The Cale and Clapton Epiphany

Lyrics Offer Hope and Inspiration to Sports Fan Crushed by (Another) Yankee Post-Season Collapse

Until today I have resisted the urge for posting Poetry on these pages which is as it should be. And OK, music lyrics ain’t exactly poetry… mostly they are just a bunch of words that rhyme -sometimes quite badly.

But the cut, Ride The River from JJ Cale and Eric Clapton’s album, The Road To Escondido just might be the perfect set of song lyrics to capture my impression of the joy Ward Patterson is experiencing as the first Full-Time Head Coach for the MCRC.
The lyrics go a little somethin’ like this:

Floatin’ down that ol’ river boy
All my worries far behind
Floatin’ down that ol’ river boy
Leave old memories way behind

Yesterday’s slowly fadin’
All my life I’ve been waitin’ for this time.

Floatin’ down that ol’ river boy
Leaves me feelin’ good inside
Floatin’ down that ol’ river boy
Tryin to get to the other side

Yesterday’s slowly fadin’
I’ve been waitin now forever for this ride.

Ride the river in this boat, ride the river…

Ok, it’s not Billy Cummings and at the risk of overselling what still seemed like a good blog posting idea about an hour ago, you can get the idea with all the metaphors and stuff, right?

For those of you who have spoken with Coach since last May, when his team brought The National Rugby Spotlight to a sleepy rural Vermont campus long accustomed to the glare of certain OTHER national sports spotlights, you can’t help but feel the love this guy exudes for this game called Rugby, or the sheer joy he is feeling in his new position.

The phrase “ Happy as a Pig in S*!#", though a tad off color, sums it up nicely.

Well, the lyric thing works for me and JJ Cale and Eric Clapton complement each other nicely... kind of like Craig Wilson and Ari Silverman. And I think WP has been waitin’ forever for this ride.

Cue the music. Sorry for the needless Yankees reference.