- Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County.
I neither know nor care about big pickup trucks; however, not long ago I paid rapt attention to a Chevrolet Silverado truck commercial on television, and here’s why. More than 50 years ago I was the lead singer in a pretty decent rock and roll cover band. We were on the road most weekends, performing at festivals, homecoming dances, proms, fraternity dances, etc., and our longest, most intense song was one by a group called Grand Funk Railroad, one now being used as background music in a Silverado commercial, “Closer to Home.” Many songs from the 1970s lie conspicuously in the background of today’s commercial television.
I try to leave the distant past exactly there, but sometimes the smell of a woman’s perfume, the taste of someone’s homemade cooking, or the sound of an old rock and roll song places you somewhere long ago, somewhere specific in the trajectory of your life, and it comes as a surprise, and sometimes it comes when you need it most, when you need to fully comprehend that the young person that was you is not the old person you are now. Men are particularly bad at such comprehension. I’m perhaps more guilty than most.