Freddogg Off The Chain

Picture is Dot Frederick with her problem Child David in row house Philly

Picture David and Checkers the calico cat. Checkers was a biter.

picture is Tommy in the army and dog Tippy.

Below links to tracy chapman song



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wijqg5KD5tc&NR=1






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNaNN9c-Hk4





I hear beautiful voices that talk to me like Wissahickon cool mountain water washing over the muddy shorelines of my memory bank as I breathe in and out under the IPOD doing my Gold’s Gym “available apparatus” workout.
Last weekday morining I was swimming in a pool of depression going from Tracy Chapman to the Cowboys Junkies singing the Hank Williams classic “I’m so lonesome I could Cry.”

Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry
Hank was a seriously messed up individual.

But it was Chapman’s new “I used to sing for you” humming lullaby that brought me back to 1963 standing by the bedside of my Father who was dying at the age of 41, emaciated and done in by a virulent case of multiple sclerosis.
My grandmother Rose sat in the rocker and hummed. She rocked and hummed as her fifth child and only son was soon to depart the earthly dimension to the non bodied spiritual world and that I understood.
I also absorbed the image of Tommy’s girlfriend her head on the bed a woman who nursed him through years of his illness and raised three kids and a variety of dumb pets with names like Luigi, Ox, Skungi, Checkers and Cheney State. Mom was just 38 years old and the part of her life she cared about the most was shutting down.
I listened to Tracy thought of my grandmother and parents and the sad story and willingly backstroked through the pool of depressing memories because it is nature’s way of soothing and healing without medication.
Even at 16 I was the “empathy it ain’t about me” person as I looked around the room and felt sadness for the lives that created me but really had lots more fun before I showed up.
John Prine wrote: “I never will remember what I never did forget.”