Well folks, we're nearing the end. Not long now until the final entry on February 19th, 2025. The last major theme to close us out revolves around the Passing of Time. If the first few months of this project were tough, they're actually a cakewalk compared to what we're about to go through. We're getting old and life perspectives are changing as they should - AKA we're closer to dying than when we were born. Some of these songs represent the heaviest weights that we've carried since knowing them. Some are as recent as 2023 and 2024, but I know in my heart of hearts that even if they came out in 1989 they would have made this list - they are that profound to me.
So if you're an artist that made this project from here on out you should feel humble and proud...you achieved what you set out to do...make music that people feel and love...thank you.
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead, and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all
When we still lived in Ohio and we would get bored we liked to take random drives to nowhere in particular, just drive and talk. Before the boys they were just totally random but after the boys we started driving to places that Larry knew as a kid. By the time the boys were old enough for us to go drive by ourselves we had lived in several places so we would drive past all the places we lived and talk about all our memories as a young family. Sometimes we would even make the drive much further south in Ohio to visit the places I spent my summers as a kid. I treasure the memories of all those drives and later motorcycle rides. It was also during these random drives that some of our best discussions and insights would happen.
Now that we are in Kansas we finally have the opportunity to do something similar for my childhood homes. Although it did also mean trips to Colorado and Nebraska but if I'm being honest a lot of things about living here require us to go to other states. It's just the price of living in a small rural community in the middle of nowhere. It is fun going back to places you haven't been and seeing how they have changed but it can also bring with it a kind of sadness. Especially if the place hasn't just changed but it has just disappeared as if it never existed in the first place. But whether the place is exactly as you remembered it or it changed or disappeared all the memories are yours to keep forever, or at least in your life.
Larry’s Perspective:
Yes it is a Beatles song. No I didn't choose it. Yes it's actually one I like because you can feel the John Lennon in it.
All you have to do is take a minute and think about all the places you've ever lived. Do they look the same? Of course not. Are some of those changes for the better? Maybe?
I think of all the houses I grew up in.
385 Rose Galena - my first and only experience with a house fire. My mom's beauty shop. The kind neighbors that let us live in their camper while my dad rebuilt the house.
3360 Creek Road Sunbury - The love/hate relationship with mowing 5 acres; the true freedom of living as a kid in the 80's - biking everywhere because it was in the "country" , towing my sister to town with my moped, parents always at work; the astronomical emotional toll 18% mortgage rates took on my dad and one of the only times I ever saw my father cry.
974 South Old 3C Sunbury - The house we "shamefully" rented the final years of my high school career; where I told my parents I was getting married and having a child; where I broke my hand punching my VW Scirocco because it was such a piece of shit, throwing the keys into a cornfield and my dad being pissed because they were lost and it had to get towed away - newsflash - it was a POS and would have needed to be towed away anyway.
Then all the apartments I rented, the condo my friends and I rented, all the places Shannon and I lived until we could afford the three different houses we've lived in, two of which our sons called "home".
We've also talked about the previous loves we've had. Some were childish, immature "first" loves, loves that broke our hearts and then this
When I think of love as something new
In my life, I love you more...
P.S. Once again on this project, we unknowingly took the same path. In the lyrics, there is very little reference to places but a lot of reference to relationships. After Shannon read me her entry and I read her mine, we laughed because that's what we're drawn too. It's not that we've avoided past relationship discussions, because believe me, there have been many. But maybe it's just the maturity of our relationship shining through that we don't need to be distracted by that petty crap - it's the more powerful memories of our lives that we want to reminisce about...
In My Life
The Beatles
There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed (Ooh, ooh, ooh)
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain (Ooh, ooh, ooh)
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you (Ooh, ooh, ooh)
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new (Ooh, ooh, ooh)
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more
In my life, I love you more...
30th Anniversary
Our Story - Shannon's Perspective
Our Story - Larry's Perspective
Ghost of a Chance (Rush) and why?
Ghost of a Chance 