Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Beach Boys – "That's Why God Made the Radio" (2012)


Cruisin’ at seven, pushbutton heaven

Capturing memories from afar, in my car

That’s why God made the radio!


This year, the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME is going back to basics.


Our 2022 class consists entirely of great hit records that I remember listening to on AM radio when I was a teenager.


I’m not going to get all cutesy with this year’s group of inductees.  Every one of them is a fastball that’s coming in waist high and right down the middle of the plate – no slow curves or dancing knuckleballs that look hittable but dive out of the strike zone at the last second.


The 1962 Chevy Belair wagon
I drove to school my senior year

I’m not serving you any fancy nouvelle cuisine this year – just big plates of old-fashioned home cooking that’s tasty and satisfying.  You’re not going to go home hungry after listening to the new members of our hit singles hall of fame.


We won’t be riding to the induction ceremony in some exotic foreign sports coupe or a new-fangled, high-tech electric car that practically drives itself.  Instead we’ll be cruising in an old-school four-door sedan with a big-ass V-8 that takes us where we want to go at 80 miles an hour without even trying – and has a ride so smooth that you’ll think you’re sitting in front of the TV in your La-Z-Boy.


I could keep cranking out the metaphors until the cows come home, but I won’t.  I think you’ve surely caught my drift by now.


*     *     *     *     *


I guarantee that you’ll going to know each and every one of the 2022 inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  All eleven members of this year’s class were top ten hits – and most of them made it all the way to #1, #2, or #3 ( and deservedly so).


So get ready for a heapin’ helpin’ of great sixties music.  I recommend listening to them while you’re cruising to the nearest Dairy Queen on a warm summer night.  


But if you can’t afford to waste that $5-a-gallon Democrat gas you filled your tank with a few days ago, just listen while you’re sitting in your car in the driveway.


*     *     *     *     *


“That’s Why God Made the Radio” is  the title track of the Beach Boys’ 29th studio album, which was released in 2012 (which was some 18 years after the release of the group’s 28th studio album).


The album was produced by Brian Wilson, who wrote (or co-wrote) most of the songs on the album.


Jim Peterik

Jim Peterik – who fronted the Ides of March and penned that group’s biggest hit, “Vehicle” – was one of the co-writers of “That’s Why God Made the Radio.”  Peterik later told an interviewer about the conversation that gave Wilson the inspiration for today’s featured song:


[Brian Wilson and I] were at an Italian restaurant and we were talking about radio and how great songs used to sound through the AM radio [and the] oval speaker on your Plymouth Valiant.  And I said, “Man, that was the best sound of all,” and Brian said, “Yeah, that’s why God made the radio.”  Of course, I wrote that down.  He didn’t realize how brilliant it was, or maybe he did, but that’s when we wrote that song.


Click here to listen to “That’s Why God Made the Radio.”


Click on the link below to buy that record from Amazon:


Friday, June 24, 2022

Hank Locklin – "Please Help Me, I'm Falling" (1960)


Please help me,

I’m falling


You may have seen news footage of President Biden falling off his bicycle last weekend while riding in a state park near his Delaware beach house.


Some anti-Biden people – I’m talking about you, Fox News! – have argued that his fall is yet one more indication that he is too old and feeble to be President.


Before I saw video of his fall, I was prepared to disagree vociferously with that point of view.  


But now that I’ve seen the video, I’m not so sure.


*     *     *     *     *


As loyal 2 or 3 lines readers know, I am an experienced and enthusiastic bike rider –  and an expert on all bicycle-related topics.  


It turns out that the oldest of my three bikes – a seven-year-old Trek FX3 hybrid – is almost identical to President Biden’s bike.


More significant for purposes of this discussion, I ride with toe cages on my pedals that are virtually identical to the toe cages that Biden uses.


Toe cages come in a variety of designs, but all have the same purpose: they make your ride much more efficient by preventing your feet from sliding around on your pedals.


Biden blamed his fall on his difficulty in getting his right foot out of his toe cage.  I have to question why a 78-year-old man who occasionally rides a few miles on the very flat trails at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware needs toe cages on his bike.  (I’ve ridden those trails, and I can tell you that my five-year-old grandson could ride them with ease – it’s about as easy a ride as I’ve ever done.) 


