***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- Jesse Winchester’s Yankee Lady

 

 

A YouTube clip to give some flavor to this subject.

…she came like the wind out of Texas, out of the Panhandle,  what did she, they, call it, that wind, oh yeah, the blue norther’, came out spouting Goethe, Schiller, and blessed Hoderlin, came north to get out of that wind and away from, well, away from a lot of stuff that those who looked to the 1960s as a jail-break were trying to get away from. Came north all blue eyes, all something out of Botticelli’s fevered mind,  all long hair, braided, ethereal, simple dress as bespoke the times, all pearls of wisdom (remember those German poet-kings) all, well, fetching if not classically beautiful and all soul. All soul ready for a mate, ready to teach a man a few simple truths if he could stand them.  

 

So they began, began their time together she teaching him bread-baking, yogurt- producing, crocheting, the many ways of sex, all the manly arts and he eagerly learned them, learned too some wisdom from her plainsong voice. They lived by the sea in a cabin, by the sea off the coast of Maine, Maine with its own winds, and she worked, and he worked sometimes, and they walked beaches, and made things from scratch, lived like some pioneer forbears making the western trek. And she, Texas-born, an orphan, grew to love him, and he her, and the spring birds proclaimed that simple fact.           

Then one day he got the urge for going like he had, unknown to her, a million times before, had what he called his Mexican urge, Mexico of the mind, to head south or west it did not matter, and so he left. Left in a fit of hubris, and she Texas- born held back her tears. And, later much later knowing that he had made a mistake, had taken the wrong road, wondered, wondered whether she still sang that plainsong, still lived by that sea…  

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Yankee Lady

I lived with the decent folks
In the hills of old Vermont
Where what you do all day
Depends on what you want
And I took up with a woman there
Though I was still a kid
And I smile like the sun
To think of the loving that we did
She rose each morning and went to work
And she kept me with her pay
I was making love all night
And playing guitar all day
And I got apple cider and homemade bread
To make a man say grace
And clean linens on my bed
And a warm feet fire place
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
An autumn walk on a country road
And a million flaming trees
I was feeling uneasy
Cause there was winter in the breeze
And she said, "Oh Jesse, look over there,
The birds are southward bound
Oh Jesse, I'm so afraid
To lose the love that we've found."
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
I don't know what called to me
But I know that I had to go
I left that Vermont town
With a lift to Mexico
And now when I see myself
As a stranger by my birth
The Yankee lady's memory
Reminds me of my worth
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
©1970 Jesse Winchester
From the LP "Jesse Winchester"

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Markin comment (2011):

One of the damn things about growing older is that those iconic figures, in this case one of those iconic music figures, that got us through our youth, continue to pass from the scene. News has just arrived via his website that the singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester is ill. Jesse had a very promising career cut somewhat short by a little thing called the Vietnam War. He felt, as others did at the time, that it was better to be a war resister and go into Canadian political exile, than be part of the American imperial military machine. While I would disagree, in retrospect, with that decision I still personally respect those who made a very hard choice. Harder, much harder, than most kids today have to face, thankfully.

But it was the music that he made, the songs that he wrote, that made many of our days backs then. A song like Glory To The Day set just the right tempo. Better still, Yankee Lady, better because we all had our yankee ladies (or men) back then, or wished for them, whether they came from Vermont or Texas, for that matter. Ya, the “old lady,” rain pouring off some woe-begotten roof, a little booze, a little dope, and a lot of music wafting through the room as we tried to take our places in the sun. Tried to make sense out of a world that we did not create, and did not like. Be well, Brother Winchester, be well.