Tuesday night I celebrate my 45th birthday and my kids got me Pink Floyds The Wall as my present.  It’s one of my all time favorite albums. Probably for the simple reason that it stirs so many memories. I remember being  introduced to the rock opera by a squad member, named Bo, while stationed at the now defunct Lowry AFB just outside Denver. That would have been back in the summer of 81. While dark and brooding one of my fondest and most emotionally stirring memories, of listening to this album, was while stationed in Bremerhaven Germany. 

It’s a chilly fall evening and I’m sitting on one of the large window sills of my room looking out the fog shrouded quad which is so typical of the fall evenings in Northern Germany.  I can remember thinking that the barracks seemed especially empty for a Sunday night.  I should be getting to bed but the gin in my hand isn’t finished and the song Mother playing through my headphones fits into my melancholy state too well, just like the mist of the fog outside.  So I chain light another of my ever present Marlboro’s, take another sip of the gin and set the needle back the beginning of the song. And instead of drowning out my lonliness, in belicose defiance I crank up the volume and so decide to revel in my anguish.

Yeah I know it doesn’t make any sense but emotional memories are hard to put into context.  Let’s just leave it that the Fall of 1983 while memorable wasn’t all that wonderful.  And while being a Sunday night, I no longer drink nor do I smoke, and I do have to be at work at 6:30 AM.  So I bid thee a fond ‘gut nacht mein herren und mein damen’.