Days On The Mountain

     
Robin and Linda Williams performed the title song of their new album, These Old Dark Hills, on Prairie Home Companion.



It is a captivating piece, made more soulful by the Shoe Band's accompaniment with its Hammond organ.  It reminds me of another one of theirs, Green Summertime.

On a gravel country road
By the bed of the old railroad
The dust follows turning wheels
And blows away across the fields
In this world of mine
In the green summertime

My feelings about this kind of rural mysticism are ambivalent.  Tallahassee still has something of a small-town feel.  Though I grew up in the suburbs of Orlando, I have lived here for most of my adult life, and when I return from visiting family in Central Florida, I confess that my heart lifts when I leave Perry behind, heading north into the hills of Leon County.

But "old dark hills" makes me think of the forlorn hills of Coosa County in Alabama, where my family lived a hundred years ago.