‘LOOKING BACKWARDS’ To all my fans and listeners to my music, I know I have not written anything to you guys and gals for a spell, but I was hoping to have a new song for you all to listen to before I did. Oh well. I have been working on a couple of ideas, but they just haven’t ‘Gelled’ yet. And I do not want to post anything that I wouldn’t listen to my self. If I can’t make it right, I wont record, and post it at all.] But being about to turn 69 years old on the last day of the year, it has got me thinking. About life, the struggles we all face while living it, and so on. But if you don’t mind, I would like to pass on some hard learned lessons to those of you that fall into that group of people, still working, trying to raise a family, and running 90 miles and hour chasing after life. By the term, ‘Chasing after life’, I mean; your running so fast with work, home building, hobbies, and barking at the kids. Well, you see, life is what happens while you are making plans for it. I will advise you of this; one day you will turn around and look behind you, and what will you find? Thirty, forty, fifty, and even sixty years have passed. The kids are all grown and moved away. Half of the family and friends that have been the ‘Solar system of your world’, has passed on, and your standing there wondering where those happy times you were looking for, for so many years, went? When the truth is, you were living them. You just didn’t slow down enough to see the scenery as you were racing down the hi-way of life. If you are in those years of raising kids, when you should be sharing and making love with their mother, then “STOP” and take a breath. Then hug your kids, tell them you love them, and go ‘make’ love to your wife! (After you take her out for dinner and a movie. It might work out better with her that way.) In 1967, I stood in the school parking lot, beside my 1957 Chevy, and watched and old man rocking in a porch swing. I thought; “Damn, that old man is lucky! All he has to do is set on that porch and take it easy” Oh how stupid the young can be! You see I was running through my school years, working after school, and chasing after the young women doing the same. And I thought I didn’t have time to squat! And that’s the way I spent most of my life, running after it so fast, I took no time to live it. Then one day, my older brother died at the age of sixty two from cancer. I stopped then, and took stock of my self, looked back at all those years, ‘not wasted’, but lived poorly. I was fifty eight at the time. But I did live some good times, through all those years. I sing about them in my songs. I try to tell the story of those years, the hard times and the good times. I could have done better while living them, and taken a little more time to notice and mark them in my memories. And LORD knows, we could all do better by our love ones, be they kids, parents, or the one that puts up with your cr$p. You all have a good evening. Curl up on the couch with your wife and kids with a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie together. Because there will come a time when the option to do so will no longer be there. And when you get up in the years as I am, and look back, you will need some good memories to lean on, and even bring a smile across your face. As to my songs, if you have not heard "STANDING ON THE EDGE", give it a listen. It is different from some of my other songs, but people seem to like it. Love to all, ‘Gerald Bubba Ulmer’ P. S. Do me a favor and share my music links to family and friends if you do like it. Making music is no fun if there is no one to hear it.