But having seen the video, I’m not sure that the toe cage was really the problem.


*     *     *     *     *


Very casual bike riders usually come to a halt by applying the brakes, leaning to one side or the other, and putting a foot out until it hits the ground.  


If you can stop on a bike without getting off your seat, I can guarantee you that your seat is too low . . . which means you’re not extending your legs when you pedal . . . which means you’re going to need knee replacements any day now.


If your seat is at the right height, the only way your foot can reach the ground when you stop while you remain seated is to lean so far over that you will likely become unbalanced and fall.


But that’s not what happened to Biden.


*     *     *     *     *


Here’s the correct way to stop when you’re on a bike equipped with toe cages.  (Actually, the principle is the same if you don’t have toe cages.  But it’s a little easy if toe cages aren’t involved.)


As you slow down and prepare to stop, you rotate the pedals forward so the right pedal is at six o’clock and the left pedal is at twelve o’clock.  (Actually, it doesn’t matter which pedal is down and which one is up – but when I ride, I put the right pedal down when I’m stopping, and Biden did the same.)


(So embarrassing!)

When you are about to come to a halt, you pull your left foot out of the toe cage and stand up on your right foot – which means you get your ass off your seat.  


As you stop, your trunk moves forward a bit so your ass is over the top tube of your bike’s frame – not over the seat.  As that happens, you lean slightly to the left and put your left foot on the ground.  Your body will be only slightly tilted to the left.


It’s easy to maintain your balance if you do this correctly.


Click here to watch a video demonstrating the correct way to stop a bicycle.


*     *     *     *     *


I have occasionally fallen when I’ve had to stop suddenly – especially on an uneven trail – and found myself leaning to the right.  I haven’t practiced standing on my left foot and pulling my right foot out of my toe cage so I can land on that foot instead, so what happens is that I freeze and fail to get my right foot free in time – which means that there’s nothing to stop me from toppling over to the right.


If that’s what had happened to Biden last weekend, I would understand why he fell.  But that’s not what happened to Biden.


Click here to watch a video of the fall.  As you’ll see, he came to a stop with his right pedal at six o’clock, got his ass off the saddle, and and landed on his left foot – he looks a little clumsy doing it, but basically he utilizes the correct stopping technique.


But suddenly and for no apparent reason, he topples over to his right.


Yes, if he had extracted his right foot from the pedal and put it on the ground when he came to a stop, that wouldn’t have happened.  


But Biden shouldn’t have needed to put his right foot on the ground.  He was leaning on his left foot, which was already on the ground, yet somehow managed to lose his balance so badly that he fell over to the right.


*     *     *     *     *


I don’t want to make too big a deal of this fall.  As far as we know, it’s only happened to him one time, and anything can happen once.


Of course, everyone knows that Biden isn’t firing on all cylinders either mentally or physically at this point.  We certainly don’t need him to go ass over teakettle while standing over his bike to prove that.


*     *     *     *     *


“Please Help Me, I’m Falling” was written by the songwriting duo of Don Robertson and Hal Blair (who also wrote Lorne Greene’s 1964 spoken-word hit, “Ringo”). 


Hank Locklin’s original 1960 recording of the song was not only a #1 country-western, but also made it to #8 on the Billboard “Hot 100” pop chart.


“Please Help Me, I’m Falling” has been covered by the Everly Brothers, Charley Pride, John Fogerty, and Gladys Knight, among others.  It’s been covered twice by Loretta Lynn – once with Conway Twitty, and once with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. 


Click here to listen to Hank Locklin singing “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” at the Grand Ole Opry in 1962.


Click below to buy the record from Amazon:


Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Beatles – "Penny Lane" (1967)


He likes to keep his fire engine clean

It’s a clean machine


Sir James Paul McCartney turned 80 years old on June 18.  (Other British musicians of McCartney’s generation who have been knighted include Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John, Sir Rod Stewart, Sir Van Morrison, Sir Ray Davies, and Sir Richard Starkey – a/k/a/ Ringo Starr.)


(Sir Paul is NOT dead!)

Two days before his birthday, McCartney completed his 13-city “Got Back” U.S. tour with a concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ – where he was joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.


*     *     *     *     *


The 36-song “Got Back” setlist did not include “Penny Lane,” which was released in February 1967 along with “Strawberry Fields Forever” as a double A-side single. 


