{"id":45453,"date":"2018-03-22T11:13:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T17:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=45453"},"modified":"2018-03-22T11:21:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T17:21:49","slug":"view-from-the-balcony-spring-seating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/view-from-the-balcony-spring-seating\/","title":{"rendered":"View From The Balcony: Spring Seating"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing this on one of my favorite holidays, St. Patrick\u2019s Day. I think it\u2019s appropriate that SPD falls in the middle of March\u2014green pollen, green grass, green leaves, and green beer\u2014all certain signs that spring is on its way. Not to mention that Ole Miss\u2019 Spring Break is already in the rear-view mirror and the boys of summer have taken the field.<\/span><\/p>\n

The winter of 2017\u20132018 was one of the coldest I\u2019ve ever known. You have to be careful who you say that to on The Balcony though. Specifically avoid saying anything like \u201cIt\u2019s cold\u201d within earshot of the Brooklyn Bookie unless you want to be regaled by a soliloquy of curmudgeonous commentary. \u201cCold? I remember when I lived in Michigan we had thirty inches of snow, and<\/em> there was an entire week that the temperature didn\u2019t get above five degrees! Don\u2019t talk to me about cold!\u201d (Michigan\u2019s deepest accumulation of snow was 117 inches in 1948. Their largest snowfall in a 24-hour period was 32\u201d in 1985. They also dropped to -51\u00b0 in 1934.) The Brooklyn Bookie has bragging rights regarding cold weather. The Mississippi chills pale in comparison. Somebody say, \u201cHallelujah!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The hoping-for-spring crowd on The Balcony tends to rush things, God love \u2019em. The sun may be shining, but in the late afternoon it doesn\u2019t hit The Balcony until summer. So they come dressed for warm weather only to be reminded by the shade and the wind that winter is still in the batter\u2019s box and spring is still on deck, which, of course, calls to mind these words from Charles Dickens: \u201cIt was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

My family on The Balcony has certain rites of spring, one of the most constant being the return of Drop-Top Tallulah. (See my column, \u201cSquare Parking\u201d from October 11, 2017, in which I politely asked DTT to allow me to make one Square circle with her. She declined my request and her monster of a mutt bit me<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

Drop-Top Tallulah reappeared on Thursday, March 15, 2018, sans mutt. She drove her red bimmer convertible around the Square, music blaring but not drowning out the sound of her own voice \u201csinging\u201d along. I was waiting to go up to The Balcony as she passed by just before 4 pm. She waved at me. I waved back. (For the non-purist my use of the slang term \u201cbimmer\u201d to identify her BMW may sound strange, but research will show that \u201cbimmer\u201d refers to the cars and beamer\/beemer refer to the motorcycles. My good friend, Leon, an insightful man and big bimmer zealot, will confirm that, I\u2019m sure.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I kept a trip tally of Drop-Top Talullah\u2019s Square circles. From 4 pm through 4:45 pm she made twelve loops. The Balcony people were highly entertained and inspired. Why inspired? Because every last one of us was thinking, \u201cIf Drop-Top Tallulah\u2019s doing Square circles, can spring be far behind?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Locksley<\/em> Hall<\/em>, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote: \u201cIn the Spring a young man\u2019s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.\u201d Does a typical man\u2019s fancy ever not <\/em>think of love? Cue up the title song from Elvis\u2019 movie Girls, Girls, Girls<\/em>: \u201cI\u2019m just a red-blooded boy and I can\u2019t stop thinkin\u2019 about girls, girls, girls.\u201d (GGG was written by the legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who also wrote songs like \u201cHound Dog,\u201d \u201cJailhouse Rock,\u201d and similar hits for Elvis and others.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I like spring, its onset is a portent of angst and potential deprivation for me. You see, in the late fall and throughout winter it is rare for me to step onto The Balcony and not be able to get my seat in the southwest corner. (Ok, it\u2019s not my<\/em> seat. It\u2019s John Currence\u2019s seat. I just claim squatter\u2019s rights.) When the weather warms I sometimes have to depend on the kindness of friends who hold the corner for me, knowing that with few exceptions I\u2019ll be there Wednesday through Saturday. As for out-of-towners and other strangers, I reluctantly and temporarily cede the best viewpoint on the Square. That\u2019s what a Southern gentleman does. Reluctantly. But as musician Henry Rollins wrote, \u201cIn winter I plot and plan. In spring I move.\u201d Reluctantly.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1985 George Strait scored a number one hit with Hank Cochran and Dean Dillon\u2019s \u201cThe Chair.\u201d It\u2019s about a guy with a few smooth moves at a bar. His pick-up line?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, excuse me, but I think you\u2019ve got my chair. \/ No, that one\u2019s not taken, I don\u2019t mind \/ If you sit here, I\u2019ll be glad to share.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So Strait and the lady get to know each other. The song ends with: \u201cOh, I like you, too, and to tell you the truth, \/ That wasn\u2019t my chair after all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I ain\u2019t George Strait. The Sundown Cowboy, the self-proclaimed Poet Lariat of The Balcony, says it better for me: \u201cWinter\u2019s gone and spring is here; summer\u2019s on its way, \/ when liquor drinkers switch to beer and in the sun saut\u00e9, \/ crowding up The Balcony\u2014taking my seat away\u2014\/ leaving me to sit and pine and suffer much dismay. \/ May the chair be so uncomfortable they\u2019ll move without delay, \/ leaving the southwest corner for me. This, O, Lord, I pray. Amen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026and that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing this on one of my favorite holidays, St. Patrick\u2019s Day. I think it\u2019s appropriate that SPD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[5,642,4,10286,1154,3,753,10426],"class_list":["post-45453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-oxford","tag-randy-weeks","tag-spring","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv","tag-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}