RAMBLING: “For days, gone”

CORPUS CHRISTI — There was a coffee shop on-base in Texas where I was stationed with the Navy. It had one door in. One door out. I’d go there sometimes. To think. To write. To draw. But it wasn’t the coffee that drew me in. Or the food. It was a song on the jukebox. A song called “Four Days Gone.”

"Four Days Gone" was track number four on an album titled "Last Time Around" by the Buffalo Springfield, a folk-rock band that blossomed briefly in the mid-1960s. It was not the group’s biggest hit. That would be “For What It’s Worth,” which opens with the lines:

“There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware”

It was an anti-war song. And here I was, a part of the war machine. A rivet, somewhere in the back-shadows of America’s arsenal.

The jukebox wasn’t one of those cool, multi-color, glitzy Wurlitzer-types. Instead, it had about as much personality as an aluminum screen door. But it held something I treasured, like a diamond ring nestled in a dime-store gift-box.

That something was “Four Days Gone.”

The song supposedly had a political tint, but a light one. Like weak tea. At room temperature.

I liked the song because the guy in it was running away. And was, most likely, never coming back. Even if he wanted to. I was too much of a coward to run away. From everything and everybody. But I could — in two-minute, 57-second intervals — hide amongst the words, phrases and notes of the musical bubble served up each time I pumped coins into the slot of that mindless machine.

The song begins with light drums and even lighter cymbals. A piano meanders in. Next comes back-pick movements on a rhythm guitar, with sound-effected brightness that gently nudges the notes a bit past their fading point as the guitar player mutes the strings with his hand to get a crisp stop and after-echo.

The words are homely, in that good way. And they move the story along just fine:

The singer meets “two kind people on the road.”

He notes that he’s “three miles shy of my town.”

And, finally, he’s “four days gone into running.”

The interlude is understated. Like the best suit sold at a cheap store. Not one more note than needed; just enough to get the point across, and not a jot extra.

And the ending? As simple and direct as the rest of the song.

Beginning.

Middle.

End.

In 1969, that was more than I was finding anywhere else in my life. So, when I had pocket change. And time to spare. I’d head over to that little haven. Bribe the music box in the corner to play “Four Days Gone” — then sit back, brooding, until the first few notes unlatched my mind's door so I could escape, if only for a little while.