Whiter Shade of Pale

Tonight's music comes with a bedtime (?) story.

In 1967 I was a 13 year-old living a sheltered life in the suburbs of Portland, OR. All I knew of the national angst of the time was what occasionally filtered into my awareness via the news.

But one day as I was hanging out in our living room listening to records on the family's hi-fi, I watched a car pull up in the driveway of the house across the street. Two men in full military uniforms got out of the car and walked up to the door. My mother knew that the husband of the woman living there was serving in Vietnam. And so she told me they probably came to tell her he had been killed.

I remember that afternoon like it was yesterday - even as I've forgotten so much. There was something deep inside that was sensing the pain so much of our country was going through - but was never discussed in my world.

Looking back on those days, I now see that this song got associated with that pain I was sensing. The words are meaningless. But its the mournful organ that always evokes what I was feeling that day as I watched the reality of was happening in the world unfold in the driveway across the street.