Candice's LJ

I've enjoyed Jimmy Rushing's singing for years, but I didn't know how good a blues pianists he was.

Masturbation goes high tech, cuz, sorry guys, I guess your hairy palm just doesn't cut it anymore.

NSFW or impressionable minds, but funny as all get out with how seriously it's presented.

I'm peeved they don't make products for women.

Video for "The Way" by Fastball

This was one of my favorite songs of the 90s. What am I sayin', it's still a favorite, heck, it's on the iPod. The story the song tells is about an elderly couple who pack up their things, get into their car, and take a road trip to get away from it all. Along the way, their car breaks down, so they decide to continue on their way by foot, lose touch with the world and find happiness in a place where they can always be together, never growing old.

It's one of the few songs that made me wonder if the lyrics were based on something that happened in real life, so I looked it up. The story the song tells is very romantic, but the incident that inspired it is anything but.

Fastball's bassist came up with the idea for this song after reading the story of an elderly Texas couple, Raymond and Lela Howard, who disappeared in June of 1997 while driving to a festival. The couple were in their 80s. Raymond had had surgery to relieve swelling in his skull following a car accident. Unable to safely drive, his children took away his car keys and sold his pickup. They then asked his wife, Lela, not to let him drive again. Lela was quite healthy for her age and still drove, but a few months before their disappearance, she began to show signs of forgetfulness and disorientation, particularly late in the day (sun-downing), believed to be symptoms of Alzheimer's.

Lela's son begged his mother to let him drive them to the festival, but Lela insisted she knew the way, since the couple went every year. The couple left, but what was supposed to be a 15 mile trip ended up with them 350 miles off their course, lost in Arkansas. They were stopped by deputies twice in Arkansas, once for driving without headlights, and again for driving with high beams, but neither deputy thought the couple was lost or disoriented, and both deputies were unaware that the couple had been reported missing in Texas, so they weren't detained.

The couple disappeared. Their families searched for them and offered rewards for information. Tips came in from as far as California but none of them led to the family and police finding the couple.

Finally, 2 weeks after Raymond and Lela left, they were found dead in their car near Hot Springs, Arkansas. They had driven off the road and into a ravine. Their families took consolation in knowing that at least they were together in the end.

The song, written before the couple was discovered dead, is a romanticized take on what happened. It presents the picture of these two seniors going off to have fun together, to be like they were when they first met.

I don't really know why I decided to write about this. I guess it's because it makes me sad, knowing the story behind the song, seeing that dark undertone to the idealized fantasy presented by the lyrics. It makes me sad, so I'm telling it here so I don't have to feel sad about it by myself.