YARDHOG' S T-SHIRT ADVENTURE

Yesterday morning I went to Lotsa Pata to buy a muffalata sandwich wearing a t-shirt I bought at a club in Nashville called Bourbon Street Blues. It's a loud tye-dyed shirt with bright white letters that announce "Bourbon Street Blues - Nashville, Tenn. It always confuses people and I always wind up explaining to them that "Bourbon Street Blues" is a blues club in Nashville that recreates the New Orleans ethos with beads, booze and sometimes bare female breasts.
I did that with a young male clerk at Lotsa Pasta yesterday. I also told him about the club's house band Stacy Michart at "Blues You Can Use."
Yesterday afternoon I changed into the "Buddy Guy's Chicago Blues Legends" t-shirt I bought last Sunday. I was having a beer with a friend at the Cumberland Brewery on Bardtown Road when a woman comes up to me wearing another Chicago Blues t-shirt, not the same one but with a reference to Chicago. Turns out she lives on the North Side of Chicago and had driven to Louisville to see a Chicago Band, "The Buzz" perform at Stevie Ray's. She asked me if I was interested in going because the sax player and the guitarist were formally with the Buddy Guy Band. I said "Sure" and a couple of hours later I found myself seated in Stevie Rays' watching a kick ass white blues band do the blues... to be continued. luv, yardhog

24 YARDHOG HOURS

The last several hours have been very interesting. It all began yesterday afternoon with a private consultation with a man Yardhog many years ago dubbed in an article in the Louisville Times "the Guru of Bardstown Road," one Harold Maier, the owner and "OPEN EAR" of Twice Told Books.
Yardhog usually drops by his shop on Saturday afternoons when Maier is leading a circus of loquacious individuals in a roundabout of verbiage. This obviously isn't Yardhog's favorite environment considering his solipsistic nature so, he was more than pleased to have the Masters' full attention for over an hour.
This morning Yardhog was primed for his 11 mile Saturday bike ride to Cox's Park on River Road. When he arrived at the boat ramp he was shocked to see the river banks clogged with the detrius of last week's storms. Layers of driftwood competed with old tires and bottles, to clog the mighty Ohio. Weren't no speed boaters are bikini babes to be seen and the air had a distinct sour smell.
Yardhog parked his bike and stood for a while watching an intrepid fisherman with one of those heavy duty, salt water rod and reels designed to catch 300 pound Tarpon or Sail Fish, when all of a sudden a car pulls up and out pops a good natured looking middle-aged black man who moseys on down to where Yardhog is standing and says, "This is all a gift. People don't realize everybody doesn't have all this beauty."
Meanwhile the river is churning and looking very ugly hardly reflecting the beauty of the early summer sky.
"You see all that drift wood piled up out there. It's dead like we're all going to be one day, but it will be pounded into sand and clay by the river and come back. This was all given to us by God and we should appreciate it."
Yardhog realizing that this cat was on some kind of a roll began a extemporaneous interview. Almost immediately the man revealed that his name was Lester Goin and he was one of the first inter-racial graduates of Jefferson Community College in 1969. "My name and several others is on a plaque in the entrance hall of the College."
He was an only child born to a poor farmer in Tennessee, five miles outside of Middlesboro, Ky.
"Four states converge at that point of the country and I used to sit in my back yard and look out at the Blue Ridge Mountain range," he said wisely, ever now and then looking over at Yardhog's tattooed arm.
"There was a GreyHound Bus that used to pass on the Highway down there everyday and I said one day I'm going to be on that bus out of here. And I did it. I've been a lot of places in my life."
One of those places was Vietnam where he served a full term before being discharged and finding work as an electrician. "I learned a lot about people there. We are all alike just different."
Much of Goin's conversation concerned religion, so Yardhog asked him if he belonged to any certain denomination.
"No, I just read a lot. I read the Bible and Spinoza, Kant, a lot of the Philosophers."
Did that all begin in College? "No my family was religious we all went to church together and they encouraged me to read."
He paused and pointed out to the muddy river. "You know, there is a war going on out there. Nature isn't pacific.
Baby Boomers don't want to face death. They think they're going to live forever."
luv, yardhog

BEWARE THE UNSATISFIED MAN

HE'S THE FIRST TO VIEW
THE BODY,
HUG THE WIDOW,
GIVE CONDOLENCES

AND THE FIRST TO BE
REALLY,
REALLY,
SATISFIED.

d.o. 6/4/04

A Take on Merton

 According to Jean Leclercq talking about Thomas Merton in "Those Who Knew Him."
"I think (Merton's) legacy has been to call attention to the importance of prayer in life. Not so much prayer as an actiivty, as an obligation, a particular exercise, but a prayer life. TO BE A PRAY-ER."
 

