He Tied the Mark at 44, July the First You Know

More meltage today, leaving gray Slushee covering parts of the driveway. Or would that be dirty-ice Slurpees? Hard to say. Won't last, anyway. Cold front is on its way. Winter, bah.

I spent most of the day writing about the hotel I saw last week, so not much new to report in the seen category, which usually gets top billing in these postings. But I can report hearing new things, or rather some old things previously lost on me. Toward the end of summer last year, I visited an estate sale by myself one day, on impulse, following a hand-lettered sign posted next to the road, and left with a few cassette tapes of old popular songs. Set aside for a time, lately I've been listening to them. As the snow falls and then melts, I've been listening to a dead man's tapes.

The best of them is a collection called Let Me Off Uptown. Among other gems, it includes this song, to remind me of summer. But not just any summer, a particular summer 20 years before I was born. Few pop songs are so temporally precise.