Let there be music...eventually

"What do you want for Fathers' Day?"
She, in cahoots with my two sons, posed this question over fourteen months ago as FD 2011 approached.
I truly am the man who has everything, so my usual reply to such questions is something like "world peace" or "a gallon of milk, because I think we're almost out." But last year I really did have something in mind. And while I knew it was something I'd probably end up choosing and purchasing myself, It was fun letting them think they were finally getting the old man something he wanted.
A mandolin.
For both the uniformed and disinterested, a mandolin is a small, eight-stringed member of the lute family, most often heard in traditional folk, bluegrass and country music. I was interested in owning one because I like the way it sounds, and because hauling one on our crowed-car travels seemed a lot easier than packing and protecting a full-sized guitar, which is often like inviting another person along for the ride in terms of the space it takes.
It's been nearly 50 years since my first encounter with a stringed musical instrument. It was a Sears Silvertone nylon-stringed classical guitar that my brother was about to receive for his birthday. While in college, both he and my sister had become avid folk music fans. Jim eventually became quite adept at finger-picking the five-string banjo, while my sister's instrument of choice was a mellow-sounding baritone ukulele, aptly called a "buke." The candles were lit and the unwrapped guitar about to be presented, when my dad thrust it into my hands.
"Here," he said. "Play 'Happy Birthday.'"
Now, I was not, in any way, shape or form, a prodigy. But for some reason, I intuitively knew how to pluck that simple melody on the bottom string of the guitar, so I did.
Big deal.
Well, actually it kind of was, for me, at least. Because, from that moment on, I was hooked.
Soon enough, I had a guitar of my own, and pestered my older siblings into sharing the chords and lyrics for every folk song they knew. When the Beatles and the rest of the British musical invasion struck our shores, I quickly got an electric guitar, and spent the next few decades playing both rock and roll and rhythm and blues before settling back into the mellower, acoustic-guitar groove I'm in now. The mandolin, I thought, would be a nice addition to the collection of instruments I've gathered over the years, which includes a couple of vintage guitars and an ancient banjo that I kind of learned to pick years ago.
But first, I had to find one.
There just aren't quite as many music stores around as there used to be, and those that are, like the great little shop that recently opened in Galva, don't necessarily feature a full line of mandolins to pick and choose from. I found plenty of them for sale on the internet, but I have been unable to convince myself to purchase any kind of musical instrument online, feeling sincerely that you've gotta touch, feel, play and listen to it before you can possibly make the decision to buy it.
So it took awhile. Like fourteen months.
It was while on a visit to New Bern, birthplace of Pepsi Cola and home of Nicholas Sparks, that I discovered a place that billed itself as the oldest music store in North Carolina.
"They've gotta have a boatload of mandolins here," I said.
Well, they didn't.
But they had one. And it was just what I was looking for.
Moderately priced, reasonably well-made and with a good-enough feel and tone, it seemed like the perfect jumping-off point for my new musical experience.
But first, I've got to learn to play the darn thing.
As an experienced guitar player, I was, over the years, able to pick up and play other instruments, like the banjo, bass and ukulele fairly easily, because their tunings are similar.  But the mandolin is tuned in fifths, like a violin, which means there is a five-note interval between strings, instead of the 3-note standard (and its variations) that I'm accustomed to on guitar and banjo. This may not seem like a big deal, but to my habituated head and fingers, it feels like trying to learn a new language using an entirely new alphabet. In other words, it's pretty darn трудный.  Moreover, the tiny neck, narrow frets and eight string setup makes even my fairly-nimble fingers feel more than kinda-clunky when I try to move beyond strictly beginner level playing.
But I'm sticking with it. And while I know I'll never be another Dash Crofts, Levon Helm or David Grisman, that's OK. After all, I was never another Wes Montgomery, Eric Clapton or Jerry Garcia on guitar, but I've always had a pretty darn good time.
Who know, maybe I'll really make some music.
Eventually.
But in the meantime, happy Fathers' Day to me.
Finally.

