Birthday Blog, 2012

"You say it's your birthday / It's my birthday, too, yeah....."  - The Beatles, 1968

I wrote the following paragraphs on a hotel lobby computer in Pittsburgh, Pa., to be posted on my birthday a coupla days hence.  At noon today Watershed road manager extraordinaire Michael "Biggie" McDermott informed me and my tour roommate Dave Masica that, due to a freak Ohio windstorm yesterday and the resultant power outages, the Findlay, Ohio, show had been cancelled.  Biggie was driving Colin home to Columbus to tend to his coffeeshop (the only place in its area WITH power and therefore a thriving enterprise).  He offered me thirty seconds to decide whether I wanted a day off in Ann Arbor, MI, or go home for my birthday before going back out on the road for Sunday's show in Chicago.  Going home to celebrate my birthday with my lovely wife Debbie won easily. 

Today is my birthday, my 60th birthday.  I'm really, really old.  Tomorrow I'll be closer to 80 than I will be to 40.  But today I'm on the road with Watershed in Findlay, Ohio - a thriving metropolis in our beloved scenic Midwest - so I don't really feel that old.  I could be worse places.  I could be working in a warehouse someplace, never seeing the sun, as I did for many, many years.  I could be watching T.V. like I do the other 333 days a year.  I could be dead.  I think my sainted Italian father would like that I'm on the road with Watershed on this 60th birthday, rather than living some workaday mundane existence.  I wish he was here with me.  Somehow I know he is.

Today is my birthday, my 60th birthday.  I'm really, really old.  Tomorrow I'll be closer to 80 than I will be to 40, but in the words of poet laureate Lou Reed, "I'm feeling good, I'm feeling oh so fine / Until tomorrow but that's just some other time."


ps. Part two of Watershed (The View From The Side Of The Stage) will appear as an appendix to Growing Old With Rock & Roll in a few days.  (The blog officially ends today on my 60th birthday.)

© 2012 Ricki C.