Whensday

Last little piece to catch up on here. What’s to say about this song? “1980’s Cowboy?” A true total time capsule. I want to remind you all that there was a time, not too long ago, that a CB radio was quite a high tech affair—communicating through the air! Now that we are all connected the way we are—‘just about‘ wherever we are--it’s hard (if not impossible for those of you born after 1990) to conceive of the fact that we used to have to have a physical connection in order to communicate—some kind of wire, at least.

We’ve so far, so fast. We’re at a crossroads that call for nothing short of true metamorphisis. That’s one of the biggest fact’s there is. At this point we’ve already progressed (?) to the state that the physical connection is now reduced to a wave (or is it a particle?). WOW! Only someone born before 1963, can physically/bodily understand this fundamental transformation. Before 1963, (the long and short of it ) we (I hope I’m included) were left to understand what was happening based on the stories our grandparents told us, period.

Something has changed. I wonder how many truckers now use CB radios vs. cell phones—these days? Here’s what Scot was writing and singing and playing about—so plaintively--way back then. Things are so changing. Back in the 1980’s, when Scot wrote this song, it was clear that the life on the prairie had changed—but what the future brought was not clear. Things had gotten more mechanized—so technical—so downright corporate. I see different things happening out on the prairie these days.

There is a plea here in this song—a plea to please remember the lives of those real cowboys. Those folks who worked a hard day as they happened across the amazing prairie--hopefully successfully guiding the herd through plain and mountain valley both. There, at night, those cowboys must have stared up into the heavens --once they’d ‘bedded down’--and then been left to suckled on the tit of the great beyond. I’ve done it too. It’s something most of us who have done it, remember. Sadly—it’s something now rarely seen by all of us who have migrated to our world’s cities. There are those still--around the world--who get to see what human generations have marveled to, and tried to notice and name, from our common beginnings.