The Earls of Leicester concert at the Opera House this past weekend really took me back. Back to the Appalachian coal mining hills of my youth, growing up in central Pennsylvania.
The Earls are described as a bluegrass group but much of their sound reminded me of “Please help me I'm falling, in love with you. Close the door to temptation, don't let me walk through” And, “Walking the floor over you.” A chord was struck.
Although my parents preferred the music of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Keely Smith and their contemporaries, one step out the door back home flooded sounds the Earls brought back.
Rella Spanogle, our neighbor behind the barn, sang along with the regional AM radio gospel station continuously. She had a good voice and was not shy about sharing.
Her windows were always open. My miner buddies hummed tunes way different from mother and Dad's records played on our big coffin-shaped RCA stereo console, which now lives with us!
But it was warm in the Opera House and when the camera grip gets slippery, it’s a sign.
Time to cool off with a stroll along the water. The east side helped revive me while recalling music that went deeper than I knew.
Folks were fishing like crazy off the docks near Atlantic Edge. Not sure what they were catching but everyone was pulling fish. The rods bobbed up and then down flipping fish into buckets. A harvest of plenty. Off to the footbridge.
It was bumper to bumper along our vibrating wooden crossing from East to West. Waves of fish cruising in large schools circled the pilings. One man with a foreign accent saw squid and wondered why people were not catching them. It sounded like he was hungry.
The “Footbridge House” popped out of the night for me as the Earls still sang in my head.