Keep on truckin’….
reminds me of the Mr. Natural patch I had sewn on my well-worn bell bottoms in the mid 70’s. I can remember that at times, it seemed that life wasn’t fair when I didn’t get exactly what I wanted. And I would write, and write…. letters to my cousin in South Carolina and a boy that I had met the past summer, letters to my Aunt Katie in Montana, poems describing the world I in which I existed…Looking back, I’m not sure what I thought was missing, but I wanted it badly.
Music would fill my world, even then, as I awkwardly made my way through the world of adolescence. The French horn practices began with sounds of a goose, and through the years with much practice and lessons, became a graceful swan. The hippie wanna-be took up guitar as my parents gave me the gift of a $100 Yamaha acoustic, and I gazed at my instructor wanting to play as well and as smooth as he. And to top it all off, there were the opera and aria lessons recommended by my junior high music teacher to ensure I had the basics down, as she knew that I ‘had it’. Great musical foundation, and I choose to photograph it instead....
And there were afternoons spent lying on the pale blue carpeted floors, of the pale blue room with the pale blue floor to ceiling sating draperies with the sunlight spilling through the stained glass piano windows onto the crushed blue velvet chair. I licked my finger, then turned the page of the Sears catalog….. meticulously writing down the page #, description and price of the items that would fill the space of my imaginary dream home with my Prince Charming, whomever he may be.
And I sat on the front porch stoop, on that perfect summer day with my transistor beside me playing the top 40 on WLS with the Wolf Man Jack, notebook in hand trying to conjure up the words to express how I was feeling…Looking to the sky I thought to myself, a very young 17 year old self, ‘if only I had a baby to love and love me back unconditionally’.
As I awake from a dream, and look back from the bright blue sky dotted with floating clouds to my note book, I am grateful to see that love, faith, family and music have indeed filled the pages of my life with my very own Prince Charming. I love you myDarlin’ Robert Kenui Pope
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