As The Miller Told His Tale

Winter night in 1967, the streetlamps reflecting cold and blue off the snow drifts on Norwood Avenue, but here in this warm basement the party is going strong. The room is dimly lit with red light bulbs, and candles in red glasses, and if you sit near one of the windows y0u can savor the difference between inside and outside.

I'm playing the drums, my friend Joe T. is on the keyboards, two guys we just met tonight are on guitar and bass. The crowd is liking us. We're taking turns doing lead vocals, a few minutes ago I ripped up "Maggie's Farm." But now we're playing slow and soft, and there's a couple in front of the bandstand, barely swaying, arms around each other, feet not moving. They're so lost in each others' eyes that they almost don't notice when we take our break and the party host puts a stack of 45's on the turntable.

We're all around 18 years old, it's just the beginning of our lives. I take a beer out of the zinc tub full of ice and light a cigarette, sit down on the corner of the stage. I take a deep drag and thank God for the life She's giving me.

Then someone casts a shadow over me and I look up, into Ann Marie's cool blue eyes, into the gentle taste of her soft pink lips on mine. I stand up and twirl her around me, my hand feeling the sweat in the small of her back as we circle round each other.

The record plays on, as we twirl each other in the hot darkness, red candles, blue snowlight, cigarette smoke rising like incense....Ann Marie pressed against me in blue denim mini and white t shirt, my best friend's girl...."Her face at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale."

And now it's forty four years later again, and I can't hold on to those memories, and I almost don't even care....yeah, right.