Tonight this one’s just for readers of this blog.
This evening, just a few minutes ago, I stumbled across this video of Billy Joel singing “Piano Man,” and it reminded me of so many wonderful nights before masks and shutdowns became the new norm.
I thought of the night at Harvard Gardens in Boston, then a simple bar crowded and patronized by everyone from day laborers living on the Backside of Beacon Hill to doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital across the street, when I met my wife Kris, a nurse at that institution. I remembered nights at the Cotton Exchange in Charlottesville, when my brother-in-law played his guitar and sang to a room so crowded on one Saturday night that chairs in that establishment were actually broken. There were other nights too when Kris and I would meet at Charlottesville’s Lena’s Dance or at Court Square Tavern along with her fellow nurses for a drink after they got out of work, and the air would be thick and blue with cigarette smoke, loud with talk and music. I recollect as well those evenings at Bogart’s in Waynesville, North Carolina, when the bar was packed with husbands and wives, lovers, and men and women on the prowl.
I recalled those evenings in Asheville when I was alone after Kris’s death and would walk to the Battery Park Book Exchange for a glass of wine and the pleasure of being surrounded by books and other people.
So much of what was now seems lost to us.
Too bad.
Because so much of what was—well, it was wonderful.
Let’s hope and pray those times returns.
Tonight this one’s just for readers of this blog.
This evening, just a few minutes ago, I stumbled across this video of Billy Joel singing “Piano Man,” and it reminded me of so many wonderful nights before masks and shutdowns became the new norm.
I thought of the night at Harvard Gardens in Boston, then a simple bar crowded and patronized by everyone from day laborers living on the Backside of Beacon Hill to doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital across the street, when I met my wife Kris, a nurse at that institution. I remembered nights at the Cotton Exchange in Charlottesville, when my brother-in-law played his guitar and sang to a room so crowded on one Saturday night that chairs in that establishment were actually broken. There were other nights too when Kris and I would meet at Charlottesville’s Lena’s Dance or at Court Square Tavern along with her fellow nurses for a drink after they got out of work, and the air would be thick and blue with cigarette smoke, loud with talk and music. I recollect as well those evenings at Bogart’s in Waynesville, North Carolina, when the bar was packed with husbands and wives, lovers, and men and women on the prowl.
I recalled those evenings in Asheville when I was alone after Kris’s death and would walk to the Battery Park Book Exchange for a glass of wine and the pleasure of being surrounded by books and other people.
So much of what was now seems lost to us.
Too bad.
Because so much of what was—well, it was wonderful.
Let’s hope and pray those times returns.