She spoke with him about traveling with the Lawrence Welk band, dancing while her husband performed with them. Eighty-seven years old, she closes her eyes, falls into a graceful pirouette. He catches her and she goes into her apartment, a tear in her eye. Her husband is long gone dead, Mister Welk too.

Ode to Good Neighbors

The man bought his son a dog when the boy’s mother left. She was white, the dog, a Malamute Husky. An elderly neighbor lady complained that the dog cried when he went to work and his son went to school. So, he put newspapers thick on the floor in the bathroom, also the dog’s water dish and food. He closed her in there whenever he and his son were not at home.

The lady was pleased by the return to peace and quiet. She asked the man how he had solved the problem of the noisy dog. When he told her, she cried, “That is an awful thing to do to such a nice dog!”

He agreed to leave the dog out, to let it have the run of the apartment, if the nice lady would listen for it and report to him as to whether the animal had learned to be quiet. Sometime later the lady reported, “The dog doesn’t cry anymore.” The man wondered whether the dog had taught them both a lesson of sorts.

One morning he heard her groan, the lady, when she bent over to pick up her newspaper. Eighty-seven years old, her back hurt. The man smiled her a good morning and went to work. The very next morning, and every one after that for eight years, the man picked up her newspaper and stood it on end by her door. He did this even on weekends, especially on holidays. He had to begin his day a bit earlier but felt better about himself for the effort.

She saved newspapers for the boy so he and his dad could line the floors of the bathroom so the good and quiet dog could do her business there. The lady had never seen such a nice dog.

One Christmas morning the man heard his neighbor outside. She was yoo-hooing and waving at the people who brought the newspaper. “Come up here, I have a gift for you!” She handed twenty dollars to the surprised girl. “You and your family are so wonderful,” she chortled. “To climb those stairs every day and stand that newspaper up for an old lady.”

The man, who had planned to tell the lady one day that he and his boy set up her paper, bit back his words and smiled. He waved at the astonished newspaper girl. He felt good about himself and life in general. The lady, not knowing about his daily deed, made the doing of it feel more special. She was not indebted to him. Quite the opposite, he felt he owed her for affording him the opportunity to learn and teach his son such an important life lesson. The recipient of his daily gift, unaware, somehow made his good deed feel extra good. The smile on the newsgirl’s face was his to share as well, a bonus. When he and his son went camping he enlisted the help of other neighbors to set the newspaper up. They loved sharing his good secret and never told the lady. They were gang members and true to their word.

Odd, the dog barked and cried on weekends but not during the week. The lady twittered and swore to the fact. The man met a woman on the internet. He and the boy moved away to be with her. The lady upstairs, a neighbor for ten years, wished them well, hugged them and cried. She knew if he kept messin’ around on that internet some woman would grab him up. He was good ’un.

After fighting cancer for two years, weakened and listless from chemotherapy, the lady finally gave in and moved to another city to live with her son and his family. The man came back to check on her but neighbors told him she had moved away. The building where they had lived was filthy and rundown. Had it been this way before, he wondered. Had he and his son lived in such a place? He saw a newspaper on the sidewalk, picked it up and climbed the stairs. He stood it up by the door, took a deep breath and walked away.

They taught themselves, these good neighbors, listened to that voice inside that makes all the difference between good and better, to be well and let the deed be done.

I‘ve been a player and singer in rock bands for three decades. I wrote songs for bands before I did any other kind of writing. My son learned to play guitar about the same time he learned to walk. I don’t do bars anymore and I wonder what keeps me singin’ until something happens like the other night. My son, Tommy, a young man with two sons and a daughter of his own, has a studio in his house. I went over to lay down some tracks on a CD he’s helping me with.