Yardhog would like to take that idea a step further. MAKE YOUR LIFE A PRAYER! luv, yardhog.

Chicago, Chicago

Chicago, Chicago a toddling town! Back from a weekend in Chi-town. One of our best trips. Got into town early Saturday morning. Stayed at the sumptuous Conrad Hilton next to the old Blackstone, which is being renovated for condos. I haven't stayed this far up on Michigan Ave in a while and it was a nice change. Grant Park is directly across the street and Buddy Guy's Blues Legends is in back of the hotel. And Powell's Books, one of the best remainder book stores in the country is a block away.
The legendary jazz singer Sheila Jordan was singing at the Green Mill over the weekend. An annual event every Memorial Day. I brought Jordon to Louisville to appear at a Louisville Jazz Society concert at least 15 years ago and I hadn't seen her since. Now 75 she hadn't changed a bit. D and I were seated in a booth waiting for the concert to start, when suddenly D said "There she is!" Jordon, who was married to Charlie Parker's pianist Duke Jordon, had come in the front door and was headed for the bandstand. I stood up, went over to her and said "I picked you up at the airport for concert a long time ago. Do you remember me?" Whether she did or not, she jumped up and hugged me. Then I said "Gail Wynters said to tell you hello from Louisville." "Oh! I love Gail Wynters. Tell her, I hope she's doing well," she said.
The rest of the night was magic. Jordon was in fine voice and the young trio of piano, bass and drums was tight and swung like mad.
Chicago is cultural gumbo. The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the hotel Saturday morning was a large Indian wedding being held on the sidewalk in front of the parking garage. Several drummers were playing along with a recorded sound track while men and women danced, jumping up and down, their hands high in the air. The men wore white, gold trimmed ceremonial hats and the woman were dressed in saris.
The streets were also full of military men and women participating in the Memorial Day parade.
At one point a rather worn looking white horse was led to the front door and a large man, I presume the groom, mounted it. The dancing and drums became more intense and the group marched in a procession around the block to the front of the hotel where the wedding was being held.
It is impossible to stand out or be a freak in Chicago. To much competition. On the way to Water Tower I saw in quick succession; A man in a large black hat, striped shirt and boots, a man wearing a sandwich board which announced something about the Russian communists being responsible for world terrorism, a very thin middle aged man running in a bikini shorts, and a young black male midget who asked for a contribution. "We're having a party for boy who went down. Tickets are only $3.50."
The weather was a great, high in the 80s, but thunderstorms, part of a severe weather system that spawned tornados back home in Kentucky and Indiana, occurred of and on.
It rained Sunday night so, it was perfect for walking across the street and hearing the blues at Buddy Guy's Legends. A really nasty looking store-front but a nice spacious interior. The evening began with an acoustic blues group followed by a rather dull electric blues band. The music and the bland cajun food made for a convenient but less than memorable evening.
Before leaving Monday afternoon D and I walked down to Lake Michigan from Grant Park and got caught in a down pour that caused us to seek shelter under the trees in Grant Park.
Yesterday, a severe thunderstorm hit Frankfort just before quiting time. I waited it out and when I got to Louisville the weather looked like it had cleared up. So, I decided to ride up Frankfort Ave. on my bike for dinner. I stopped at El Mundo's and ordered a burrito and had taken about two bites when I looked up and saw a large black cloud bearing down on me from the north/west. One of the restaurant workers came out and said something about a tornado warning, which caused me to began eating my burrito even faster than I was previously, which had to be some kind of a record for burrito consumption. As the sky darkened and the wind picked up, I jumped on my bike and rode like hell for four miles arriving at home just as the first drops of rain began to hit the pavement. Whew! I spent the rest of the night sitting on my new screened in porch watching the first fire flies of the season compete with the lightning.