Love and Rockets

I had been over to 100 records and requested Tesco post some Love and Rockets. So he does....

I am amazed that my memories have been hijacked by an image of an album cover, and not by the sound, or the taste of gin and tonics. An album cover.

So, I have spent part of my day recollecting a drive to a funeral and friends I miss. I am trying to recall my exact age, and circumstances around those around me. I must have been 16, or 17. The memories of a year or two-- or three are clouded by the fog of gin and tonics mixed with late nights, and probably some other "recreational" use of one thing or another.

The album cover I stared at while passenger in a car across the highways of Nebraska lined with corn, and alfalfa, beans, and irrigation pivots. The album cover I stared at on the way to a funeral to bury a friend in a sleepy little farm town in the middle of nowhere.

I do not remember Mark and I talking during the drive. I remember the music sounding like a train as we drive past a hundred miles of empty track. No train in site. And I remember feeling sick to my stomach the entire day. So Mark drove across the desolate highways, over rolling hills. I sat in the passenger seat, I do not recall a word passing between us.

So I sat here today and thought this would trigger feelings of the friend that we had lost to himself. It did not. Seeing the album cover made me miss my friend Mark, the driver. Mark that taught me how to mix a great gin and tonic, the difference between a quinella, and trifecta at the track. We would spend hours at the track, watching dogs, or horses, and drinking gin and tonics or beers, playing darts, shooting pool. The things a 16 or 17 year old girl needs to know how to do.

I wonder if he is still writing stories, drinking gin, and gambling?