Penny Lane was a street in suburban Liverpool where a major bus terminus was located.  McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison frequently changed buses at the Penny Lane terminal when they were students.


The subject matter of “Penny Lane” has been described in one book about the Beatles as “Liverpool-on-a-sunny-hallucinogenic-afternoon.”  (McCartney had first taken LSD a short time before “Penny Lane” was recorded.)


*     *     *     *     *


“Penny Lane” is a charming little record.  But like most Paul McCartney-penned songs, the lyrics leave something to be desired.


(Asking for a friend)

The recording engineer who worked on “Penny Lane” has said that McCartney was playing the Pet Sounds album constantly during recording session breaks.  The arrangement that McCartney eventually came up with for “Penny Lane” falls a little short of what Brian Wilson was doing in those days, but it’s still quite interesting.  (The piccolo trumpet solo is particularly noteworthy.)


McCartney’s lyrics are frequently rather slapdash.  The lines quoted at the beginning of this post – He likes to keep his fire engine clean/It’s a clean machine – are about as lazy as anything Sir Paul ever wrote.  (It’s like he completely lost interest after coming up with the first line.)


And all the people that come and go/Stop and say “Hello” is almost as bad.


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to watch the promotional film the Beatles made for “Penny Lane.”


Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:


Sunday, June 19, 2022

Billy Murray – "Low Bridge! – Everybody Down" (1912)


L-o-w bridge!

Everybody down

L-o-w bridge!

We must be gettin’ near a town


There are 16 lift bridges on the Erie Canal between Fairport and Lockport – which are about 75 miles apart.  


(Between Fairport and Lockport the Erie Canal also passes through Spencerport, Brockport, Middleport, and Gasport – whoever named the towns along the canal wasn’t the most imaginative person in the world.)


Those lift bridges are usually kept lowered so cars and trucks can cross over to the other side of the  canal.  In their lowered position, most of those bridges are only three feet or so above the surface of the canal.  


The Brockport lift bridge in lowered position

But whenever a boat is coming through, the bridge is raised so that it provides 16 or 17 feet of vertical clearance – plenty for the pleasure craft that make up virtually all of the boat traffic on the Erie Canal these days.


When a lift bridge is elevated, red lights flash and warning bells ring as a barrier arm comes down – it’s just like what happens when a train is approaching a road crossing.


A boat passing under the
elevated Brockport lift bridge

I can only imagine how I would feel if I was running late for an appointment, or my child was sick and I needed to get to the school to pick him or her up, and I had to wait at a lift bridge for some swell in a big-ass cabin cruiser to pass.  


*     *     *     *     *


Construction of the 363-mile-long Erie Canal – which traverses New York State from Albany in the east to Buffalo in the west – was begun in 1817 and completed eight years later.  


There were no real civil engineers in the United States in those days, and no power equipment.  The dirty work of digging the big ditch was accomplished by Irish laborers, German stonemasons, and mules – with the help of a lot of black powder.


The original canal was 40 feet wide and four feet deep.  The tolls collected from the freight and passenger boats that used it quickly paid for the cost of constructing the canal. 


 A hundred years later, the state rebuilt the canal and changed its official name to the New York State Barge Canal.  The new canal – which was three times as wide and three times as deep as the original one – couldn’t compete with railroads and trucks, and was not profitable.  


*     *     *     *     *


A few days before I was scheduled to drive to Buffalo for a four-day group bicycle trip along the Erie Canal, a car struck me while I was riding on a trail near my home in suburban Washington, DC.


The collision was 100% the fault of the driver, who failed to stop completely at a stop sign and then look both ways before proceeding into the intersection I was crossing.  


He was turning right, so he looked to the left to check for oncoming traffic – but didn’t look to the right, which was the direction I was coming from.  (Since he was turning right, he didn’t have to worry about cars coming from the right.)


I assumed he had seen me and would stop to allow me to go through the protected crosswalk, which is what he should have done.  But that was a mistake.  I was directly in front of his car when he rolled into the intersection and started to turn right.  So he hit me squarely, and knocked me off my bike.


You know what they say about what can happen when you assume too much, right?



