Spring in The Whitewater Valley: My Sugar Mountain Part I

"Sugar Mountain"

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon,

You're leaving there too soon.

It's so noisy at the fair

But all your friends are there

And the candy floss you had

And your mother and your dad.

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon,

You're leaving there too soon.

There's a girl just down the aisle,

Oh, to turn and see her smile.

You can hear the words she wrote

As you read the hidden note.

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon,

You're leaving there too soon.

Now you're underneath the stairs

And you're givin' back some glares

To the people who you met

And it's your first cigarette.

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon,

You're leaving there too soon.

Now you say you're leavin' home

'Cause you want to be alone.

Ain't it funny how you feel

When you're findin' out it's real?

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon,

You're leaving there too soon

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/sugarmountain.html

I was born October 1st, 1968.

I did not think that was so extraordinary most of my life, but now I know how fortuitous it was.

I grew inside my mother that year listening to some of the most influential music of the 20th century.

The FM band on the radio was a new-ish thing and it was to the air waves like YouTube is to the internet.

It didn't matter if the tune was a bootleg Grateful Dead tape or a intricately planned out studio recording - hi fidelity projected the intoxicating sounds, the poignant lyrics, and the raw emotion right into your eardrum like you were sitting with the musicians and singers in an intimate concert.

...and even years later a little girl running around barefoot on a 65 acre farm on Garrison Creek in Fayette County Indiana could experience it far far away from it all through a transistor radio.

What does all this have to do with the first day of SPRING following one of the most mind melting WINTERS in recent years?!

The music of my childhood followed me around in the form of the lyrics stuck in my head it left there.

Every first day of spring in my LIFE has inspired those multitude of lyrics to pop forth from my lips, almost as a song of praise for the blessing of getting through the long cold winter months.

On Sugar Mountain has been one of those songs that echoed what it was like to be born and raised and then start a young adult life in Fayette County, Indiana.

(In this past year I have found that many, like me who left to make a different life, echo those same lyrics in their lives so I wanted to share it here with you all.)

The sweet tune and lilting lyrics soothe you into thinking its a beautiful lullaby, an ode to a happy childhood.

A Happy Childhood

"It's so noisy at the fair
But all your friends are there
And the candy floss you had
And your mother and your dad.
Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons"

Ah...I could relate to those lyrics - 

The fair -The Fayette County Fair!

Candy! - a kid's favorite thing!

Mom and Dad - safety, love and things the way it should be, order.

Sugar Mountain- our rolling hills in the Whitewater River Valley were mountains to me.

The barkers and the colored balloons - our dogs, our toys.(As I grew older I learned that barkers were the carnies that called, or barked out to fair goers to come try their luck at games and take thrilling rides on the crazy looking machines.)

And as a fresh, but newly jaded, Neil Young progresses with the same repeating tune, and the almost repeating lyrics, you realize subtle changes appear. 

"You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you're thinking that
you're leaving there too soon..."

Is the mountain changing?

Or did the perspective?

Maybe both?

"There's a girl just down the aisle,

Oh, to turn and see her smile.

You can hear the words she wrote

As you read the hidden note."

Growing older I wondered what it would be like to have my first love and to be that girl who enchanted some boy with her smile and her written words.

That feeling of spring bursting through your heart so strong that it seems as though you will explode.

But more subtle changes happen along the way.

"You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon..."

Teen-aged angst and fear balled up to project defiance and courage only to come off as awkward and crowd following:

"Now you're underneath the stairs

And you're givin' back some glares

To the people who you met

And it's your first cigarette."

After high school graduation I stayed to work before college. Soon I felt the valley had abandoned me, rejected me. I no longer belonged here. I had no use here...my dreams, my skills were out of time and out of place here then.

"Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon..."

So if the valley would not make room for me in its life, I would not make room for it in mine. In 1988 I left. I headed to Denver, wanting to never return.

"Now you say you're leavin' home

'Cause you want to be alone.

Ain't it funny how you feel

When you're findin' out it's real?"

I asked myself will the rest of life be wrapped up in those last two previous lines?

Surely not!

Surely, life is more than just a big let down on the dreams you had and there will be room for new ones. 

Surely?

Those lyrics continued to echo through my mind and through my life for the next 15 years.

"Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

you're leaving there too soon,

You're leaving there too soon."

To be continued tomorrow in: My Sugar Mountain Part II