Shakespeare wrote about “star-crossed lovers” in his classic drama Romeo and Juliet. John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans” in his lovely song “Beautiful Boy.” And countless people have either said “I was lucky,” or “I just couldn’t catch a break….”

Most of us, I think, live life as if we are in control of what happens to us. We make good choices, we reap good results. We choose foolishly, we suffer. But the longer we live, the more things actually happen to us, the more we realize that we deal with many things which are ultimately beyond our control, and the best we can hope for is to try to deal responsibly and meaningfully with the reality with which we are presented. Sometimes fate throws a real curveball, and there never seems a good time to be blindsided by that pitch.

“A Fine Time to Call” may sound like an autobiographical song. It is. I was much, much younger when the “call” came. And though I was still young and had never been married, I suddenly felt like I had become weary with life experience. Someone I had once known, someone with whom I had once experienced an emotional relationship, called me after a five-year separation of her own choosing. And she was reaching out to me.

A man of action might have responded quickly and decisively – one way or another. A man of reflection, like me, is led to think about things. What does it mean? What is meant to be? What should I do?

This song is about a place of emotional confusion and indecision. The woman in question was married to another man and no longer available to me in any serious way. But feelings often don’t read facts well. After the phone call, I literally walked out into the woods near where I lived at the time and had the experience that I revisit in this song. The conclusion I reached in those woods was the same as the conclusion I reached in the song. “Now I must begin to try to forget her again. Now I must begin to forget her all over again.” The pain of the attempt to forget is intensified because it is not the first time, definitely not the first time.

What happened next? Well, that’s another story, recounted in other songs and compositions. But I like this song because it captures a moment when I had to choose what I would do with what fate had handed me. And it is real. When I listen to the song, I say to myself, “That’s how I experienced it.” The guitar sounds the way I felt at the time. The voice fades away gradually, softening, as I hoped the memory would. – Bob Tatum

Fine Time to Call

Walkin’ through the woods on a hot, humid summer’s evenin’
Walkin’ through the woods with my life hangin’ limp like dead tree limbs.
Rememberin’ a voice on the telephone
A voice I hadn’t heard for many years
I heard a tender voice on the telephone
Now I’m walkin’ through the woods
Why do I feel so alone

While walkin’ through the woods, I feel a drop of rain reach my bare head
While walkin’ through the woods, I remember every word that she spoke
She said she’d never really forgotten me
She had assumed that I would always be there
But she never had the nerve to say she loved me
Now there is no way
Her being married and so far away

(Instrumental break)

(Bridge)
I wonder if she’d see me if I passed through tonight
I wonder if she’d greet me as a lover or as a friend
And I wonder where I’d sleep — would she put me out on my own again
And I wonder if she knows how friendly I might be still….

Still walkin’ through the woods, I hear the sad whippoorwill pleading
Calling for a time which has gone and which cannot be again
She picked a fine time to call me
She picked a fine time just to see how I’d been
She picked a fine time to call me
And now I must begin to try to forget her again
Now I must begin to forget her all over again
All over again
All over again (Words and Music Bob Tatum from CD Sound Traveler)

Sound Traveler will be playing next week in Melbourne at the Melbourne Mainstreet Fall Festival. We will be performing courtesy of Vapor! Hookah Bar and Social Club on Sunday, September 25. Hope to see you there.