The rovin' dies hard in Normal entries

When I was in school (shut up, I totally went to school, shit I’ve got enough book larning to hit the middle of the Trump administration edgumacation bell curve) I had trouble finding English classes after my freshman year that would pat my ass sheepskin-ward. So I took this one class called American Ex-Patriates in the 1920s. You know, guys like Hemmingway and Pound and other guys that weren’t quite Americans or guys like John Dos Paso’s or Hart Crane. Of course, the best of the bunch were folks like James Joyce and Pablo Picasso.

I remember some funny shit from that class, like the professor lecturing like Jack Benny and pronouncing Studs Terkels name as exotically as possible (imagine an umlaut over the U so Studs is pronounced with your mouth in the shape of a maiden aunt’s kiss, and change Terkel to Tour-kell). My buddy gave his oral presentation the morning after a MDA and sex binge, his jaw to tight to open and his tongue too sore to wag. His presentation was on Hemmingway and the professor assumed he was demonstrating a hard bitten voice. My intent is not to make the professor sound stupid, lots of people his age can’t recognize the crunchy end of an MDA binge and, it’s possible, the studs terkel thing was a straight faced joke.

This is pre-amble to the song below and I meant to suggest a century ago Americans traveled for adventure, cultural enlightenment, inspiration, expression of freedom or just historical ideation. The fragments of which still clung to my fathers generation. My childrens generation grew up with the idea that international travel was like hitch-hiking — it used to be safe but isn’t anymore. I know these are gross generalizations, but the idea of the ugly American has gotten uglier; we are less likely to travel and less welcome.

The song below, the roving dies hard, is a nationalist song praising the Scot on the road (ok, just give me a wide berth on the ‘road’ piece. It’s pride, melancholy and commitment wrapped up in nationalization and travel). Shit. Train of thought derailed. It’ll be late to the station.