Gold will turn to gray

 and youth will fade away

They'll never care about you, call you old and in the way (D. Grisman)

last saturday as my uber rolled down the quiet desolate streets of my birthplace, and classical piano and violin music played on the car stereo .....it felt surreal......as if i was in a movie.....the night before was a very emotional experience....PC's Bar & Grill celebrated their 25th anniversary...and seeing so many people at one time was overwhelming....some i had not seen since the carefree pre-pandemic days...it was both a celebration of longevity for the bar and the friendships that were harvested around that mahogany room and also a kind of wake/funeral for a time that has surely past on.......time is fleeting and our days are short.....i wonder if people realize that ?

i arrived on whitehall street with time to spare and so i walked the streets where i used to work for so many years......stopped at a street cart and ordered a bacon agg and cheese on a roll with ketchup and hot sauce.......just a sandwhich ? not really......it was a piece of my former life.....a time when things were good.....real good......a time when i would bounce up the subway stairs at Rector Street and roll past Trinity Church and onto Wall Street.....eager to get in the office believe that or not.....comradery was overflowing back then.....we worked together and played together......we drank in the Gin Mills, made good money and loved every minute of it........today that too is soo distant that it almost seems like a movie i watched decades ago and i have to strain my brain to recall all the details......growing older and moving on is difficult enough.....but it becomes so much harder when they erase your past......it's almost all gone now , and in some cases it's as if it never existed at all.

This Saturday we gather again in the borough of churches , in that oasis on 5th avenue we call PC's...we gather to remember a friend who left too soon ( don't they all)....we gather to tell his stories for one more afternoon....we try to turn back the clock , although we know we cannot. .....as mister dylan would say...someday too we'll be in that ditch....lets hope somebody cares enough to raise a glass......i really hope we have a nice turnout....because time is fleeting and our days are short.

When just a boy, he left his home

Thought he'd have the world on a string

Now the years have come and gone

Through the streets he walks alone

Like the old dog gone astray, he's just old and in the way