Love's Real Stories

“So, what about Paradise?” said my friend, Kurt. “With all this Coronavirus stuff going on, I hope people haven’t forgotten about Paradise.” Kurt, born and raised in Paradise, lost his house and business in the Camp Fire. He moved to Arizona, and says he and his family would consider coming back “if there is ever a town of Paradise to come back to.” He likes to say, “If they build it, we will come” and “Let us know when the sap is rising.”

“Forgotten?” I said, “No way. But, poor Paradise, here we go again!”

“Yeah,” he said, “I heard businesses were just getting ready to open and everything. Like maybe the sap was rising after all. And now everything is shut down everywhere. My wife is a germaphobe anyway. Now she wears a hazmat suit 24 hours a day. She won’t go anywhere. I suspect she burns my clothes after I go shopping.”

“Weird times,” I said.

“No kidding,” said Kurt. “I’m afraid to scratch my own nose, and I dream about rolls of toilet paper.”

“Ha!” I said. “I’ve washed my hands more times in the last month than I have my whole life!”

“I do miss my old hometown,” said Kurt. “My eight-year-old son runs around singing, ‘That town will make you crazy, crazy as a loon.’ Cracks me up. I had no idea the kid heard the stuff I play on my speakers out in the garage, much less retained it.” He paused then said, “Little pitchers have big ears.”

“Wait!” I said. “You’re quoting John Prine songs, right?”

“You bet!” he said, “Are you a Prine fan, too?”

“Yep! I love that song your kid is singing, ‘Crazy as a Loon’,” I said.

“I think ‘Paradise’ is my favorite,” said Kurt. “The song is about another town named Paradise, a town in Kentucky where Prine’s family lived, and it got wiped out, too. The difference is Paradise, Kentucky never came back.”

Kurt sang a few lines of John Prine’s ‘Paradise’. He croaked out a pretty good version of that catchy tune and catchy lyrics, including a decent inflection of Prine’s scratchy nasal twang.

Kurt said, “I can’t believe Prine died from the Coronavirus. I’m in mourning.”

“A lotta heartbroken people out there,” I said, “including me. He was a treasure.”

“I read a quote,” said Kurt. “Prine said, ‘If I can make myself laugh about something I should be crying about, that’s pretty good.’”

“Pretty good words for right now,” I said.

He paused, then said, “Anyway, is it Deadsville in Paradise right now?”

“I’m heading up there tomorrow,” I said. “We leased a space for our Paradise Real Estate office right up the road from the one that burned down, and we’re gearing up for helping any way we can in the rebuild of that town.”

The next day, I went up to Paradise from Chico. I hadn’t been there since right after the first of the year.

Paradise is not Deadsville. The main drag, the Skyway, was buzzing with steady traffic, eighty percent trucks. Trucks with trailers, lumber racks, Concrete rigs, flatbeds loaded with building materials stacked high and strapped down. I cruised the side roads and didn’t go far in any direction without seeing new construction. A foundation formed here, a house framed there, a lot graded there. Lumber stacks piled along the roadside, fresh and clean.

I called Kurt from my cell phone. I stood beside the Skyway in front of our new Real Estate office.

“Hey, Kurt,” I yelled into the phone over the traffic noise, “the sap is rising!”

“Well, okay then,” said Kurt. “If they build it, we will come!”

“Hey,” said Kurt, “my wife and I have a new favorite John Prine song, ‘My Darlin’ Hometown.” She cries every time we listen.”

Kurt croaked out a few lines of the song:

“I’m lost and I wish I were found/ In the arms of my darlin’ hometown.”

Pretty good words for right now.