A watched turtle never comes

It's turtle time on Topsail Island.
It's been a couple of months now since the giant loggerheads began making their way through the nighttime surf to deposit their eggs in deep-dug holes along the sand dune that borders the beach. This year, there have been upwards of 70 nests on our 26-mile island so far, with over 20 of them on the northern stretch where we live when we're here. It's a busy time for the members of the Topsail Island Turtle Patrol, with volunteers walking the beach every morning in search of new nests, and others anxiously awaiting the first wave of newly hatched babies.
Topsail Island is also home to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, one of only two in the U.S. The all-volunteer Center cares for and rehabilitates injured loggerhead and other species of turtles, and releases them back into the sea or finds other homes for those unable to survive in the wild.
While our "here today, gone tomorrow" schedule hasn't allowed my spouse to accept a full-time route along the beach, she has been an enthusiastic substitute beachwalker and volunteer who, last season, discovered the first nest on the island.  So you can imagine her excitement when she got off the phone after a longish conversation with the charming volunteer turtle honcho who manages our portion of the shore.
"Good news," she said. "We're going to be sitting a nest!"
Now, before you fall prey to the indelible image of the missus and me donning zippered feathered suits so as to better resemble giant-sized broody hens, let me explain that the term refers to the practice of keeping an eye on turtle nests that are due to hatch in order to, in some small measure, protect the hatchlings from predators and well-meaning tourists, plus attempt to steer them right if they are attracted by artificial lighting instead of the moon-lit sea that is their natural destination.  Even with those efforts, I have heard it estimated that only one in a thousand will survive to adulthood and return--in the case of the females--to the same stretch of beach to lay eggs of their own some 30 to 35 years later when they reach full maturity, due to both natural predators and man-made hazards. We were both pretty thrilled about the opportunity to be on the scene when over a hundred infant turtles took their first steps out of the nest and towards the ocean. It was a sight she witnessed last year, an opportunity I skipped because my night vision was all but nonexistent before the cornea transplant I received in the fall.
Because that's the thing.
They only hatch at night.
It is, apparently, part of the evolutionary development of the tiny guys that they instinctively know it's much safer to exit the nest when seagulls and other opportunistic predators are off duty.  Moreover, it's thought that bright light is damaging to the new hatchlings' eyes, so nest-sitters are limited to the use of dim red lights while observing the nest and the streams of young reptiles that "boil" from them at hatching time.
The nest we were assigned to was just down the beach from our own beach access, so getting there was quick and easy. A good thing, too, because we spent seven long nights sitting in near and total darkness, waiting for something to happen. An experienced turtle tender named Jane was in charge of the nest, and assured both me and the steady stream of onlookers who stopped by to see what we were doing that things were normal, in that every nest is unique in the way it matures and hatches. But after nearly a week had passed after what should have been the end of the normal gestation period, even she started wondering if the nest had somehow hatched undetected after we had left it for the evening, with the tell-tale turtle tracks concealed by late-night rain and offshore winds.
We stayed later, just in case.
Still nothing.
And later.
Nada.
Our grandsons and I traced giant sea turtles in the wet sand near the water in an effort to create some good karma, but high tides washed away our artwork without any result.
By this time, I think we were all getting a little worried.
Then nature took over.
Megan walked down one morning to see if anything had happened in the wee hours of the night before, only to discover that the heroic hatchlings had made their break for freedom in a rare daytime race to the water just 45 minutes earlier. The miraculous minutes were witnessed by a fisherman and a tourist named Jim from Ohio, who had faithfully visited the nest each night and had, apparently, arrived for an early morning look-see at just the right time.
"He was one happy camper," said a turtle patrol member who arrived on the scene soon after.
I bet.
And though we were kind of disappointed we didn't get to see the little guys off, we were glad that it had finally happened and that 110 baby turtles had made their way to the ocean that will be their home for the rest of their lives.
A few nights later, we attended a "nest analysis," where the hatched nest is dug up, and egg shells, unhatched eggs and other evidence is examined. And while the experts among us exclaimed at the extreme rarity and high risks of a daytime departure from the nest, I couldn't help but imagine a happy hoard of sunglass-wearing loggerhead babies skipping into the warm surf, thumbing their tiny noses at sunshine, seagulls and turtle mavens alike.
You know, scientists estimate that sea turtles have been around for at least 200 million years.
After all that time, chances are, they know what they're doing.

