When a judge says he's playing Comfortably Numb for you, what does that mean? Should I be worried?

A few years ago I was talking with Dottie Tawney who was working then for the Venango Area Chamber of Commerce. The band Lawyers, Guns  & Money was setting up and she mentioned something about Ollie.

Now I was fairly new to Venango County so I didn't know who Ollie, the keyboardist in the band, was. But I was racking my brain trying to figure out why he looked so familiar, so I asked, "who is Ollie?" She told me "it's Judge Lobaugh." 

I knew who Judge Lobaugh was (thankfully, for covering him for the newspaper and not from standing shackled before him) but I had no idea he was a rock-n-roller. So I went back and wrote a story about tis great story I found, only to realize I was the only one in the tri state area who didn't really know this story.

It was fun to write that piece which ended up as a blog. In it I mentioned that he sang "Comfortably Numb." So last night when the drummer in the band said "Let's do Comfortably Numb next", Judge Lobaugh saw me and said, "we're playing this for you." I laughed and awkwardly replied, "well, I'm halfway there Judge." Probably not the smartest of replies in retrospect, but I was stone cold sober so ...

Something happened Saturday night that hasn't really been able to happen for far too long. Justus Park was loaded with food vendors, activities for kids and a few hundred folks parked lawn chairs on the grass to listen to old friends play old tunes as they awaited the fireworks the local firefighter's union supplied to light up the sky. 

It was almost like looking back and forgetting the pandemic even affected anything.... well except some folks are no longer in the crowd.... that part still sucks and it will be a long time before we're over that, if ever.

But the hair raising good time does show that we humans can persevere and move on.

On Saturday night, downtown Oil City looked like a ghost town during the fireworks, but that is because hundreds of people were in the park, hundreds stood on the bridge, hundreds stood on the South Side looking across the river, hundreds were along Route 8 with a good view and I'd hazard a guess that up near the top of Central Avenue hundreds crowded to look down at the display as they have for years.

There was a festive feeling in the air as people seemed to be having a good time.

As for me, I'll admit I felt a bit off. Most folks sat in chairs and there seemed to be a lack of dancing to the band that I've witnessed in the past. I stayed around the perimeter mostly and then even ventured out of the park when the fireworks started. I never want to take the same type of photo every single night (there are three fireworks displays in three nights.)

So I found myself in a nearly empty downtown trying to make a stereotypical, but not one I've ever made, photo of fireworks with a flag in the foreground.

I made this picture. I did not notice at first that the flag was tattered. I wasn't overly happy with the photos I was getting. The fireworks weren't placed quite right and I wasn't prepared with the proper lens. I could go on and on. But as I looked at this image, I thought about the last year and a half and this seemed exactly what this nation is right now. 

We've been through hell. And yes, we are a tad frayed from the experience. But you know what? That flag is still flying. America turned 245, but it is by no means old. Nor is it even close to being done. We might be a tad tattered, but we are still upheld by the strongest principles humankind ever penned, so we celebrate and we move on.

We grow better because we air our differences, make mistakes, acknowledge those mistakes and work to correct them. The beauty is the Founding Fathers did not write a how-to, they simply wrote a must-seek document that will take hundreds of years of hard work to accomplish.

Today we're further along than ever before in understanding what Thomas Jefferson penned, yet we still have a long, long way to go.

Happy Fourth of July - may we keep getting better because we truly want to be.



Below are a few more photos that grabbed my eye and tried my best to capture. Like America, I too am a work in progress. I may not be Comfortably Numb judge, but thank you for the song!

Here is to another 245+ years!