It’s been a while, but let’s see if I can finish what I started lo those many years ago…

-          God Only Knows – The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys - God Only Knows (Official Music Video) (youtube.com)

Originally banned in the UK due to the use of the word God in the title, this is one of my favorite Beach Boy songs and its angelic vocals bring me to my first house in Elgin, two houses from the Historic district.

            I have the boxed set of Pet Sounds and it has numerous alternate takes and studio excerpts from various sessions where Brian Wilson works with the session musicians, trying to get what he heard in his head onto the tape.

I love hearing a song come together, as Brian tries to explain to the musicians what and how he wants them to play.

            I transferred the CD’s onto cassettes and I listened to them on my Walkman as I made repairs and rehabbed our 100+ year old home. Among the tasks, tearing off four layers of shingles and them re-roofing the garage and painting the exterior and trim of the whole house (I found a .45 bullet in the roof as well, perfectly perpendicular as if someone shot into the air and it came straight down into the roof).

            The house had an 8-foot drop ceiling in the living and dining rooms. I removed them and did my first dry walling by myself, renting a drywall jack that held the 8x4 foot panels in place as I screwed them to the joists. Except for a couple places (where the wall curved), the ceiling came out pretty good, put back to the original 9 foot height.

            Putting the ceiling back to its original height then created a new project. All the trim above the three windows and six doorways had to be matched, since the drop ceiling had come down to the top of each window and door opening.

            In addition, all the corner trim pieces (bull’s eyes in the upstairs room and the downstairs “Library”, which still had the original 9-foot ceiling) were gone. Lynn and I went to Salvage 1 in Chicago and spent 10-15 bucks apiece for 18 corner pieces with numerous coats of paint on them. There was large pallet in the middle of the floor stacked high with pieces and you would sort through them to get matching pieces.

            I got longer pieces of the straight trim (to match the straight piece of molding on either side of each window/door opening, which profile was much harder to match) by removing trim from the inside of the closets. I spent many hours removing the numerous layers of paint from the trim and corner pieces.

            Then I made the biggest blunder of my renovation career. In the dining room, we had chosen corner pieces with a sort fleur-de-lis raised detail. They were intricate and were a real pain to strip. They were not square, like the other “bull’s-eye” pieces, but had a pediment on the square so that the piece became a rectangle.

            Pediment should have been the operative word. I rotated the pieces, placing the pediment on the top, I should have removed the side trim and sawn them to allow the pediment to be on the bottom so that the square part met the top trim, but when I realized what I had done, it was too late. I had wall papered the walls and making the corner pieces smaller would have exposed the wall behind.

            No one ever noticed (or at least no one ever pointed it out to me).

25 years after we moved, I checked online and a recent listing had photos showing everything as it was then (though the wallpaper is gone).

            Bob Vila wept.

96 - Doves and Crab Dance - Cat Stevens

Doves - Cat Stevens

Crab Dance - Cat Stevens

                These are both Cat Stevens instrumentals. “Doves”, according to the “liner notes” in 

the box set, On the Road to Find Out, was used at concerts to check tuning of the various 

musician’s instruments., while “Crab Dance” was the “B” side to the 45 RPM (“What the heck 

is a 45, old man?”) of “Sitting” from 1973.

                Being a “B” side reminds me of a “B” side I used to play when my dad was flush with 

Illinois Bell overtime pay and we would go to an Elgin bar and grill called Leitner’s  and he 

would give me a quarter to play 3 songs on the juke box, one of which was the “B” side to the 

beautiful “Morning Has Broken”, “I Wanna Live in a Wigwam.”

                The burgers at Leitner’s were the best. The cook would use an ice cream scoop to 

get a wad of beef, place it on the grill top, then press it flat. The edges would get a little crisp 

and we would always order them with “the works”, which was mustard, pickles, and chopped 

onions, which is how I order every hamburger (and hot dog or polish, see # 63) to this day).

                The closest burger to a Leitner’s today is a Steak and Shake, a thin burger with crisp 

edges, though nowadays the buns are always oversized to fill you up with bread, as opposed to

burger.