Matt, a guitar man with whom I played in bands for twenty-five years, came over to trade some riffs with Tommy. There was obvious conflict between them and I, completely out of character, stood back and watched. I wondered how it would work out, the gray beard and the young lion armed with axes and bracing the wall. Matt was half stewed when he showed up and continued to chug beer after beer. He toodled around with some old guitar band music, throwing howling laments across the room. Tommy stayed in the groove of what he describes as his own cutting-edge original sound and hurled his fair share back. Troy, my son-in-law and drummer, would just about get a beat picked out on his traditional/electric drum kit then those guitar men would switch tracks and carry that music train away.

I got tired and began to pack my PA system and harmonicas. I know all about guitar players and the misty shades of dawn. Matt was ‘sitting on a stool’, pretty much all the way drunk now. He was finger pickin’, doodling around on his Les Paul. He began to pick a rhythm, almost country and, to my surprise, Tommy joined in on bass guitar. Troy began the process of uniting the guitars through the awesome mystery (to me anyway) of percussion. I watched them for fifteen minutes as the power of the piece grew. Tears came to my eyes and goose flesh claimed the surface of my skin. The three of them had given themselves over to ‘the danse’. I backed into a far corner, lest I interrupt with a shout of silence.

I waited fifteen more minutes to see if Matt would give voice to the music. I heard somewhere that he had started singing and didn’t want to step on his toes. He gave me that ol’ six-pack smile of his and shrugged his shoulders. Hands shaking, I took pen and paper from my war bag. I powered up the PA, clicked my mic on, and stepped into the danse. I scribbled down the first few lines I could pick from the air then allowed my voice to bleed into the haunting spaces between the instruments. “I been up that road (I stopped, felt it my bones, that it was time to wait), “And I been down so very damned long” (pause again); “I been almost right” (oh yes, the longer pause); “And I been, I been so wrong.”

Matt gave me that look I have seen in the forever of my music. The switch-up was coming, they were heading for the bridge. I turned around and faced the wall. What do I do? I don’t know what to put in here, the chorus, what? Panic, they’re rolling, these musicians of beat, chord, and note. I am the word man. I’m supposed to know what’s next. Then I did what I have done thousands of times over the years. I closed my eyes and crawled out of my brain. The energy of the moment was mine. All I had to do was reach up into that space just beyond my fingertips and pull it down to me. A tear created its own path down my cheek as I fell to one knee. The chorus, crushed forever inside me, burst forth and passion issued from my lips: “Sometimes I feel... I feel like cryin’. Sometimes I feel... I feel like singin’.”

The instruments overrode me and, in their insistency, I understood, the next few moments were theirs and theirs alone in this danse, this making of love, to the moment, the air. She owned us, this mistress and her urgent flow of energy, surging and swirling between and around us. And they came down. Yes, like warring angels, they sped to a cushion of peace. What now, Mister Word Man, what now? My other knee found the floor and I surrendered my all to a breathless pause. “Like I can’t stand” (wait... wait..). The musical spiders are weaving their magick silken chord voices... “I’m a man.” And so it went... a new musical child was born.

My bar room days are over. I miss those old players and riders. I might never see my buddy Travelin’ Matt again but we wrote some kick ass songs, me ’n him, and sometimes I feel. For that night and maybe one or two to come, I am determined to write and sing for the rest of my unnatural life. Here’s the rest of the song.

~Sometimes I Feel~

(a song)

I’ve been here before

and I’ve been in other places

I just got started

then I lost too many faces

Sometimes I feel

I feel like cryin'

Sometimes I feel

I feel like singin'

like I can't stand

I'm a man

There’s a ride I missed

a few I shouldn’t have taken

Yeah, my heart has sung

It’s been on the wrong side of breakin’

Sometimes I feel

I feel like singin'

like I can't stand

I'm a man

I’ve been fallin’ down

I’ve picked myself up again

The best part of me

ain’t no third party sin

Sometimes I feel

I feel like singin'

like I can't stand

I'm a man

I look in your eyes

I am lost to all the rest

There's a fire there

You’re the worst; you are the best

Sometimes I feel

I feel like singin'

like I can't stand

I'm a man