It’s All in the Game

It’s All in the Game*…Tommy Edwards…1958. Here’s the thing about that song: I was 12-years old when it became the #1 hit in the nation and my ear was glued to my transistor radio. As such, All in the Game was one of the first songs I remember that introduced me to the romantic quotient in boy-girl relations…beyond other such hits as Hey Little Girl in the High School Sweater and Chantilly Lace which merely celebrated boy-girl. And in looking back on my relationship with Lorna, which I’m doing a lot of in this the 50thyear of our marriage, I’m struck by the influence the song had on me in seeing love as a game…and I mean game in the best way, as in playful. Again to my man Johan Huizinga:

Play casts a spell over us; it is 'enchanting,' 'captivating.' It is invested with the noblest qualities we are capable of perceiving in things: rhythm and harmony.

I’m not what you’d call a laugh-a-minute guy, but I have endeavored to invest my relation with Lorna with as much playfulness as my sense of dignity will allow: here, here, and here for instance. The “game” we’re playing in this our “Golden Jubliee” year is Tour du Jour. We’ve put the names of 12 nearby locations (maximum 2 hours away) in a little treasure chest and draw one each month and then visit it, not as a nearby location, but as if we were tourists there. Three months into the year and it’s already yielding enchanting, captivating results. 

The first was an electric bike excursion through La Jolla. The second was a visit to Carlsbad, which actually got me to walk into the Museum of Making Music for the first time ever even though I walked by it every day for 15 years while working right across the street. Our most recent tour was to Anza Borrego, which is the site of some of the most astonishing fossil finds in North America. It is also the outdoor gallery for Ricardo Breceda, whose artwork graces our home property, but for fullest appreciation must be viewed in its natural desert environment. 
On this visit we also learned about Ghost Mountain, which in the early 20thcentury was the homestead of Marshall South, his wife Tanya and their three children. They were immigrants to America…he from Australia; she from Russia…they were both people of letters, but threw themselves into the backbreaking work of building a home at the top of a mountain in a forbidding environment. It’s an extraordinary tale of independence and isolation that speaks directly to the heart of anyone who longs to escape the insanity of modern American society. But it’s a sobering message, too, about how the most remote and seemingly self-reliant paradise can be vulnerable to world events and domestic discord. The Navy moved the family off their land when it became enveloped in a World War II practice target range…and divorce ended the marriage. Again, it’s all in the game. The game of course does make its winners and losers. Fifty years in, however, and Lorna and I are still riding a quite wonderful winning streak.


*   *   ** As amazing as it is to realize that camels, zebras, wooly mammoths, and saber-tooth tigers once roamed less than two hours from our door, it's almost as amazing to realize this about It's All in the Game:

The song is based on a 1911 classical violin and orchestra piece called "Melody in A Major" that was composed by Charles G. Dawes a banker who later became Vice President under Calvin Coolidge in 1925. Years later, in 1951, songwriter Carl Sigman penned lyrics to the melody and changed the song's name to "It's All in the Game". 

Also amazing that Ed Sullivan hurried Tommy Edwards off the stage like this!