Rivers of Thought
Life, Leadership, Business & Technology
It all started on Thanksgiving day, a long, long time ago, in a beat up station wagon, somewhere on Interstate 65 and State
Road 46 between Indianapolis and Nashville (Nashville, Indiana that is). My first wife, our two kids and I were heading to her mom’s place for Thanksgiving. The drive was going, well, it was going like you would expect it to go with two boys under the age of 10 strapped in a car in the days before iPods, Gameboys, iPads, and cars with DVD players. Even though it wasn’t a long drive, they were still bouncing off the ceiling. My wife was reading, and me? I was jamming out to Q95 (well, as jamming out as you can be with a wife and two kids in the car).
It was about noon. OK, to be specific it was straight up noon, when this song came on the radio, this song about Alice…and a restaurant, a song called Alice’s Restaurant (sorry Arlo, I had to do it). Here was this guy, playing guitar, telling a story, and singing (granted there was more storytelling than singing), but it was captivating, not only for me but for the two banshees in the backseat, they quieted down and listened…for 18 minutes and 34 seconds they listened! It was AMAZING! By the time Arlo finished the last chorus, with the boys and I signing along, we were pulling into Nana’s drive.
A year later, we were on the road again, in the same beat up station wagon, with the same two rambunctious kids in the 
back, listening to the same Q95, low and behold they played the same song, at the exact same time! Amazing! What is the coincidence of that? (Ok, it wasn’t for another year or two that I realized it was a Q95 Thanksgiving day tradition to play Alice’s Restaurant at Noon, I was a REAL slow learner back then!)
Fast forward several more years. My wife and I were divorced (hey, as my youngest son, Brad, once said, “This isn’t Leave it Beaver around here, ya know?”), I was spending Thanksgiving with my girl friend and both of my sons were spending Thanksgiving with their mom. Although we had been divorced for some time, I still was not used to not seeing them on a holiday like that. I was kind of moping around, helping Carmen get dinner ready when the phone rang. It was my oldest son JT.
“Dad, are you listening?” he asked.
“Huh? Listening to what”, I responded (I guess I was still somewhat of a slow learner).
“Alice’s, are you listening to Alice’s?”
“expletive deleted!”
I immediately ran to the stereo, turned on Q95 and listened in. I think I even began to sing along. I am sure Carmen thought I was going a tad nuts. After the song was over, I started to explain the story to her…how it had become a Thanksgiving Tradition to listen, how the boys and I would sing along…all of it. She just looked at me, smiled and walked over to her CD Cabinet, reached in, and pulled out the CD “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie. If I wasn’t already smitten with her, I was now head over heals!
Fast forward about a decade or two. The tradition continues. Every year at Thanksgiving, no matter who is joining us, JT 
and Brad, their families, our folks, and the occasional friend, we play “Alice’s Restaurant” and sing along. We even printed off all the lyrics so our folks could be sure and follow along. Dave and his wonderful baritone providing cover for all the rest of us who can’t really sing.
OK, so Arlo may not have ACTUALLY saved my life, but he without a doubt saved my Thanksgiving and helped us build a sense of family and tradition during a time of turmoil and transition. You can bet that at noon on Thanksgiving, we will be gathered in the family room, with Arlo pumping through our Sonos stereo, singing at the top of our lungs.
If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +.
Pop!
In the distance the muted sound of a single gun shot. I crouched low, waiting.
Pop!
Pop-pop!
Pop-pop-pop-pop!
In the dark corner of the alley way, I could not be sure of the direction of the gun fire. It was obvious the fight was escalating.
The sound echoed, it was difficult to tell how many gunmen were out there among the deserted buildings.
popopopopop-popopopopop
The rapid fire of an automatic weapon, followed by silence. One minute, two minutes, still I waited, barely wanting to breathe.
Nearby, I heard a hushed voice. “Indy? Indy?” A hand reached out and touched my shoulder. “Indy ? Indy? Indy…ff? Jeff? Jeff? are you awake?”
I woke up…on my back deck…grinned sheepishly at my wife…and admitted I must have fallen asleep. “The Curse of the Black Walnut” was not the latest Indiana Jones adventure and no, I was not Harrison Ford. The pop-pop-popping was not the sound of gun fire. “The Curse of the Black Walnut” was the sound of dozens and dozens of walnuts falling from the trees and covering the ground; covering the ground where we had just spent the last four hours picking up walnuts.
A little over three years ago, we moved into our dream home. A nice home on about four acres, Mud Creek running through the backyard, a small white barn, a meadow, some woods and 28 Black Walnut trees in the back. The first fall we lived in the house, hundreds of walnuts fell to the ground. It was a pain, but honestly we didn’t think much about it. The former homeowner teased us a bit, but we shrugged it off.
The second year, Indiana had suffered a pretty severe drought. There were very few walnuts.
This year? This year was different. The walnuts began falling in mid-August. At first, it was easy to keep up with them. (Especially easy for me since Carmen did most of the “picking”). She would spend an hour or so a couple times a week walking the yard and picking up the nuts. She devised an ingenious method of using the old “pooper scooper” we had saved after our dogs had passed. She was able to pick up the nuts without the backbreaking job of bending over all the time. Even so, it was tough work.
As we got deeper into fall, more and more walnuts began to fall. It was now impossible to pick them all up in a single evening. In fact, it took three or four nights and by the time we got done, more had fallen. By this time, we had ordered another “pooper scooper” so we could both work.
The peak (we hope) was this past Saturday. We both worked for four hours to pick up all the walnuts. The yard was cleared. Carmen went inside and I sat down on the deck to rest and close my eyes a bit. About that time, the wind picked up. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop! Pop-pop-pop!
I can’t tell you how many walnuts we have picked up this season, exactly. What I can tell you is that a “pooper scooper” 
holds about 30 walnuts. Dumping those scoops into a wheelbarrow, we count 20 – 30 scoops to a load. I have lost track of the number of wheelbarrow loads I have dumped, but I am guessing it is closing in on a hundred. Do the math, THAT my friends is a LOT of walnuts.
So while the “The Curse of the Black Walnut” may not star Harrison Ford, I have PLENTY of cursing for those damn walnuts!
If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +.
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Insights is the weekly, thought-provoking newsletter from Jeffrey S. Ton.
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Rivers of Thought – A more personal thought, observation or musing