Heading west from the Cumberland Gap

The recent Illinois-to-North Carolina trip we made to return our youngest grandsons to their mom and dad would not have been complete without some sort of rudderless jaunt through uncharted territory. It is, after all, what I do, just as some men are compelled to murder fish or hit small white balls into deep underbrush with the aid of overpriced sticks.  I can sense my spouse's trepidation when she watches me gleefully pouring over my tattered set of gazetteers and other highway maps as a journey approaches.
"How were you planning on getting there?"
She has learned to ask this question both casually and carefully, hoping, I think, to detect and defuse the worst of my misguided dreams before I plan something both stupid and dangerous. Actually, I think she's come to like some of my scenic detours nearly as much as I do. Or at least, she's gotten better at hiding her real feelings about the fact that I'd rather drive aimlessly down a dusty path towards parts unknown than almost anything else in the world. But, we've made the Illinois-Carolina trip so many times that it's a bit of a challenge to find a new, interesting route without going even further out of the way than even I am willing to go.
I usually find my information and inspiration about the places I want to see and the roads I want to take from fellow travelers, either in person or in the books and articles I read. But this time was different. This time it was a song that provided the idea for the most interesting part of our cross-country route.
The tune is called "Wagon Wheel," a popular folk song that I've been playing for a few years now, and have always liked, due mostly, I think, to its references to places where I've enjoyed spending time.  The song has an interesting backstory, in that the chorus was written by Bob Dylan back in 1973 when he was recording the soundtrack album for the movie "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid." The verses were penned in 1995 by folk-rocker Ketch Secor, of the group Old Crow Medicine Show, who heard the unofficially released Dylan material on a bootleg album when he was just 18. Dylan's unfinished song is generally called "Rock Me, Mama," based on a chorus that goes like this:

Rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama anyway you feel
Hey mama rock me
Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a south-bound train
Hey mama rock me

Secor expanded it to tell the story of a hitchhiking trip south along the east coast from New England, through Philadelphia, and on to Raleigh, North Carolina, where the singer hopes to "see my baby tonight."  But it's the next-to-last verse of his version that really influenced me to choose the route we took last week.

Walkin' to the south out of Roanoke
I caught a trucker out of Philly
Had a nice long toke
But he's a headed west from the Cumberland Gap
To Johnson City, Tennessee

Now, you might think a straight-laced family man like me could be a bit put off by the reference to smoking marijuana in that stanza. But I strummed and sang my way through a period of time known as the sixties, when it seemed like every other song title and/or band name contained some reference to an illicit substance or its effects. So the idea of a few tokes didn't scare me off, though the thought of a stoned trucker on a winding mountain road continues to be a little alarming.
The big deal for me was the idea of crossing via the Cumberland Gap, a pass through the Cumberland Mountains region of the Appalachian Mountains at the juncture of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. It's famous in American history for its role as a vital passageway through the mountain range that divides much of the eastern United States from the rest of the country.  It was long used by Native Americans of the region, then identified in 1750 by Dr. Thomas Walker, a Virginia physician and explorer. The path was widened by a team of loggers led by Daniel Boone, making it accessible to pioneers who used it to journey into the western frontiers of Kentucky and Tennessee. It was an important part of the Wilderness Road that was the principal route used by settlers for more than fifty years to reach the West from the East, and is now part of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.
In other words, it's my kind of place.
The park includes an informative visitors' center, an historic, well-preserved Kentucky mountain settlement, cave tours, hiking, camping and a winding drive to a majestic mountain overlook called the Pinnacle that had my co-pilot fervently hoping no one was toking or otherwise impaired while making the often harrowing car trek at the same time as us.
It was, I thought, kind of like Great Smoky Mountains National Park without the people, as the magnificent place was nearly deserted on the warm, sunny July day we discovered it.  Getting there was easy, too, as U.S. Route 25E is now a mostly four-lane highway through the foothills and mountains. A portion of the route has even been restored to an early 19th century wagon path since the 1996 completion of the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, which replaced a 2.3-mile stretch of U.S. 25E between Middlesboro, Kentucky and Cumberland Gap, Tennessee that was once  known as "Massacre Mountain" due to the large number of travelers killed on the twisting mountain road--a fact I wisely kept from my traveling companion until we were safely on the straight and level.
After leaving the park, we headed for Johnson City, just like the song says. And it was then I realized something was a trifle amiss.
"Hey," I said. "According to the song, we're supposed to be heading west."
But we weren't. We were, in fact, going almost directly east, with a little southeastern portion right at the end that rolled us into Johnson City. This didn't really trouble me much. But I did have to convince my adult passenger that the song was wrong and we were, indeed, headed in the right direction. Later on, I read an article that discussed the song and addressed the whole east/west mixup.
“I got some geography wrong, but I still sing it that way,” Secor said. “I just wanted the word ‘west’ in there. ‘West’ has got more power than ‘east.’ ”
Really?
I guess I never considered the relative power of those two words. But right or wrong, it's a nifty little song, all the same. A great little drive, too.
And anyway, we got where we were going. And I'm pretty sure that's all that counts.

Who needs Disneyland?

