All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown
The moon rolls through the nighttime,
Till the daybreak comes around
All my life's a circle but I can't tell you why
The season's spinnin' round again
The years keep rollin' by
It seems like I've been here before,
I can't remember when
But I got this funny feelin'
That I'll be back once again
There's no straight lines make up my life
And all my roads have bends
There's no clear-cut beginnings
And so far no dead-ends
I'm sure you can find a video of this song on the internet as performed by The Brothers Four (including me), The Kingston Trio and Mary Travers (maybe others?) from a TV show we taped back in the early 1980's. So here's how these lyrics apply to me and to your question.
I grew up in Medford, Oregon and Meri and I have moved back to this area as of Feb. 1, 2014. There's one circle in my life - coming back home.
During the summer of 1963, I took a job as grounds keeper for the newly establish Britt Music Festival in Jacksonville, a historic mining town 5 miles west of Medford. I would ride my little Honda scooter out the festival grounds to water and mow the lawn, clean up after concerts and generally keep the site looking nice. Since our return to the area I've joined the Jacksonville Boosters Club, and one of our responsibilities is doing landscaping and clean-up projects at the Britt site. Circle #2.
Between 1985 and 2005, The Kingston Trio performed at Britt twice. The first time, Bob Shane was still with us. After the concert I had a nice reunion with several former classmates and a couple of my former teachers. One was my junior high choir director, Carrol Graber, who gave me a photo of a stage production we had done in about 1960. It was a minstrel show and I played banjo. This was before the age of political correctness, and some of our cast members were in black-face, as was the custom of minstrel shows until that practice became a no-no. (As an interesting aside, Medford in those days was known as a "sundown town", meaning that if you were African-American, you had to be out of town by sundown. There were no black residents allowed. I don't have any idea how that policy was enforced, let alone even tolerated.)
I also had a nice reunion after that show with my former singing partner from my youth, John Eads. John and I sang together as "The Kinsmen" from about 8th grade all thru high school. For many years, John served as City Attorney for the city of Medford. Sadly, John later contracted cancer, putting up a valiant battle for several years. In 2005, The KT was booked for a return engagement at Britt on July 22nd. Bob Shane had retired the year before and the decision had been made to replace me with Rick Dougherty. The Britt concert was to be my last show with the Trio. I count that as another circle in my life, since my professional career really began here in Medford.
My pal, John Eads, at that point was not doing well and I was calling him daily to boost his moral and admonish him to hang on until I arrived for our July 22nd show. I was hoping that he'd be able to attend if he was having a good day. Sadly he passed just hours before I arrived in town on the 21st. I was pretty devastated and made the decision to dedicate our Britt performance to John. Ron McUne, another of my classmates and the executive director of the Britt Festival at that time, joined me onstage for a musical tribute to John. I think we sang "500 Miles", one of the tunes from The Kinsmen repertoire. It was an emotional night for me on many levels - last show with the Trio on top of a sad farewell to my long-time friend. Another circle completed. And I will always count that evening as one of the highlights of my career.
We now live less than a mile from the Britt Festival grounds, and on many nights we sat on our deck this past summer and enjoyed hearing Willie Nelson, The Gypsy Kings, Randy Newman and other performers as their music danced across the vineyards.
All my life's a circle.
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