The Good Old Days
Highway 191, Montana
2014
Nothing spectacular about this particular scene, just a shot of a lonely highway (my favorite kind) across some wide open country on a warm spring day in Montana. With nothing else on the agenda over Memorial Day weekend, we took a little day trip to Lewistown, Montana. We didn’t do much of anything except wander around and enjoy the fine day. Sometimes that’s all you need to do to be content.
By coincidence yesterday I happened to leaf through a novel I read recently,
By the Lake by John McGahern, and came across a passage I had marked that seemed apropos to this feeling:
The days were quiet. They did not feel particularly quiet or happy but through them ran the sense, like an underground river, that there would come a time when these days would be looked back on as happiness, all that life could give of contentment and peace.
That in turn reminded me of the line from the Carly Simon song
Anticipation: “stay right here ’cause these are the good old days.” Here’s a video of her singing that song back in 1971. (I had some good old days back then too–wonder if I thought so then.)
]]>
The Good Old Days
Highway 191, Montana
2014
Another song with a similar theme: These are Days by 10,000 Maniacs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gnQ7SLnbu0
I sometime try to guess the context of the picture from the title (sometimes kind of hard when the title is like Study in Blue # 74) but getting back to the POTD- it was entertaining to journey back to Carly cause at the start I had a different notion what a straight shot 120 mph eastern Montana highway had to do with the good old days before high gas prices…..
Steve, for the record, I’ve never driven 120 mph on a Montana highway, even back when there was no posted speed limits. Not sure I even hit triple digits, but I know I came close a number of times.
Long before”Anticipation ” my dad used to say the same thing to people who dwelled on”the good old days “. Not much good about them he’d say.These are the good old days.
Now that’s the kind of driving I miss. Nothing at all like that east of the Mississippi. Driving anywhere out here is a chore.