This must be the place: ‘I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again’
Trade Winds Lounge in Florida.
Garret K. Woodward photo
Hello from the Trade Winds Lounge in downtown Saint Augustine, Florida. It’s 10:10 p.m. and I just finished my first Coors Light at this second stop of the evening, and right when classic rock/country gold tribute act Jackhammer finishes up its second of three sets tonight.
What was initially an old-school tiki bar when it opened decades (and decades) ago has now morphed, more so melted in the hot Florida sun, into a beloved dive bar of legendary proportions.
The inside of the bar feels like the belly of some creaky, warped pirate ship, no doubt from being flooded out several times from the nearby Matanzas River just across the street.
The staff is rowdy and doesn’t put up with shit of any kind, a key trait well-earned after years at the helm. Behind the bar, well-worn bumper stickers cover the counter with statements like “Keep Honking, I’m Reloading,” “When Was The Last Time You Were Jagermeistered?” and “My Bartender Can Beat Up Your Therapist.”
For me? I’ve been, happily, wandering in here for the better part of the last 10 years. Cold beer and good folk, live rock-n-roll and hearty conversation. I mean, what more do you want, am I right? Update: 10:25 p.m. and Jackhammer is back onstage. Cue Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”
It is immediately after the completion of that song in the previous paragraph when the dichotomy of my existence comes into full view. There I am, sitting by myself at the bar, watching a band of 60-something dudes singing songs of my 40-something youth (Oasis “Wonderwall”), all while the 20-something crowd from nearby Flagler College are ordering shots and howling, especially when Jackhammer slides into Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
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At that moment, I realized I’m too old to be cool like those Gen Z faces in the audience, and yet too young to collect Social Security like those Baby Boomers behind the microphone. Shit, we millennials are currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. We remember the world before the internet and were just teenagers when social media and smart phones burst onto the scene — this haphazard, somewhat lost and jaded generation of chaos and confusion.
No matter, I feel pretty damn good for 41 (knock on wood, knock three times). Never married. No kids. Freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want. This isn’t to brag, it’s more so the situation I’ve found myself in at this juncture of my life. In truth, when I was in college in Connecticut, I figured by 40, I’d be married to the love of my life with two kids, a mortgage, a dog, and maybe two vacations a year to somewhere warm and/or on some coast.
That wasn’t the case. No hard feelings, either, seeing as I’ve been lucky enough to date and genuinely love some incredible women over the decades. Weird to even type the word “decades,” but it was 24 years ago when I started dating my high school sweetheart, 21 since my college girlfriend, and several years since other faces have come and gone. The memories are still there, albeit a little fuzzy on the edges nowadays, though they remain cherished, even today.
All of this circles back to this essay I came across years ago in The New Yorker magazine. Written in 2016 by the late Donald Hall, it’s titled, “Between Solitude and Loneliness.” It is a piece of work I return to at least once a year, especially when the loneliness of time and place creeps into my heart and soul every so often. Hall’s words and emotions continue to soothe my restless mind and provide a sense of imagination for what lies beyond the unknown horizon.
One of my favorite parts of the essay plays into my continued manifestation for a cottage/cabin in the northern woods to live, work and exist in with a beloved significant other: “Summer afternoons we spent beside Eagle Pond, on a bite-sized beach among frogs, mink, and beaver. Jane lay in the sun, tanning, while I read books in a canvas sling chair. Every now and then, we would dive into the pond. Sometimes, for an early supper, we broiled sausage on a hibachi.”
Sure, Hall’s essay ends with a sense of sadness and sorrow. But, what I took away from it was this deep well of gratitude — for being able to love, and have the capacity to do so. That, and you just never know what the future has in store for you, with many of the good things fleeting as soon as they arrive.
And yet, to simply be in the presence of those good things? Count your lucky stars to be able to witness such beauty and splendor in real time. I know I do, where as I get older, I try to embrace the fragility and inevitability of human life and of experiences with said well of gratitude as we all continue on our way, either on this earthly plane or somewhere else in the cosmic ether.
It’s like this one time I heard a passerby drunk guy say to his buddy on Broadway in downtown Nashville: “It is what it is, it was what it was, and it ain’t what it ain’t.” I remember being so struck by that statement, so much so I stopped walking for a hot second to simply let that sentiment sink in, so that I wouldn’t forget it, only to continue my way along the journey of life and love.
While I was momentarily lost in thought at Trade Winds, Jackhammer rolls into Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker’s seminal number, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Once the audience hears that opening guitar riff, the lead singer kicks things off to the roar of the crowd: “She grew up in an Indiana town/Had a good-looking mama who never was around/But she grew up tall and she grew up right/With them Indiana boys on an Indiana night.”
Visions of first hearing that melody at the (now long gone) Bowl Mart in my hometown of Rouses Point, New York. That tiny town is my starting line, the measuring stick — either geographically or spiritually — of the road to the “here and now.” That unrelenting purpose within is to always be curious and retain that sense of wonder that conjures magic from the endless universe of people, places and things one may encounter at any given moment.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