                If my dad was really flush with cash we would get burgers at Leitner’s, then drive a 

couple blocks down Rt. 25 to Burns’ Pharmacy, where we would get marshmallow malts to go, 

then drive to nearby Lord’s Park to eat them by the “zoo” that was there. It was a zoo in the 

sense that animals were held behind bars there, but I don’t recall many truly wild animals. I have 

photos from a book called “Picturesque Elgin, 1902”, showing the zoo with a bear in one of the 

cages. The zoo is long gone, and the park is now home to a petting zoo, with buffalo and deer 

running loose in a fenced in area.

                “Al’s Café” in downtown Elgin, bought the soda fountain and recipe from Burns’, but I 

have never had a malt there that compares to Burns’. They don’t seem to use the same amount 

of malt and they definitely don’t use the same amount of marshmallow, because it’s just not the 

same. The closest I’ve found is Culver’s, but even they don’t use the same amount of malt.

                Another long gone Elgin institution we would occasionally visit was Morris’ Bar-B-Que,

on Business route 20 (Villa st). I don’t remember much about it except that the small, low 

building had numerous white, porcelain pigs on the roof.

                We didn’t eat out that much when I was growing up. We were solidly lower middle 

class, we owned  a house, but didn’t have a lot of discretionary funds and, living in Algonquin, 

there were very few restaurants.  In Algonquin, in the 1960’s Port Edward, today a nice upscale 

seafood restaurant, was then a pizza/burger  joint, next to Harnish’s Phillips 66 gas station 

(now the parking lot fronting route 62). The nearest McDonald’s was in Elgin, 10 miles away. 

There was a restaurant at the NW corner of routes 62 and 31, now a gas station, called 

Simonini’s. It was a ritzy place, but we never ate there, and it burned down in 1974.

                We ate a lot at home obviously, I remember a lot of dinners of fried egg sandwiches, 

or waffles, or fried chicken, or spaghetti which my mom cooked. Occasionally she would cook 

one of my dad’s favorites, liver and onions. She would also fry up a pound of bacon, and I could 

stomach the liver if I wrapped each bite in bacon and onions.

                My mom also made a favorite of mine, where she would mix ground beef with 

chopped onions. Then spread a thin coating onto one half of a hamburger bun then place them 

under the broiler. I miss those….

                The list of Elgin restaurants now long gone is endless…

                Hurdle’s: a diner/restaurant I’d go to after every adjustment of my braces, before the 

pain started, for an olive burger and a slice of apple pie with melted cheddar cheese.

                Woolworth’s and Kresge’s:  two “dime stores” across the street from each other,each 

had a lunch counter.

          

                Dieterle’s: a fine German restaurant.

                

                Lazarra’s: the best thin crust pizza I’ve ever had. And hot fudge sundaes for dessert.

               

                There was a little diner, can’t recall the name, across the street from the Crocker 

Theater, in the corner of the Sears parking lot. I remember a burger there with my best friend, 

Jimmy D, when his dad took us to see “The 3 Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze” (a 

Curly Joe from 1963). I was all of 8 years old, but I remember sitting at the counter enjoying a 

burger .

                And recent losses like the Gasthaus, another German restaurant that bit the dust in the

last few years, and the Bangkok House, a Thai/Chinese restaurant I frequented for almost 25+ 

years when it went belly-up a couple years ago, and then the Green Jade, a Chinese restaurant 

that closed last year.

                Not that there aren’t acceptable restaurants around now, there’s more than enough 

good places, it’s just that it’s sorta sad when pretty much everything from your youth is gone, 

and I can’t expose my kids to the glories of a Leitner’s burger and a Burns’ malt.

95 - Bright Eyes - Art Garfunkel - 1978

Bright Eyes - Art Garfunkel - 1978

            Bright Eyes, sung by Art Garfunkel, is from one of my favorite animated movies, 

 Watership Down, from the book by Richard Adams. It is used during the sequence where 

 Hazel, the lead rabbit, voiced by John Hurt, has been shot by a hunter and lies near death.

Bright Eyes, burning like fire,

Bright Eyes, how can you close and fail,

How can the light that burns so brightly,

Suddenly burn so pale?

            It always brings a tear.

            He survives to lead the rabbits who escaped with him from a warren ruled by the evil 

 Woundwort to a new warren, a free warren, in the Watership Down.

            The rabbits are voice by a veritable who’s who of English character actors, John Hurt, 

 Richard Briers, Ralph Richardson, Denholm Elliot, Harry Andrews, and American Zero Mostel, 

 as a Russian seagull.

