Par for the Course

By Jerry David DeCicca

My dad loves golf and he’s never had cable TV.

When I call him, I sometimes hear the clatter of a barroom and its TV bouncing off a wall into his speaker phone, because he always answers on speaker phone. Once a year, I hear a familiar piano melody that sounds like a pill commercial jingle trying to down-play its side effects. My dad and I talk on the phone a lot, but usually only for a couple minutes each call.

“Are you watching the Masters?” I ask him.

“Yeah, it’s the last day.” He yells this into the phone, thinking I won’t be able to hear him because he can barely hear me. I can almost see his eyes not move from the screen as he tilts his head towards the device. He doesn’t ask me how I know what he’s watching, but I assume he thinks I follow the PGA schedule despite decades of sharing my disinterest.

“I have some records by the guy that did that theme song.”

“Hmmm,” and the way he hmmms tells me now someone is swinging a club and he only almost heard me.

I tell him about the Dave Loggins records in my collection, how Dave Loggins had a hit called, “Please Come to Boston,” from his Apprentice album, and that another song on that record, “Sunset Woman,” I recorded with Larry Jon Wilson for his final album as part of the “Whore Trilogy.” I could tell he wasn’t really listening because usually when someone says the word “whore” people start to pay attention, no matter the context. I kept talking. I tell him that Larry Jon did a TV theme song, too, for a public access-type show called Georgia Backroads, and wasn’t it weird that two songwriters who made so many great records would be known to most people only because of TV theme songs that took place in Georgia? I reminded him who Larry Jon was since it had been a few years.

“Actually, Loggins’ best record is probably Country Suite. Larry Jon recorded “Goodbye Eyes,” too, but that was from One Way Ticket to Paradise. I keep forgetting we did two Dave Loggins songs for that record.”

“He must be good.”

Larry Jon would refer to Loggins as, not good, but a “heavy hitter.” It was a phrase he reserved only for the greats. The TV got louder, and it sounded like a car commercial, my cue for a more present conversation about something he doesn’t care about.

“You remember when I went to the Gulf Shores to do that?”

“Yeah, I remember. He was your friend that passed away that you helped make that record. These guys get much money for that, you think?”

“What, from their records or the theme songs?”

“The theme songs!”

“I mean…” I begin to share, pausing to consider how much energy it is going to take to make my point and if it’s even worth it, “no idea, probably some money, but imagine writing all those songs and guys like you all around the world scheduling their lives around a TV to watch golf and you all hear his music, but you’ve never heard his records or, probably, even the Three Dog Night cover. It’s like all these sub shops with their “Enjoy Every Sandwich” signs and these suburban moms with “Dance Like No One Is Watching” t-shirts. Warren who? What’s ‘Desperados Waiting for a Train.’ No one ever thinks about it. It just sits there.” I knew he didn’t know what I was talking about, but I also knew it didn’t matter.

“Seems like they should have done more theme songs.”

And I can hear the piano again, cutting through the air clearer than an announcer or advert.

“Dad, what I’m saying is, don’t you think it’s interesting what seeps into people’s lives, what makes it further into the world, and what doesn’t? It’s totally random. Not representative of their lives or work at all.”

“Right, right, random,” he agrees. “Pretty interesting. Oooooooohh.” The last sound told me someone swung a club and it didn’t go well.

“There’s actually words to the song, but the Masters just use the instrumental version.”

“It’s good this way. Doesn’t need words.”

He might be right. I can still see the Dave Loggins Lps in Larry Jon’s record collection. He only had a couple dozen records left when I met him, a few years before he passed, just two cardboard boxes on the floor. Buffett, Kristofferson, Loggins, Joe Williams, a John Hammond Sr. tribute LP on Columbia that Hammond had signed and given to Larry Jon. I remember the inked inscription being very sweet and I wish I had stolen that one. I didn’t have any Dave Loggins records then, but I bought them a few weeks later. They’re easy to find, usually a dollar or two, and when I see them cheap like that, I pick them up to give away, but I don’t think most of my friends like them as much as I do.

“Hey, I gotta go,” dad said. When my dad says “gotta go” it usually means he just doesn’t want to be on the phone anymore.

“What are you drinking?

“Uh,” as he thought about lying, “Crown.”

“Ok, take it easy on that. Love you.”

“Give me a call this week. Good talk. Love you, too.”

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