We've never had much trouble thinking of things to do with our youngest grandsons. After all, most of the time we spend with them is at our part-time place on the North Carolina shore, where the beach is always a hop, skip and a jump away. I was pretty sure we'd be able to keep them engaged and entertained when we met their parents halfway between Galva and Carolina to grab the boys for a mid-summer visit a couple of weeks ago. But you never know how a six and four-year-old will react to their first extended trip away from mom and dad, and I wondered if they'd be happy spending all that time with us.
"Take 'em to Disneyland," suggested one friend. "They'll never forget it."
"Me either," I thought. "Like every month when the Visa statement comes."
Actually I'm sure we will do the Disney thing one day with all our kids and grandkids, but this time, the boys got to visit a whole series of theme parks that are all part and parcel of what I've come to think of as "GrandmaLand,"
Now, I wouldn't exactly characterize my own approach to parenting (and grand-parenting) as lazy. No, I prefer terms like "laid back" and "liberating." The grandma-lady, though, has always been more of a hands-on type, filled with energy and ideas for ways to have fun, experience something new and learn a few things along the way. But we wholeheartedly agree that successful child-rearing requires both frenzied activity and hit-and-miss meals, which translates to the parenting style that got us through with our own sons:  "Keep 'em tired and keep 'em hungry and they'll always sleep and eat when you want them to."
After a fun farewell family night spent at a Knoxville, Tennessee hotel with a built-in mini-waterpark, we headed north with Cyrus and John Patrick. A stop at historic Fort Boonsborough in the Kentucky hills took care of the educational portion of the ride home to Illinois, and we gave the two travelers a couple of days to adapt until things got busier still. A 500-mile trip north introduced the young Carolinians to Wisconsin, with a stop at a favored family spot along Lake Geneva. By nightfall, we were in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where a surprise party was planned to mark my sister and brother-in-law's wedding anniversary. It was the first opportunity for the little boys to meet a veritable treasure trove of cousins, aunts and uncles, plus experience the wild grandeur of one of our favorite places in the whole wide world. The morning after the party, three generations of family members hiked up Sugarloaf Mountain, then headed for the beach for swimming, boat rides, fireworks and firelit songs and s'mores. The young adventurers beach-camped with us on the shores of Lake Superior, sleeping under a sky that was incredibly lit by the most amazing display of Northern Lights I've ever seen.
Heading south again, we visited another favorite spot--Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo--when the temperature was a hundred and one.  The lions hid in the shade, the rhinos stayed dug deep in the mud, and the ostrich sat still in the cooling mist of a nearby sprinkler. But never fear, the monkeys--and boys, too--were in fine flying form, and that's all that mattered.
But it seemed to me the best times of all happened at our house, where they experienced the amazing kind of kid freedom that can only be enjoyed in a small town. The boys were wide-eyed when we told them they were free to go across the street and into the park that borders our front yard as long as they stayed in sight and checked in from time to time. They conquered the playground equipment, discovered our old croquet set and hit golf balls with a set of clubs newly inherited from an older cousin. They made friends with neighborhood grandkids, shot hoops with a Galva basketball legend and put up sweet corn with grandma and a friend. They were young gentlemen when we took them to see the Pirates of Penzance at the Orpheum Theatre, old hands when they gamely tried to stay up late for a double feature at the Autovue Drive-Inn, and suddenly notorious when they took a neighbor's Shih Tzu on a dizzying ride down the tornado slide in the middle of the park.
They learned that the deck out back is a great spot for breakfast, that the Galva pool is the only place to be on a hot afternoon, and that the best way to spend a warm summer evening is catching fireflies in grandma's front yard. But best of all, we think they've truly learned to love the place they've called "the snowy house" ever since they saw their first real winter here a couple of Christmases ago.
I have to admit, it seems longer than a couple of weeks since we picked up the boys. Not because time has dragged, but because of the sheer volume of activities, people and places they (and we) have encountered along the way. But I heard son Patrick on the phone with young John the other day, teaching him to say, "help, I've been kidnapped,"  so I guess it's time to take the two of them home.
We hope they'll remember Galva and "the snowy house" as a special place. As a place they want to visit, again and again. We know we've remembered the joys of boys, with laughter in our ears and love in our hearts.
Come again. Come again soon.