            I remember reading somewhere (I think it was Smithsonian magazine back in the 

 1990’s, but I cannot find it) that it was written as an allegory about World War II and the fight 

 against totalitarianism.

            This was the third movie I rented from Fotomat, the first video tape rental outfit, after 

 Days of Heaven and Harold and Maude.

I also saw it on a large screen at a theater in Hanover Park, long gone, in a double feature with Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings animated feature, which covered only about a half of the 3 books in a 133 minute film. Both were released in 1978. The Bakshi film was rotoscoped, he took live action footage, removed the detail, then drew and filled in the outline of the figures. I was not impressed.

It took another 20 years, and a great advancement in CGI, along with a great director in Peter Jackson, to truly bring the Lord of the Rings to life. I have never read the Ring Trilogy, but enjoyed the films when they came out.

Someone stole my Zune!!!

Just a quick update…

                I left it in my car, in our driveway, unlocked (smooth move, eh?) and someone took it and the charger/FM transmitter I used to listen in my car.

                This was last summer (2017) and for the next few weeks I  looked in the ditches in our subdivision (we have no sidewalks, someone had to walk from the street, up the driveway, look in and see it ,and grab it), because I’m sure they thought they were getting a cell phone, and I pictured them walking down the road a bit, figuring out it wasn’t a cell  phone (WHAT THE….a ZUNE!!!, Son of a ….”), and throwing it in the ditch. Never found it, though.

                And people still get $60-90 on Ebay for one. Not bad for a defunct, unsupported piece of hardware.

                I’ve got my Kaffred playlist on my computer at work, but it does not play randomly, it plays alphabetically by title. Which is OK, but I liked the randomness of the Zune.

                So, after an absence of almost 1.5 years, I will try to re-launch my blog and finish up the last 10 or so songs on my list.

                Truth be told, I have two CDs in my car that I listen to almost constantly right now. One is Jimmy Webb’s “Just Across the River,” an album of his classics, sung with some interesting guests.

                                Wichita Lineman – w/Billy Joel

                                If You See Me Getting Smaller – w/Willie Nelson

                                P.F.  Sloan – w/Jackson Browne

                                By the Time I Get to Phoenix – w/Glen Campbell

                                Highwayman – w/Mark Knopfler

                                All I Know – w/Linda Ronstadt

                The other CD is the “new” one from Yusuf/Cat Stevens. I say “new” because at least half of the songs were written when Cat was in his pre-TB (see #53 - (I Never Wanted) To be a Star), pop star, phase, in his late teens. Songs from his second studio album, New Masters, released in 1967, when he was 19, include: the Laughing Apple (the CD’s title), Blackness of the Night, Northern Wind, and I’m So Sleepy (a song I used to sing to both Zay and Alicia when they were little, and which Alicia now sings along with me when I play the CD in the car). There’s also a song from the late 60’s early 70’s called Grandsons (or I’ve Got a Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old from the box set that came out in 2001) and a song he wrote for Harold and Maude (see #70 - Don't Be Shy), “You Can Do (Whatever)” that was not used in the film.

                The new songs are all good, sounding a lot like Cat Stevens songs from the Mona Bone Jakon- Catch Bull at Four time period(1970-1972). In fact, the enclosed booklet of lyrics explains that each song is a story that the Tillerman (of Tea for the Tillerman) is telling to Teaser (of Teaser and the Firecat). 

                My favorite song is his reworking of Northern Wind (Death of Billy the Kid), because Mr. Stevens/Yusuf sings it in a low range, so low I can’t even get to it when my voice is low in the morning.He also substantially changes the last verse from:

                                Let it fill his life, life, life, until there’s nothing left

                                Let it kill his wife, wife, wife, until he goes to bed.

                                                                To:

                                Let it fill his life, life, life until there’s nothing left

                                Let it kill his wife’s love, until he goes to bed

                My other favorite (I like every song on the album, actually) is “Don’t Blame Them” that riffs on a melody by Beethoven (don’t ask me which one, Lynn pointed it out to me, and the CD liner notes thanks Ludwig Van for the melody

                Don’t blame the girl, she won’t do you wrong,

The veil she wears, on her long dark hair, Mary would have done

                And goes on to a “Peace Train”-like finish.

                All in all a wonderful listen.