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| That's The Way It Was (Music "Goin' Home", the Largo movement from the New World Symphonie by Anton Dvorak 1893 Words by Joseph Bocci with a little help from Robert Frost' "The Span Of Life") (Ray Keller/Jack Van Gleason arrangement) You know, there's an old saying some of you folks may remember, "The old dog barks backwards without getting up, I can remember when he was a pup." Well, I guess age can kind of sometimes drag us down, keep us from doing the things we used to do. Just like this old country of ours, from the Rocky Mountains to the timeless Mississippi River, the great granite spires of Yosemite Valley, the weather beaten shores of Maine and Miami, the almost prehistoric animals that live in the Okefenokee. Ya, Uncle Sam, your age is starting to show. Seems like I noticed a broken stride and a heavy sigh last time you walked by. What's the matter? We getting you down? Well, I'm kind of tired myself, it's been a long two hundred years. You know, I remember the First Continental Congress. Man, we had them all there, the greatest of the great. Ben Franklin and I was buddies before he got involved in all that politickin'. Course, he had a big job, helping all them forefathers get it together. Ya, and I remember the Civil War, kind of sad, but, they saw it their way and we saw it ours. Guess that's what life is all about, though I sort of get the feeling that's maybe where we started to slow down. Oh, I know a lot's happened since then. Hey, I was with Wilbur and Orville Wright the day they got that thing to fly. And what's more, I can tell you exactly how many bricks there are in the Empire State Building - I was the foreman! Well, We've had our industrial age, our space age, and our peace and love age, brother. I just wonder if we'll ever get it together again like when I was a kid. Course you never know, maybe two hundred years from now they'll still be saying, "that's the way it was". |