A small town summer evening

This is Main Street in Murphys CA, population 2,000. It usually doesn't look like this, because normally, there are cars lining the street. They must have cleared it for the photographer! Often it's this empty at midnight!
Murphys has a park, and on the first Friday of every summer month, there is Music in the Park. Although you can't see it in the picture, just beyond the picnic table is a stream, cold from snow melt, but shallow enough to warm up in the summer, shallow enough for little kids to splash and swim, deep enough for tubing. There's a bridge from the park to the town library. Tonight was Music in the Park night, with the three-piece band named Plan B. The drummer is a local insurance broker - I don't know the other two. They played '60's and '70's music mostly, but they didn't just copy the Beatles or the Stones, they played their music, so the sounds were different, fresh. Most of the park is lawn, but the area just in front of the gazebo is gravely black top, and on a night like tonight, filled with dancers from babies in arms to toddlers, to oldsters who danced as if they'd never stopped. The eight dollar dinner is always provided by a local purveyor, and tonight's was by the local Sierra Market, and was the best I've ever had at the park, chicken, tri-tip, deli salads, watermelon, cookies. I was with friends, of course, and the music was too loud for conversation, but the warmth of sitting with best friends - as well as the warmth of the evening - was a balm to my heart, so I could listen to words of love and not cry. "They're writing songs of love, but not for me," kept going through my head. Music is still piercingly poignant.


This is the Murphys that I will be sad to say goodbye to.