Highway Song (4 of 12)

     Ryan sat on the bench in the park, playing his guitar to the river the better part of an hour.  Of course, after some random noodling on chords, a flood of old favorites came to his mind and he followed that musing down the paths it took him.  He found himself playing some old Kingston Trio songs - music he’d heard from well loved and well-worn cassettes in his parents collection growing up.  His parents had loved music, and had a nice collection of cassette tapes they’d bought over the years.  There were some old vinyl records at his house growing up, but that format had been mostly abandoned by the time he’d grown up enough to pay attention to music.  They still lived in an old drawer, and he’d occasionally pour over the large album covers - admiring the art that accompanied massive albums of music the spoke the stories and songs of a generation born of “The Greatest Generation”. Of course, he’d muse on the things his parents generation did, and what they didn’t… and what they ultimately did.  It was a vast, long, wormhole that was still affecting people who were living today - including the aging boomers, many of whom were rapidly approaching the ages when they found them relegated to the corners of life - small rooms in the homes of family they once held as babes and raised, or worse yet, tucked away in some cold, uncaring medical facility, waiting die, being attended to by minimum wage workers who were doing the bare minimum to get by and not get yelled at by people making slightly more money than them.  People who held this small authority over their head like a large baton, while they themselves were bullied by people above them making just slightly more, and wielding more imaginary power than they really had. In truth, they were just lorded over by the people who owned facilities like this - greedy, rich, money grabbers who barely worked themselves, and encouraged their low paid workers to cut even more corners to the bone in order to line their own pockets.  They did all this while convincing these low paid workers that they were “blessed and lucky” to even have a job.  All while caring for the children of “The Greatest Generation”... and knowing that many of that same great generation already experienced this end in life, and had died undignified deaths in sterile, cold, nursing homes, bereft of the love and family they once had.

    This tangent of thought made Ry shudder, and he stopped playing the guitar for a moment.  The sun soared over the sky during the afternoon, and was steadily making its celestial jog towards the western horizon.  Ry wanted to walk around town a bit more, and explore some things before nightfall.  He figured he’d come back here to try and find an inconspicuous place to bed-down for the night.  He liked this place - the whole town had a slow and comfortable vibe.

    If I could he thought I’d live in a place like this forever.