The death of a Trooper

Bang the drum slowly.
My beloved 1994 Isuzu Trooper died suddenly--once and for all--just a few days before the Fourth of July. I was hoping it was nothing serious, but, the prognosis was not good and my old-car repair budget is small. So I pulled the plug on the trusty, rusty machine.
I spent a last few minutes with the big green beast the other day, pulling a wild mix of stuff from the back storage area and glove compartment, including a decade's worth of registration forms, oil-change receipts, two sets of jumper cables, a tow chain, miscellaneous tools and musical equipment, and three big bags of old clothes I've been meaning to take to Goodwill since that time I cleaned out my closet back in my senior year of high school.
Then, without a look back, I walked away from the old car.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not getting all sentimental and sappy about a car. But, I've gotta admit, I'm gonna miss it. Throughout its life as our family vehicle, and even since it made the ignominious transition from the "good" car to "my" car, it has served us well, hauling us just about anywhere we wanted to go in all kinds of weather, and starting virtually every time I asked it to, right up until to the morning when it wouldn't start at all. Even then, I guess I should be grateful it decided to die at home, and not on some out-of-the-way country road or in the breakdown lane of a crowded interstate highway.
It's been nearly fifteen years and more than a quarter million miles since we bought the new-to-us SUV at the anxious urging of our younger son, who was then a sophomore in high school and a newly minted driver. Looking back, I realize he was desperate to get behind the wheel of something besides the baby blue mini-van that then represented the top end of our family fleet.
I can't say I blamed him. I was, too.
While the Trooper was generally a model of dependability and performance throughout most of its lengthy career, readers of this column may remember that it--like many of us--did develop some quirks during its golden years. Specifically, it began to shed certain functions that it, apparently, considered nonessential to efficient operation, including the radio, interior lights and the air conditioning except when traveling downhill. Most peculiar, though, was when the otherwise good-hearted vehicle got a little testy and developed a dangling left front door that had to be held shut with a complex combination of straps and bungee cords, lest it fly open and eject an unsuspecting driver into the oncoming traffic flow.
I'm probably going to have to look for another car eventually, but there's really no big hurry. Our Carolina son and wife are starting to wonder when we're going to return the grandchildren we borrowed over a week ago, so we'll be on the road for a while fairly soon. And even when we're around, we seem more and more able to share a car, thanks to schedules that are more flexible than they used to be.
"It'll be like when we were first married," she said, remembering the days when a one-car status was a financial necessity.
"I hope not," I muttered, as I recalled all the times she forgot to pick me up at work.
But I think the main reason I'm in no hurry to get out there and haunt the used-car lots is that there really aren't that many vehicles out there that I'm especially interested in owning. At least, not that I can afford.
So, I'll keep my eyes open.
Maybe I'll find another Trooper. Or maybe it's time for that red convertible. Or a baby-blue mini-van.
In the meantime, if you see me standing on the street in front of my house with a confused look on my face, don't worry too much.
It's going to take some time to remember it's gone.

Just how hot is it, anyway?

I suppose there were probably a couple of places warmer than my house last week. Like the surface of the sun or the gates of hell, maybe.  I was all but certain I had found one of the hottest spots on the planet when we headed all the way up to the Fargo area the weekend before the Fourth to help son Colin and his family move to a new home. After spending their first few years in the area living in a modern townhouse in a treeless, edge-of-town housing development, they've moved to a single family home in a tree-lined neighborhood, not far from a riverside park and the university where my daughter-in-law teaches.
"They've moved to a house with character," noted my spouse.
Yeah, and without air conditioning, too.
Central air has never been a priority in an area where summer usually only means a few days of bad ice fishing. But whether it's a sign of global warming, a coming apocalypse or just plain bad luck, folks on the northern plains have been experiencing the same kind of mild winters, warm springs and hot, hot summers as the rest of us. It's been a while since I've been involved in the box-bustling, couch-coaxing process of moving. And really, Colin and crew had taken care of most of the big stuff, with just some cleaning chores and furniture arranging left for the two of us.
A good thing, too, because even moving a few boxes, vacuuming a couple of rooms, mowing the lawn and washing some windows had me sweating buckets in the unaccustomed northland heat. I was sorry to leave them, but a little relieved when it was time to retrace our steps in order to get home in time for the fabulous Fourth of July celebration in my hometown. It was a great day, but unless you were lucky enough to be accidently locked into an ice machine, you know just how hot it was. I thought about it while participating in the near-death experience of mowing the lawn on the afternoon of the third, and decided it would be worthwhile to prepare myself for the weather-related comments that were sure to come from the friends and family members that would gather on my porch the next day. That night, I scoured the internet for hot-weather facts designed to both amuse and educate my audience. I imagined the lightning-quick commentary I'd provide at the first mention of weather and the record-setting temperatures.
"Hot one, eh?"
It was just the opening I had been hoping for.
"Yeah, it's pretty toasty, all right," I'd say. "But nothing like the Lut desert in southeastern Iran."
My comprehensive internet search had armed me with the fact that a 2005 NASA study indicated soil temperatures that reached about 160 degrees in the region, making it the hottest spot on earth.
Likewise, I had learned that the aptly-named Flaming Mountains of Turfan in northwest China's Xinjiang province are a place where the temperature has been know to reach 122 degrees, and that the hot, dry area near Ahwaz, Iran gets less than an inch of rain per year and averages 116 degrees in the month of July. I discovered that Timbuktu borders the Sahara Desert and once had a recorded high of 130 degrees, along with spring temps of 108 and wintertime highs in the 90s. But, I planned to save my favorite for last--Death Valley, California, the lowest place in the Western Hemisphere at 280 feet below sea level and the site of the highest temperature ever measured in the U.S. back in 1913--134 degrees!
That's the stuff I was going to share with my guests on that sweltering Independence Day, and I'm sure they would have been impressed.
"That John sure knows his weather facts," they'd say.
And they'd be right.
But as I looked around at the crowd on my porch as they did their best to beat the sweltering heat, I realized I might just want to save my new-found treasure trove of knowledge for another, cooler time. Because if there was one thing they didn't need that day, it was any more hot air.

