‘Streets of London’ has a good message ~ February 6, 1997

David Heiller

Music was a big part of my life when I was in the Peace Corps in Morocco from 1977 to 1979.

Roger and David making music in Morocco.

I played the banjo a lot to pass the time. When I’d get together with American friends, we’d always play music.

One of my most memorable musical moments in Morocco came at a workshop that the volunteers were having in Tangiers. I don’t know how much work we got done at this workshop. I do know it was a good time to visit with friends, compare war stories, and play music.

We were sitting around in a hotel lobby, playing music, when an English gentleman joined us. He brought out his guitar, and the rest of us soon put ours away.

He was good. Very good. The kind of performer you’d pay music to see at a college coffeehouse. He played song after song. Wow, it was nice listening to him. We fell under his spell.

And he came up with a classic line that night, one I still remember. One of the volunteers asked him, with a dreamy look in her eyes, if he knew “Streets of London.”

He smiled, and paused, and said in his British accent, “Know it? I know the bloke that wrote it.”

I’ll never forget those words, spoken with just the right amount of understated pride. Know it? I know the bloke that wrote it.

He told about singing it with Ralph McTell, who was the bloke that wrote it. Then he proceeded to sing the song, and it instantly became one of my favorites.

I had known the song before and liked it plenty, but this guy brought it to life.

Steve and David in Morocco

The song has a message I still fervently believe. I think about it every time I think life is rough.

Look at people like Laurel Hultgren and Randy Hjelmberg, who are featured on this week’s front page. They have health problems galore, but they look on the sunny side of life.

I worked at Camp Courage for five summers. Every camper had some type of physical handicap. Some were on their last legs. Some didn’t have legs. Pick a physical handicap, it was at Camp Courage. It’s hard to lump them all together, but I honestly can’t remember any camper ever complaining about anything. The happiest times of their lives were at camp. Maybe that’s selective memory on my part. But it seemed to me the camp was aptly named. The campers had a lot of courage.

I saw a lot of courage and dignity in Morocco too. Morocco has a very simple system of welfare. It’s called begging. If you ever think you have it bad, think about standing on a lonely street in Fez, on a clammy winter night, holding a child in one arm and an upturned palm in the other. That takes courage and dignity. Thinking of scenes like that, which I saw plenty, my little problems didn’t seem so insurmountable. They still don’t.

“Streets of London” sums up this message as well as any song I know. “Don’t complain. You don’t have it so bad. Look around you, and count your blessings, because life could be a whole lot worse.”

Streets of London Ralph McTell

Thank you for reminding me of that Ralph McTell and thank you, Mr. Nameless British Musician in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1978.

Streets of London

Ralph McTell

Have you seen the old man 
In the closed-down market 
Kicking up the paper, 
with his worn out shoes? 
In his eyes you see no pride 
Hand held loosely at his side
Yesterday’s paper telling yesterday’s news 

So how can you tell me you’re lonely, 
And say for you that the sun don’t shine? 
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London 
I’ll show you something to make you change your mind 

Have you seen the old girl 
Who walks the streets of London 
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags? 
She’s no time for talking, 
She just keeps right on walking 
Carrying her home in two carrier bags. 

Chorus

In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven, 
Same old man is sitting there on his own 
Looking at the world 
Over the rim of his tea-cup, 
Each tea last an hour 
Then he wanders home alone 

Chorus

And have you seen the old man 
Outside the seaman’s mission 
Memory fading with 
The medal ribbons that he wears. 
In our winter city, 
The rain cries a little pity 
For one more forgotten hero 
And a world that doesn’t care 

Chorus

‘Wow, that was a great Christmas’ ~ December 26, 2002

David Heiller

The house was spotless for at least five minutes on Saturday morning. The great “Company's Coming” ritual was done: dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning, organizing, and many other little jobs.

I stopped to marvel. Our house never looks like this, and it really shouldn’t, because it would then belong to someone else and not Cindy and me.

Then company came.

Three more adults, three more kids, one more dog. Both entryways filled up with coats and boots and snow-pants. Cheese Nips and pistachios smothered the counters. Cookies, cookies, everywhere.

Lots of cookie, lots of food, lots of joy!
Claire and Therese.

A dog kennel went into the laundry room. Kids books took their place of honor on the coffee table. Games and playing cards lay on the dίning room table.

Soon a Christmas movie was playing on the living room TV, and music poured from the kitchen radio. Dogs barked. People barked.

Now we’re talking Christmas!