*     *     *     *     *


I was screaming bloody murder as I fell to the pavement, using every single four-letter word in my vocabulary (which is a lot).  Fortunately, the driver was going very slowly when he hit me, so he was able to stop almost instantly.


The fall broke the mount for my cycling computer and bent my water bottle cage, but did no other damage to my bike.  More importantly, the fall did no damage to me.  The next day, my son asked me how I felt, and I told him that I felt perfectly fine – in fact, I hadn’t even thought about the collision that day until he asked it about it.


I told my five-year-old grandson about the incident later that week when I picked him up at his Montessori kindergarten.  Jack is already an accomplished bike rider, and I wanted to teach him a lesson about never taking chances on his bicycle when there are cars around.


He listened carefully to my account, then said, “Grandpa, I think we need to forgive him.”


Which is good advice, of course.


*     *     *     *     *


I originally signed up for my Erie Canal group bike tour in 2020, but Wilderness Voyageurs – the Pennsylvania-based company that offers that itinerary and many others – had to cancel it and all their other escorted bike trips due to covid-19.


So I signed up to do the tour in 2021 instead, but had to pull out at the last moment due to a herniated L5-S1 disc (which eventually required surgery).


I was afraid I was going to have to postpone the trip a third time because I found out a couple of months ago that another fragment of that pesky disc had broken off and would need to be surgically removed.  But I was able to schedule the surgery for the week after the tour.


Biking is apparently very easy on your back – my neurosurgeon cleared me to ride as much as I wanted to prior to my surgery.


*     *     *     *     *


My car’s navigation app told me the best way to get from my home near Washington, DC, to the Buffalo area was to drive straight north through the middle of Pennsylvania on US 15.  (Some people call that part of the state “Pennsatucky.”  Having driven through it, it’s easy to see why.)  


I arrived at our group’s hotel around dusk and found a nearby brewery where I ate, drank, and watched the Yankees hit six solo home runs in five innings off a hapless Cubs rookie pitcher.  (That put him in the record books – no major-league pitcher has ever given up more home runs in a single game.) 


One of those homers had an exit velocity of 119.8 mph, making it the hardest-hit ball so far this season.  The Yankee who hit that homer – Giancarlo Stanton – is responsible for an amazing 31 of the 42 home runs that have been measured as traveling at 119 mph or higher when they left the bat.


Giancarlo Stanton
The next morning, I met my two guides and eleven fellow travelers in the parking lot of the hotel at 800a, where we mounted up and hit the trail.


*     *     *     *     *


We covered 25.9 miles, 35.3 miles, 29.7 miles, and 27.4 miles, respectively, on the four days of the trip – just short of 120 miles altogether.  (I could have ridden further each day, but I was VERY glad that I didn’t have to – I rarely ride such distances, and I’ve never ridden that far over the course of four days.)


Most of the time, we were riding on the unpaved towpath adjacent to the Erie Canal.  That stretch of the towpath is almost perfectly flat – it’s over 64 miles between lock 34 in Lockport and lock 33 in Rochester – and very quiet: there was relatively little traffic on the towpath or in the canal.


I wasn’t sorry when I dismounted my bike as the end of the last day’s ride, but I was sorry to say goodbye to my fellow travelers.  We had spent a lot of time together those four days – while we were riding along the canal, eating our meals, and stuffed into the 14-passenger Ford Transit van that transported us, our bikes, and our luggage between our hotels and the trailheads – and we got along very well, indeed.


Usually, there’s one pain-in-the-ass in a group like ours – someone who is always late and holds everyone else up, or is a high-maintenance type who needs special attention from the guides, or who talks waaaaay too much about himself or herself.  But I don’t think we had anyone like that on this trip.


Unless it was me.


*     *     *     *     *


A lot of people think the title of today’s featured song is “The Erie Canal Song.”


But the song was copyrighted by Thomas S. Allen in 1912 as “Low Bridge! – Everybody Down.”  (It’s not entirely clear that Allen actually wrote the song.  In 1930, a federal court ruled against Allen’s publishing house when they brought a copyright infringement suit against another publisher.  The court apparently believed testimony from two witnesses who said they had heard the song years before Allen said he wrote it.)


Most of the newer recordings of the song – including those by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen – substitute “15 miles” for the “15 years” in Allen’s copyrighted lyrics.  I think we sang “15 miles” when we sang the song in our grade school music class. 