Oh say can you see?

If there's one thing you heard yesterday, along with the pop-pop-pop of illicit fireworks and the BOOM-KA-BOOM of the real thing, it was probably--hopefully--the song that starts with these words.

"Oh say can you see at the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"

The song, of course, is "The Star-Spangled Banner," our national anthem. It's a stirring piece of music, based on a poem written during the War of 1812 by Francis Scott Key and set to a well-known English tune of the day.  The original was four verses long, though I'd challenge just about anyone to come up with a word of stanzas two through four without assistance.
Heck, a lot of folks have trouble with the first one. And with just singing the song as it was written.
It requires a vocal reach of an octave-and-a-half, which, while a little demanding, should be no real challenge for a competent singer who knows enough to start low in order to successfully reach the high parts. None the less, it's been butchered by a whole host of pro warblers and other celebs, including Christina Aguilera (forgot the words), Hillary Clinton (forgot the mic was on), and Roseanne Barr (should have forgotten to show up in the first place.) Other renderings of the venerated anthem have seen it transformed into a variety of rock/pop/funk/soul/country versions, often with less-than-stellar results.
Key wrote the poem with the song in mind while watching the British blast the bejeebers out of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore.  He had no idea that the likes of Michael Bolton, Cyndi Lauper, American Idol winner Scotty McCreery and Aerosmith frontman/Idol judge Steven Tyler would go on to blast his words and work into near-unrecognizability.
Of course, not all of the big-venue renditions have been busts.
Check out the Dixie Chicks' rich, but simple arrangement at the 2003 Super Bowl, Whitney Houston's definitive performance at Super Bowl XXV or Beyonce Knowles' sensational singing job at Super Bowl XXXVIII. Dig a little deeper, and you'll find a nifty harmonic rendering by Phish at a New Jersey Nets game, Jose Feliciano's much-maligned, guitar-and-voice interpretation before Game Five of the 1968 World Series, Marvin Gaye's questioned, but oh-so-smooth adaptation at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game and the ultimate surprise, a sweet, poignant rendering by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Vince Welnick of the Grateful Dead before a 1993 San Francisco Giants' game.
But my all-time fave was one of the most contentious, at the time, at least.
During the final set of the historic Woodstock music festival, Jimi Hendrix let loose with a stunning rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner on electric guitar that's been called one of the most important political rock statements of the 1960s and the Vietnam era.  Even today, music scholars can't agree on what message Hendrix's screaming guitar and ballistic feedback was trying to deliver. Using a whammy bar and a fuzz box, Hendrix captured the sound of falling bombs and screaming rockets, of ultimate victory and crushing despair. Some saw it as an update on patriotism--stars and stripes turned psychedelic--while others claimed they couldn't even recognize the melody. Musically, it was a shot heard 'round the world, as it changed our national anthem from a traditional marching-band piece into a bombastic vehicle for solo electric guitar during a period of time when our nation was bursting at the seams over the very definition of America and patriotism.
 “I’m American, so I played it. I didn’t think it was unorthodox,” Hendrix said. “I thought it was beautiful.
He was right. it was.
It still is, in fact.
Both the song and the nation it stands for.