76 Trombones

 

“To everything, turn, turn, turn…

There is a season, turn, turn, turn…

And a time for every purpose under Heaven.”

 

Or so goes an old folksong (old to me, in any case,) that sometime seems to apply to me and my life as it is going today.  My everything today, though, is my thinking of another song I learned in my youth and knowing how it applies to me here in my seventy-sixth year.  

 

That other song is a bit applicable since it is the song I’ve picked out for this year, it being appropriately named “seventy six trombones” which works out quite well for me this year.  This will be the last time I use this song as my own, though, since the second line continues with “and a hundred and ten coronets right behind.”  Which, you see, probably is not a line I could ever utilize along with my age, like it or not.

 

Seventy-six is a bit more than I would ever have aspired to as a much younger man.  Men in my family have typically taken leave of such things a bit sooner than their late seventies, something I am fortunate to be able to not have followed them on.  How much longer I might be able to say this is anyone’s guess.  Feel pretty good today, in any case.  Just lucky, I guess.     

 

My seventy-seventh year, should I make it to that time, will require another song.  I guess I will have to work on that a bit.  Let’s see….

 

“Seventy-seven aardvarks sittin’ on a fence, uh huh…,

Seventy-seven…,” well, guess I could go on, plenty of things rhyme with “uh huh,” of course.  Then, again, maybe the best thing at this point would be to just drop the whole thing.

 

Yep—that’s it!  Bye for now.  (Check back in another week?) (J)