Y - You've Got To Get Over Here!

Two years after my father’s death, my mother discovered his ghost on a reel-to-reel tape.

She called me one Sunday (my day off).  “You’ve got to get over here now, and I don’t want an argument.”

My mother rarely called me.  I would either stop by her house or call her.  But when she called, I listened.

Once there, she wanted me to listen to the reel to reel that he had recorded.

As I've mentioned, my father could play the guitar well, and would record himself from time to time.

I shrugged my shoulders.  “So?”

 

“Just listen!”

Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, rarely did my father’s taste in music run this side of Sons of the Pioneers, and never to music of the 60s.

He detested the hippie movement and everything it stood for, believing those protesting the Vietnam War to be just this side of traitors.

Mom pushed the play button.

I blinked hard a couple of times.  My father’s voice, no doubt.  My father playing his guitar, no doubt.  The song he both played and sang.

“Blowin’ In the Wind,” by Bob Dylan.

One of the big protest songs of the 60s.  I loved the song, and played the Peter, Paul, and Mary version frequently.

His was more like this P, P, and M version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld6fAO4idaI 

I had no idea what to say.

“Maybe … maybe he didn’t understand the meaning of the song,” I suggested.

She crossed her arms.  “Wait ‘till the next one.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUjvI-2TiMg&feature=related

He played and sang a perfectly respectable version of “If You’re Going To San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)” written by John Phillips and performed by Scott McKenzie.

The one on the link was just made a few years ago.

Clearly I did not know my father as well as I thought, as his reel ghost explained.

On the same visit, my mother produced a cassette for me to listen to.  "You think that was something, you will NOT believe this," she said.

Check out tomorrow’s post.