Click here to listen to Billy Murray’s original 1912 recording of “Low Bridge! – Everybody Down.”  (It includes only verses one, two, and five of the song.)


Click here to watch a very informative video that includes all five verses of the song.


Sunday, June 12, 2022

Anne Murray – "Daydream Believer" (1979)


Cheer up, sleepy Jean

Oh, what can it mean?



“Daydream Believer” – which was written by John Stewart just before he left the Kingston Trio – became the Monkees’ third and final #1 single in December 1967.


Anne Murray’s 1979 cover of the song was one of my mother’s favorite records, so I’m featuring it rather than the original Monkees’ recording today.


*     *     *     *     *


My mother, who died exactly one year ago today, went by her middle name – which was Jean.


Her first name was Emma, which she loathed for some reason.  One of the many indignities of her final years was that she was usually called Emma by her various caregivers – after all, that was the name that appeared first on her Medicare and Social Security cards, and most people understandably assumed that was the name she went by.


My mother in 1974

My late father didn’t like his first name –which was Harry – either.  He preferred to be called David, which was his middle name.


The columbarium marker that identifies their final resting place gives their names as H. David Hailey and E. Jean Hailey.  That’s sort of odd, I think, but it’s what they wanted.


*     *     *     *     *


My father and mother lived in Joplin, Missouri, for virtually all of their adult lives.  He was 90 years old when he died in January 2016 – just a few days after we had celebrated my mother’s 90th birthday.


I and my children tried to persuade my mother to move out of her house in Joplin and into assisted living immediately after my father’s death.  She refused to do so – not surprisingly, since she had just suffered the most traumatic loss of her life, and was reluctant to abandon what was familiar and comfortable for her.


But a few months later, she fell and broke a bone in her neck.  Fortunately, that fracture did not result in any paralysis or other serious medical complications.  But it was clearly no longer safe for her to be living alone in her house, and she agreed to let us move her to an assisted living apartment just a few miles away from my home in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.  


I hoped that being close to her four grandchildren – all of whom lived nearby – and the great-grandchildren that they were beginning to produce at a prolific rate would help her move on from the loss of my father and their home.  But that never really happened.  


My mother with her oldest
great-grandchild in 2018

Part of that was due to age-related dementia, which caused her to become inordinately anxious and fearful despite our efforts and those of her caregivers.


But her real problem was losing my father – her husband of over 68 years.  The loss of his love and companionship was a terrible blow to her, but what I think hurt just as much was that his absence meant that she had no one left to care for – and caring for the needs of her family was my mother’s real  purpose in life.  


*     *     *     *     *


Prior to the onset of covid-19 in 2020, I visited my mother almost every day.  Some days, I would drag her to the daily chair exercise sessions down the hallway from her apartment.  Other days I would have breakfast or lunch with her.  


Occasionally, I would bring her to my home for Sunday dinner, or for birthdays or holiday celebrations.  But it made her very anxious to leave her apartment for any length of time – as soon as we left, she’d beseech me to turn around because she was afraid they weren’t going to let her back in her the building, and would try to open her car door while we were moving.  


Covid put an end to face-to-face contacts between residents and non-residents for about a year.  Eventually outdoor visits were allowed, but she wanted no part of sitting outside during the winter.


A window visit during covid

To make matters worse, my mother’s hearing had become so bad the last year or two of her life that we couldn’t really communicate on the telephone – despite her very expensive hearing aids.


*     *     *     *     *


She had something of a respite in early 2021, when we were able to enroll her in a long-term hospice program that provided not only skilled nursing care but also two very kind and patient companions who alternated staying with her from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm everyday.  


We were given plenty of warning when it looked like the end was approaching, and the hospice staff made sure that her final days were peaceful and as free as possible of pain or distress.  


My children had the opportunity to say their farewells, and my sister had time to fly to Washington and spend several days with her before she quietly passed away.  My sister’s visits always had a remarkable effect on my mother’s mood, and her final visit was no exception – she rallied noticeably despite being very near the end of her life.


*     *     *     *     *


I think my family would tell you that I’m a lot more like my father than I am my mother.  I’m proud of the parts of me that I inherited from my father, but I’d clearly be a better person if I had inherited more of my mother’s personality.


