No Smoking

More than twelve days ago our vacation travels began with a Big Mac eaten in the Indianapolis airport and ended yesterday eating a bag or Ritz crackers in Chicago International over an empty wallet.  I also began the ordeal with a full Kindle reading Oscar Hijuelos's memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes . . . a rather humble, and at times self-deprecating history of his own Cuban roots and the life which led him to write The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love, which won the Pulitzer prize for fiction some twenty years ago.  And Hijuelos's Mr. Ives' Christmas is one of the most theological and emotionally moving Yuletide tales one will encounter.

Interestingly enough, as I turned off my Kindle in Indy, and as Becky and I were preparing to board our flight to Denver, I heard a familiar voice and I spent all of five minutes talking to an old singer-songwriter friend who informed me, as he scurried away with his guitar to catch his own flight to Phoenix, that he had written one of his songs using my poem-lyrics.

"Do you remember the poem?" he asked. "I hope you don't mind."

"I'm sure I don't remember," I admitted.  "And no, I don't mind."

"I'll send you a CD," he promised (thanks, Jim).

Some time today I'll be listening to the song and trying to recall what, exactly, I wrote for these lyrics (twelve years ago?).  I doubt Tim Rice or Bernie Taupin have anything to worry about.

And so began our vacation . . . poems, a loaded Kindle, and Thoughts Without Cigarettes.  Hijuelos kept me company most of the way to Denver, but I kept trying to delve into my own past to remember this song writing incident.

"Does altitude effect memory?" I asked Becky as we passed over Limp Biscuit, Iowa. 

"Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason," I said.  "And who are you, lady?"