You couldn’t ask for a better mnemonic device.  Having an “older” American automobile while living and working in Canada in the late ‘80s, necessitated the conversion of business mileage into business kilometers when filling out a corporate expense report, with one mile equal to 1.609 kilometers.

That meant that at the end of every junket there came the time for “Deacon Lee” to prepare “his sermon for next week.” Sing the first four lines of this song to yourself a few hundred times (lyrics below) and you too will surely remember the conversion factor of miles to kilometers until your “dying day.”

It’s hard to deny that Elton John was at his creative peak between 1969 and 1973. After the release of his second (and breakthrough) album, “Elton John” in the spring of 1970 came “Tumbleweed Connection” in the fall of that same year.

Despite the fact that it didn’t produce a solitary single, this concept album inspired by lyricist Bernie Taupin’s penchant for Western Americana, would be the second of three certified gold records for Elton John (preceded by his eponymous second album and followed by the sound track he scored for the film, “Friends”) in as many months.

  LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 23 July

Country Comfort

 Soon the pines will be falling everywhere

Village children fight each other for a share

And the 6:09 goes roaring past the creek

Deacon Lee prepares his sermon for next week

 I saw grandma yesterday down at the store

Well she’s really going fine for eighty-four

Well she asked me if sometime I’d fix her barn

Poor old girl she needs a hand to run the farm.

 And it’s good old country comfort in my bones

Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known

Just an old-fashioned feeling fully-grown

Country comfort’s any truck that’s going home.

Down at the well they’ve got a new machine

The foreman says it cuts manpower by fifteen

Yeah, but that ain’t natural, well so old Clay would say

He was a horse-drawn man until his dying day.

 And it’s good old country comfort in my bones

Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known

Just an old-fashioned feeling fully-grown

Country comfort’s any truck that’s going back home.

 Now the old fat goose is flying cross the sticks

The hedgehog’s done in clay between the bricks

And the rocking chair’s creaking on the porch

Across the valley moves the herdsman with his torch.