It happens every year, when Cindy’s brother and sister and their families stay with us at Christmas. We get ready for their big rush by bulldozing our old interior and constructing a new one. And like I said, we clean, clean, clean.

Then they arrive and the new house soon looks like the old one, and then some. Neatness has no place at the holidays. It’s fine for a dinner and small talk, for a quick visit and a peck on the cheek. But in an extended family where everyone knows everyone else’s good habits and bad, the house soon looks like a huge, human salad bowl, and rightly so.

Full and busy at our house at Christmas.
Notice that my brother can still read a book?

It’s the ultimate compliment when a person can relax at your house under such conditions.

I sometimes dream of a big house with spare rooms for everyone. What would that be like at the holidays? Probably great. But it somehow never happened for us, and I doubt that it ever will. So we all adjust to the smaller house and the clutter. We dodge the boots in the porch and dogs in the dining room, and we relax faster than it takes to think about relaxing.

It’s a temporary thing, and that probably, helps. No, we couldn’t live like this for an extended period of time. But we know in the back of our minds that order will soon return. And then when it does, when the songs have been sung and the house is quiet and the shelves are back to normal, when the lights are put away and the empty canning jars start returning to the top of the fridge, we always say, “Wow, that was a great Christmas.”

I hope the same can be said for you as you celebrate the holidays in your own way.

Happy New Year and thank you to all the readers of the Askov Amerίcan.

The unforgettable Bath Night ~ January 10, 1985

by David Heiller

What comes to mind when you think of Saturday night as a child? For many people, it’s bath night. Or maybe that should be capitalized. Bath Night, an American institution.

David (left) and his older brothers, 
presumably AFTER Bath Night
the previous eve.

As a child Bath Night for our family had a certain ritual. I had seven brothers and sisters. The girls got the upstairs bathroom usually, while my two brothers and I splashed downstairs. Glenn, nine years older, would usually bathe first, because he had places to go and people (usually of the opposite gender) to meet.

Danny and I followed. Three years my senior, Danny was expert at taking baths. He convinced me that no soap was necessary. There were little germs in the water, and these germs drove tiny bulldozers that scraped dirt away. Mom ended that theory, possibly after finding no ring in the tub one too many times.

After the bath, it was into pajamas and onto the living room floor in front of the TV. At 8:30 Palladin—Have Gun, Will Travel. Next: Gunsmoke, everybody’s favorite. How many squeaky kids watched Matt Dillon square off against the man in the black hat every Saturday night at nine? Matt always fired a second late, but his aim hit its mark. An important lesson for us clean kids.

A hamam in Chaouen, Morocco.
(Daughter Malika took this lovely photo on her stay in Morocco.)

Perhaps my most memorable Bath Night came in 1978, when I lived in Morocco, teaching with the Peace Corps. Moroccans know how to do up Bath Night right. They all converge on the “hamam” or public bathhouse. There, they strip down to shorts, grab a couple of buckets and scrub themselves clean while catching upon the latest news with their neighbors.

I usually went to the hamam early in the morning. Fewer people, less hassle. But one blustery night in January, I grabbed a towel and went to the local bath house. I paid my 50 cents in the front room, put my clothes in a basket under a bench, and walked into the hot room.

All eyes turned on me, a six-foot-one, white American bulk in a sea of brown bodies. The room was packed, men and boys, dads and sons, washing their hair, scrubbing their legs, sitting, talking, enjoying their Bath Night, and enjoying watching me.

I looked for a place to sit down, then spotted a vacant chamber off to one side. I asked a man who I recognized if the room was taken. He glanced in surprise, then said “La, sir illa bghiti.” Go ahead, if you want to.

As I sat in the room, a small man entered, shook my hand, introduced himself.

“La bes. N-atai-ek kulshi?” Hello, You want the works?

It then flashed that I had entered the domain of the hamam’s masseuse. Before I could say anything, he poured water on me, and started washing my hair. He scrubbed my back, my front, my legs. He used a pumice stone and a pad that made Brillo seem like baby lotion. As a topper, he threw on a few wrestling holds on me and stretched me out. My muscles cracked and popped. I never felt so good.

As I left the room, the Moroccans made way for me like Moses in the Red Sea. Their faces showed a new respect for the Americani. A few of my students shook my hand. They’d never seen anything like that in their hamam, and I would guess, haven’t since.

That was my most memorable Bath Night. I’ll never forget it, and I don’t regret it. But I think I’ll stick to Gunsmoke.