Mother Nature changes moods FAST!
Evidently someone tried to fool Mother Nature. It didn't work...

For the most part, today was really NICE. Like John Denver once sang, it was "Cool 'an Green an' Shady." Yeah, I was in the park today; I brought the little transistor radio with me, and the Mariners actually won in a come-from-behind game today. As I listened to the game, I was watching the pickup basketball games on the new Park "slab", and other people tossing frisbees, baseballs and soccer balls. All of a sudden, everyone's come out of the woodwork; two weeks ago, the park was absolutely vacant. Something about the warm weather and sunshine, I guess.

Listening to veteran Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus is always an interesting experience. Today, the Baltimore Orioles had loaded the bases. He said, "There's a bird in every bush, and their wings are flapping", as they threatened to score bigtime against the M's. If someone hits an easy fly ball to an outfielder, Mr. Niehaus will say that it's a "can of corn", and of course, whenever someone hits a home run with the bases loaded, he'll yell out, "get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, it's GRAND SALOME TIME." (he hasn't had the chance to say that very much this season!) I have a sneaking suspicion Niehaus is manic-depressive, but I don't have proof.

So anyway, I spent the day in the park. MMMM, sunshiny all day long. After listening to the M's game, I went up and sat on the Sea Wall and practiced some note combinations I picked up last night. I got a new DVD by Traffic, and I found the melody line from "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" really interesting, so I was playing that over and over. I probably drove everyone around me crazy in the process. I think I drove Mother Nature crazy, too...because all of a sudden, I began feeling raindrops. I looked up, and a big old cloud had parked itself right over me, and splat, splat, splat...I looked down, and the ground was DRY within a ten-foot radius of where I was sitting. My own personal rain cloud. Whoopee.

And then, all of a sudden, WHOOSH! The winds started kicking up, rain started falling everywhere; I threw my guitar in the case, and toted it, along with myself, to the nearest tree so I could shield myself from Mother Nature's assault. Someone out there somewhere must have done something terribly wrong; that's what I think whenever a severe storm kicks up all of a sudden, that someone somewhere made the Gods angry, and their wrath was thus vented upon us all. Of course, the storm is probably nothing but coincidence, but that's not good enough for someone who makes molehills out of mountains like I do. After that, I just went home. I can be thankful my roof doesn't leak, I guess.

Anyway, for those of you who meandered through this obviously boring, irrelevant posting, here's a nice little visual reward: In the first photo, here's CDA's City Beach as it appears today; you can see Independence Point, and the log boom which marks off the portion of the swim area that the Lifeguards try (in vain) to control...



In the photo below, you'll see City Beach and Playland Pier, which sat where Independence Point is now; you can see the swimming docks that, in my humble opinion, made the swimming area a whole lot more fun.

When I was a kid, I had so much fun swimming here. Gotta lotta sunburns, too! Judging from the haircuts in this older photo, I'd say this photo was taken somewhere in the mid to late '50s, possibly early '60s. You can see the old shade trees by the park benches, and unlike now, there was no concrete between the sidewalk and the seawall. I hope you liked this version of "Living in the Past"!
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Not bad, not bad at all, considering I didn't read a newspaper, or exercise any kind of free-thinking today. I guess the ol' propaganda machine is still working...