VACATION DREAMSFOREWORD
"I thought I'd never get out of that place," remembered Jim Colegrove in recalling one of any number of places around the world he
has been thus far in his 43 years. Which place? It could have been
his boyhood home of Fairborn, Ohio or any of the places he visited
as a boy on family travels in the '40s & '50s. It could have been New York City when as a young man in the 1960s he lived and performed
in Greenwich Village coffeehouses or perhaps it was Woodstock,
N.Y. in the late '60s where he was part of that emerging music
community. Maybe it was ice-bound Canada which he criss-crossed with
Ian & Sylvia's band or perhaps Osaka in the early 1970s. It could
have been anyplace he was while in the Army! It could be one of
the hundreds of towns and cities he's been in the past decade while
on the road with his band, the Juke Jumpers. It's not Texas because
he's still here, but it could be almost anywhere else. Maybe it was
one of these—maybe it was none of these! It doesn't really matter where it was, though, because what he got out of a place is more significant than what place he got out of. Wherever he has been during the past 5 decades of travel and change he has gotten a lot out of those places. Just as a boy he dreamed of the places and people he discovered in past vacation travels and those that lay ahead, he recalls the "vacation dreams" of his life's "spring and summer." It is uncertain if in these pages it is revealed what place he got out of but what he got out of these places certainly is revealed. And there is much for us to get out of these Vacation Dreams.
Syd Sidan Cover art by Guy Juke.
|