Goodbye to the big blue Dodge
May 13, 2009
My 1968 Dodge Coronet 440 has gone to that great big garage up the road.
We signed the title over to our old friend CC yesterday in exchange for a more reliable car.
The Dodge couldn’t have gone to a better home. CC is going to convert it to a drag car and run it at the race track in Delmar.
I hated to see it go. Over the last twelve years we had some great times tearing up the countryside in the old beast but it was just too powerful, too unreliable and too uncomfortable for the kind of traveling I will be doing this summer.
So the funky 1968 beast has been replaced with a funky 1989 beast. I am now the proud owner of a 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis GS with less than 100,000 miles. This cruiser has spent a good hunk of the last twenty years in a nice garage. The car is in scarily good condition and it is perfect for road trips to Johns Hopkins because it was built for highway travel. The split bench front seat is like sitting in a big velour sofa. Best of all, CC is pretty sure he can tweak the 5.0L V8 to boost the horsepower. He was talking about dual Flowmasters before Dear Old Dad dragged me away. . .
I will miss the old Dodge, but I can’t wait to see what kind of trouble I can get into with the new Bluesmobile!
Here is the 1998 Mercury:
Here is one last look at the old Dodge. Picture by Dick Edie:
California Ukulele
May 13, 2009
Kelly in California writes:
Hi Patrick,
I just had a light come on last weekend when I was playing around with my ukulele, and I wanted to share.
I was trying to play a song on my ukulele that I play on my guitar (No New Tale to Tell by Love & Rockets), and it wasn’t sounding quite right. I think it was that even though the actual chords were the same (D,F,C,A), the chord shapes gave a different sound than the guitar does, and things just weren’t flowing the same. So, I was trying it in different keys to get a similar sound to what the guitar has. It turned out that when I went up a 4th (G,Bb,F,D), everything fit right into place. Then, I noticed that those shapes were the same as the 4 top strings on the guitar. Ding! Ding! Suddenly, I realized that I could play all the same chords from my guitar on the ukulele, and just have the key be transposed up a 4th.
Well, I was happy, and I thought someone in the Tangier Sound community might find it to be useful information.
Good luck with your surgery, and thanks for all the inspiration you’ve given me and everyone else. I really appreciate it.
Kelly in CA.
