Sunday Drive: Time Is Tight

Time flows on endlessly like a mighty river, and we small, frangible human beings mostly find ourselves drifting with the current, sometimes languorously over a broad stretch of placid water, and other times dashing and crashing through fearsome rapids that lead to who knows what on the other side.  All we can be sure of is that if we survive the rocks and shocks, we shall certainly be changed, for good or ill.

How short a span does fifty years seem in retrospect!  One can almost turn around and touch the past, it seems so near in memory.  The year 1969 was a turning point in American history in some ways, and certainly it was in my personal history:  the last golden, carefree summer before the hammer blows of life began to fall, forging childhood into adulthood in the years that followed.  There is a persistent myth that one's teenage years are the happiest of one's life.  I can testify that in my own case, they were anything but.

Nevertheless, for me this simple, lively tune by Booker T. and the M. G.'s from the spring of that watershed year perfectly expresses the exuberance of youthful, untroubled happiness.  I thought so then, and I think so now.  It always makes me smile.