A photo of my mother (the smallest girl),
her mother, her maternal grandparents,
and her six aunts and uncles (circa 1932)

The one aspect of my life that I can say is entirely the result of her influence is music.  She had played the piano and the clarinet as a student, and insisted that I start piano lessons when I was in 2nd grade.  I didn’t really take to practicing the piano – she had to push me to do so, and I’m sure I tried her patience with my tendency to practice just enough to get by.  


But she persisted, and eventually I progressed enough that I started having opportunities to perform in public – as a soloist, an accompanist, and a member of our high school’s jazz band and other ensembles.  


Many of my best memories of growing up relate to music, and I still love listening to and talking about music.  My life has been enriched greatly because of my involvement with music.  And for that, I have her and her alone to thank.  


My mother at age 21

Looking back, I know how much she enjoyed seeing me perform.  A few years ago, I dug out some of my old piano music and put together a short program that I performed for her and an audience of several dozen of the other residents at her assisted living facility.  I played that music better when I was a teenager than I did 50 years later, but no matter.  I like to think that my performance took my mother back – at least briefly – to happier times.


*     *     *     *     *


I asked my son and daughter to take part in the long-delayed memorial service we held for my mother a few days ago in Joplin by reading these verses from the hymn “Come, Labor On” – which has always moved me:


Come, labor on!
Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain
While all around him waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the Master say,
Go work today.


Come, labor on!
Claim the high calling angels cannot share –
To young and old the Gospel gladness bear.
Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The night draws nigh.


Come, labor on!
No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
Till the long shadows o’er our pathway lie,
And a glad sound comes with the setting sun,
Well done, well done!


Come, labor on!
The toil is pleasant, the reward is sure;
Blessed are those who to the end endure;
How full their joy, how deep their rest shall be,
O Lord, with Thee!


Click here to listen to “Come, Labor On!”


*     *     *     *     *


The words of that hymn speak very directly to me about my mother’s life and legacy.  


My mother never “dared stand idle” – she kept busy.  For her, there was rarely “time for rest” before the long shadows finally fell over her pathway at the end of her life.  


But she was more than just a hard worker.  Hard work is too often done for selfish reasons – an attempt to achieve personal fame and fortune, or in the hope of exceeding the accomplishments of rivals.


By contrast, my mother’s hard work was never done for her own advantage, but selflessly and out of love and concern for her family.  


*     *     *     *     *


My sister and I were the first beneficiaries of her caregiving.  Nothing was more important to her than our happiness and well-being – she was always on our side, and we could always count on her to be proud and supportive of us. 


Christmas 1960

She couldn’t have been a better grandmother to my four children.  She and my father would fly back and forth to Joplin when my kids were young – they kept them for a couple of weeks each summer, and a week or so after Christmas.  Now that I’m a grandparent, I know just how tiring it is to oversee one or two young children for an overnight visit – much less care for four children for two weeks.  Her only complaint was that we lived so far away, and that she couldn’t spend more time with her grandkids.


My mother was an only child, and when my widowed grandmother got older and needed help with everything from grocery shopping, to getting to doctor’s appointments, to doing her taxes, to mowing her lawn, the responsibility fell entirely on my mother’s shoulders.  My grandmother was able to remain in her home until she died just before her 95th birthday thanks to my mother’s selfless assistance.


Her final caregiving assignment was my father – given that he had health problems and physical limitations that became more and more serious as time went on, taking care of him would have been no easy task for a much younger person.  But she somehow managed – even at 90 years of age – to keep things going with very little outside help.  


At the doctor's office in 2016

I now know just how much of a struggle daily life had become for my parents at the end.  But my mother rarely asked for help – not out of pride, but because she didn’t want to be a burden to my sister or me.     


*     *     *     *     *


In “Come, Labor On,” the master acknowledges his faithful servant’s efforts at the end of the day with the words “Well done, well done!”  


For all that she did for others – my grandmother, my father, my sister and me, and her grandchildren – my mother certainly deserved to hear “Well done, well done!” as the night fell on her life.


The hymn assures us that “those who to the end endure” will be blessed.  “How full their joy, how deep their rest shall be,” it promises.


That’s a comforting thought, isn’t it?


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to listen to Anne Murray’s cover of “Daydream Believer.”