Take it Easy

The Eagles
1972

As a youngster I never took a single step unaided.  I never rode a two-wheel bike or a scooter, or for that matter even a tricycle.  I wasn’t even allowed to ride the Wild Mouse, the rickety old roller coaster at Suburban Park, the small mom-and-pop amusement park on the other side of town and a place my father took us all to once or twice.

As a child, in other words, I never knew the singular joy the going fast and feeling the wind whistling through my hair. That’s one of the reasons why when I reached the age of sixteen driving became so important to me. It was a chance, at long last, to hit the accelerator, roll down the windows and fly – and do so with the wind blowing in my face.

With that, I’d like to share with you one of my all-time favorite pieces of traveling music – performed by, just maybe, my favorite band of all time.

Enjoy, my friends. And as you listen to this little sliver of road trip heaven from On the Border, the Eagles’ 1972 album, try to imagine a young man in his early twenties, all wide-eyed and worry-free, tooling down an open stretch of blacktop, his dreams and future out there ahead of him, and his hair – for maybe the first time in his life – flowing behind him as free as his spirit feels.   ###