Since I had so much fun igniting the fires of controversy with my Beatles list, I thought I’d try out the Stones. Artwork by Mr. Nate Fowler.

01. Jumping Jack Flash

02. Monkey Man

03. Tumbling Dice

04. Wild Horses

05. Torn And Frayed

06. Gimme Shelter

07. Happy

08. No Expectations

09. Honky Tonk Women

10. Live With Me

11. Sway

12. Memory Motel

13. 2000 Light Years From Home

14. Almost Hear You Sigh

15. 19th Nervous Breakdown

16. Little T & A

17. Soul Survivor

18. Respectable

19. All Down the Line

20. Slave

21. Before They Make Me Run

22. Dear Doctor

23. Mixed Emotions

24. Ruby Tuesday

25. The Spider And the Fly

26. Baby Break It Down

27. Slipping Away

28. Thru And Thru

29. Stray Cat Blues

30. Connection

31. Lowdown

32. Dandelion

33. Brown Sugar

34. Can’t you Hear Me Knocking

35. Let It Bleed

36. Jigsaw Puzzle

37. My Obsession

38. Lady Jane

39. Play With Fire

40. Let’s Spend the Night Together

41. I’m Free

42. Citadel

43. Loving Cup

44. Moonlight Mile

45. Casino Boogie

46. Dance Little Sister

47. Saint Of Me

48. Rough Justice

49. Heaven

50. Shattered

And just for fun, their best covers:

01. Love In Vain [Robert Johnson]

02. Carol [Chuck Berry]

03. I’m A King Bee [Slim Harpo]

04. Little Red Rooster [Howlin’ Wolf]

05. Down the Road Apiece [Will Bradley Orchestra, though the Stones probably nicked the Chuck Berry cover]

06. Mercy Mercy [Don Covay]

07. Route 66 [Nat ‘King’ Cole]

08. Prodigal Son [Robert Wilkins]

09. Cherry Oh Baby [Eric Donaldson]

10. Hitch Hike [Marvin Gaye]

Generations & Moving On

I found out today that my great grandparents' [my mother's mother's mother and father] house will be put up for auction sometime next week. My mother's cousin who owned the place moved out and it's apparently become bank property.

I really can't remember the last time I was in the house. I know I was never in it when Bernie's family lived in it and they raised a mess of kids there and sent them out into the world, so we're talking a generation... twenty years? Twenty five? I barely remember my great grandfather, Joe Vorderbreuggen. He died when I was 9 or ten. But grandma lived for another 10 years or so, so I can recall her a little better. She always was thin. She had a throaty chuckle when she laughed, which grandma seems to share. I used to love to run up the hill early in the day and say hello to her. Sometimes she's be watching the television, but the best times were just sitting on the porch glider with her.

The house seemed to be huge. Two stories straight up. I don't remember the layout of the upstairs. The only times I was up there was to rush up the main stairs run across the the back of the house and rush down a hidden back stair and pop out into the kitchen. I don't ever remember being in the master bedroom. Most of the time we were in the little living room, in a kitchen with a one tub sink and an ancient gas stove.

But now it will be somebody else's house. Which I guess it was when Bernie and Nellie moved in. But this time it probably won't be family. I found out today that that wasn't built by Grandpap. it was on the land when he bought it, so it was somone's before them and now it will be someone's again. The house IS 110 years old, which speaks to the permanence of the structure. It certainly outlived the barns and the chicken coops which used to be there. Of course one can only hazard a guess at what one would find between the walls and how much upgrading will need to be done by a new buyer... as I said, I have no idea how much upgrading was done on the 80s when it was last empty.

It just brings a certain sadness to those of us who knew it as 'Grandma Vorderbreuggen's house.' Which is nostalgia. A piece of our childhood that we can no longer visit, one chapter closing and all of that. But we have all moved before. I can remember living in 7 houses or apartments while growing up. Some are dim, hazy memories like a dream that fades as you wake up. Some are more etched in the mind, places you played and people you knew. My mother has been in her house since 1980. Before they bought that land, the house didn't exist. Now it does. Mom threatens to sell it every so often and move into an RV so she can just take off when she wants to. I doubt her, but she may have a surprise left in her. Someday - hopefully not soon, but someday it will be empty and it will be sold. And someone may gut it and just start with a shell and rebuild or they may just knock the whole thing down and build the McMansion of their dreams. Hell maybe one of my nieces will inherit it and raise their family there. In thirty years [and counting] I have memories there, sure. Do I want to live there? Not really. It's still too far out of the action for my taste and I have no use for the land or the barn.

But back to my original thought: Do I think about the places I used to live and the people that are living there now? no. Do I wonder if they painted the house a different color or how the trees that were there are now? No. But is it weird to think that someday, someone who is not one of the family could be living in the house that my grandfather built from the ground up? Most definitely! It seems harder to bear that thought than someone living in the house I spent my teenage years... ahem and a GOOD PORTION of my twenties. I think part of it is that it's "Grandma and Grandpap's House." Those carefree summer days of youth spent there. [Youth? I sleep better in that house than anywhere on Earth. My next to last visit I spent half horizontal on a couch or bed, I think.] The smell of dinner cooking or reaching in the cookie jar or the early evening "dish" of ice cream - sometimes with a little Hershey's syrup, sometimes a little float with 7 Up or Sprite! Grandpap holding court in the living room watching his shows - Hee Haw or Gunsmoke always seemed to be on. Catching fireflies or games of freeze tag or croquet with the cousins. [No horseshoes for me after I saw what they did to Milo.] Walking into a room and kissing Grandpap on his beautiful bald dome. Lazing in the hammock or on the swing. All the memories there. Someday - again, hopefully not soon but someday] someone else' family may live in that house and their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids will make memories there like we have. And one day, maybe a couple of generations down the road, the cycle will move on for them also.

I guess my point is this: This is part of life. I don't like it, but it is. People move on, either physically they move away or they pass away and all we are left with is structures and memories. When our parents are gone, their memories will be gone, but things will remain. When we are gone out memories will be gone, but we will live in the memories of those who knew us until a few generations down the road we are nothing but a picture in a family album or a line on a genealogy tree and a head stone in a cemetery. I guess this is the hard part. We have funerals to say goodbye to our loved ones and be comforted by our friends and families. But I guess some things we have to face alone with our own thoughts.

So long, baby and amen.