge so, I figure, why not? I’m gonna talk. And you’re gonna listen. [Chuckle] Uh, but fortunately for you this is a recording so, you don’t have to worry about bein’ polite, you can just shut it off if you get tired of listenin’ to me. Uh, I’m recordin’ this in my living room, so you might notice a car, or a pickup, or dump truck, goin’ by…uh, well, you might hear my dog lickin’ himself, too, but there’s not much I can do about that…um, well, I think that’s probably enough intro, uh…yeah…oh, there is one other, uh, yeah, the music, umm…uh, so I like the old time stuff, I, uh, yeah, I really do, I, I like it a lot. Uh, listen to it whenever the wife’s not in the house, the scratchier the better, so, um…and I even try to play it, some of it, sort of, so…so brace yourself for that…okay?…okay ---
So, hey, huh? It’s summertime. We made it. Mm-hm. Summers are usually pretty nice up here, or they can be, let’s put it that way. It can be cold and wet, too, but man, when it’s nice, it’s nice, so-um, so we all look forward to summer up here…in the southern Greens. ‘Course it’s not perfect, nothin’ is. Like I said, it can get chilly and wet up here, even in the summer. And there’s ticks, dammit, more and more of them, seems like. Folks up here were sayin’ how that last cold snap we had, back in, uh --- I think it was March, was gonna help keep the tick population down this summer, but, uh…yeah…I had a doctor’s appointment back here in April, and after the appointment I took my dog for a walk, just a short one, you know, just around the parking lot, and when I got ‘im back to the car, I found four ticks on ‘im…yeah…one walk, four ticks, in April…so…that does not bode well.
And floods, we got floods now, so we gotta deal with that. We had a flood here last summer, flood of a lifetime, they called it. But then we, supposedly, we had one of those twelve years before, too, so, uh, to my count that makes two floods-of-a-lifetime in twelve years so, I don’t know whose lifetime they’re talkin’ about. Uh, we’re up here on a hill so we don’t have to worry about gettin’ washed away but, uh, man, this time last year, it was like we were on our own little island up here. [sound of car passing by] There was water everywhere. A lot of merchants down there on Main Street were under water for a couple o’ days. Finished off a few of ‘em.
And it’s gettin’ warmer here, too. Yes, it is. Used to be we, we could get through the summer just fine, you know. Never needed an air conditioner. Just keep the drapes closed during the day, open it up at night. But there’s lots o’ nights here lately where I wish I had one of those noisy beasts, so I don’t know...have to see how that goes, climate’s changin’, there’s no doubt about that. Anybody who says different’s got his head way up his ass.
More and more power outages, too. Not sure what’s goin’ on there. Happens in the winter a lot, o’ course, snow and ice, trees fallin’ on the lines. Most of the neighbors up here have generators for backup, but, uh, we never took that plunge, we just keep scrapin’ by. But now, there’s outages more and more in the summer, too, seems like. We’ve had some thunderstorms come through here, Jesus…last week we had one come through, woke us up in the middle of the night, it was intense there for a while. But then it finally quieted down, and we went back to sleep. But then o’course it wasn’t long before I had to get up to pee, and there was no power, and it was dark. And by dark, I mean black, pitch black. I had to get up, though, so I headed for where I thought the dresser would be, where I keep a flashlight, but there was nothin’ there. No dresser, no flashlight, nothin’. I don’t know how it happened, but I got turned around somehow, I just, uh, so I just had to keep kinda shufflin’ around, you know, reachin’ around, but there was nothin’ there. I was lost, in my own house. And the upstairs, our upstairs is not that big, so I couldn’t figure out how I could be movin’ around like that without bumpin’ into somethin’, but there was nothin’. So I had to get down on my hands and knees --- ‘cause there’s a stairway just outside our bedroom --- and so once I was down there on my hands and knees, eventually, I start --- I did start feelin’ stuff, and I started thinkin’ maybe I was in the spare room across from our bedroom. I don’t know how the hell I got in there. I must’ve walked right past the toilet that’s there on the landing between the two rooms, and that’s where I needed to go, I needed to get to the toilet, ‘cause I had to go, bad. But I couldn’t get outta this room. I just keep crawlin’, and grabbin’ stuff, floor lamps, chair legs, but I can’t get outta this room. I can’t even find the window. So then I hear my wife, she’s callin’ me, “Ezra, where are you?” And I say, “Damned if I know.” So she says, “Well, what’re you doin’?” And I say, “I’m crawlin’ around in the spare room, and I need the toilet now.” So we kept goin’ like that, talkin’ back and forth, so I could follow her voice, and I eventually I found the toilet. [sound of car passing by] And then I crawl back to bed. So then my wife wants to know why didn’t I use the flashlight, and I say, “I tried to use the flashlight, that’s how I got lost.” Well, she didn’t know how that was possible, and I told her that I just proved it was possible…yeah. O’course, you know, when the kids heard about this, they had to take a run at me…you know, “Your cell phone has a flashlight, you know?” And they giggle, have their fun, but they’re not gonna win that argument, they know, they know better than that. No, no, no cell phones, no computers, no electronic devices, in the bedroom. Mm-mm. I am not havin’ somebody watch me, or listen to me, while I’m asleep. Mm-mm.
[Ezra sings second verse of James Alley Blues.]
