The Times, They Are A'Changin'

    How many songs have been written about change?  Before doing a web search, I thought of Judy Collins' Circle Game, Bob Dylan's The Times, They are A-Changin'," and Ricky Nelson's Garden Party. (Wow, am I showing my age now!)   After a search I discovered dozens of songs I had never heard.

    James Taylor wrote and sang a song about going back to visit his childhood home and finding it had changed so much he could no longer feel like he was home while there.  It is a song entitled Copperline.  After describing the sights and sounds and smells he remembered from his childhood, he sings, "I tried to go back, as if I could; all spec houses and plywood.  Tore up and tore up good, down on Copperline.  It doesn't come as a surprise to me, it doesn't touch my memory."

    Most of us have many fond memories of at least portions of our childhoods that are brought to life by a sight, a sound or a smell.  Every time I smell leaves burning I remember my boyhood days in Syracuse when autumn leaves were raked into piles all over the neighborhood and set to smoldering by dads assigned to weekend yard duties.  Whenever I hear the theme song from Midnight Cowboy my mind takes me back to a specific day, driving down a country road outside of Grass Valley on a blue-sky spring afternoon.  I don't particularly like that song, but it evokes that memory without regard to my musical tastes.

    My son returned from college one day to find a modern medical office and pharmacy had been built on a former dirt corner of the local supermarket parking lot.  He was heartbroken.  As a boy he had ridden his bicycle across that dirt lot many times a day, many days a year.  That experience would only persist in his mind from then on.

    Change is coming, or should I say continuing, in my part of the world.  At least, I am pretty sure a big change is on the way in the form of a new traffic light that is going in on Highway 88.  If my suspicion is confirmed, this will make an even dozen in the county.  I know, I know, you may live someplace where there are a dozen lights between your house and the grocery store.  But I don't live in a big city.  When I moved to Amador County in 1980 there were no traffic lights (I never considered  the ones that control alternating one-way traffic on the dam to be legitimate traffic lights).  This is somewhat disturbing to me.  I know change is not always bad, but I liked this county the way it was in 1980.  I liked being able to get mail addressed to me with nothing but my name and the city name on the envelope.  I enjoyed knowing most people's names, or at least their faces.  I thought the little volunteer fire department and two-person police force were wonderful Mayberry-type fixtures.  And I bragged to my friends in other parts of the country that I lived in a county with no traffic lights.  I have it on good authority that my own town (it's officially a city, but I still like to think of it as a town) is also on target for getting its first traffic light.  If I had the ability, I would consider moving.  But I don't, so I won't.  If I had the ability to turn the clock back, I'd be tempted, but I believe I would decline that option as well.  As much as I think I enjoyed those good ol' days, I'm not sure they would be as great the second time around as my memory would have me believe.

    Steve Martin wrote a song, My Daddy Played the Banjo in which he lovingly recounts his boyhood days of listening to his father play the banjo on warm, summer nights, and then learning that art from him.  In typical Steve Martin form, the end of the song reveals that all of that was just a lie he was telling.  Then he makes a statement that is true of so much of the nostalgia we cling to, "Now the banjo takes me back to the foggy days when memories of what never was become the good ol' days." 

    I believe it was the Greek philosophy Heraclitus who said or wrote, "Nothing endures but change."  I have to disagree with the exclusive "nothing" while agreeing that change certainly is one thing that cannot be stopped.  We are somewhat fickle about that, aren't we?  We love to fondly remember the way things were, but we would find it repulsive to eliminate change from our lives completely.  How sad it would be if babies didn't grow up, if we didn't increase our knowledge, if we didn't become better people, or if our relationships didn't develop into deeper relationships.  These are all changes we treasure. 

    So, I guess I will hang on to my memories of a traffic light free county; probably think about it every time I am stopped at the new controlled intersection, but I will not allow myself to become bogged down in the muddy memories of time gone by.  I have too much to do today.

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