Take It Like It Comes
Stefan
Stax
1972

Last weekend the storm finally came.  There’d been, for a week, talk of little else.

Looks like a big storm blowing in.

Gonna be high winds on Sunday.

Better batten down the hatches. 

Everyone, suddenly, was an expert.  A nation of meteorologists, talking about low pressure systems, storm fronts over the Atlantic, falling barometers, predicting the worst.

On Saturday night the storm was in full flow.  I lay in bed listening.  Winds howled across the yard, the night yelped.  First rain then hail hammered the roof.  Small sticks and branches were separated from trees and careened around the place.  Random whistles and crashes filled the night.  Where, I wondered, do all the little birds go?  Where, for that matter, do the big birds go?  I suppose that everyone has their place, some more exposed and vulnerable than others.  At four-thirty a willow twisted up and out of the ground, flapping into and over the fence.  Ten minutes later a feed trough came skidding across the field.  The night moved.  There was no moon.  No stars.  The grass lay low, the trees thrashed.   

As I couldn’t sleep, I made some tea and put a record on.  The record on the top of the pile was ‘Take It As It Comes’ by Stefan.  I don’t know anything about Stefan, other than he released five singles on Stax, one on Crazy Horse, and, together with his brother, an album in the early 80s.  He didn’t make much of a mark; he was just another white southern outsider, in thrall to Otis Redding and Bobby Bland.  He made some great records and then disappeared.  He did what his record tells us to do: Take it like it comes.  

Words to live by.  

Storms, careers, success, music, love, life.  

Take It Like It Comes. 

In the morning I walked around the wind-mangled fields.  Uprooted trees, limbs and branches everywhere, a gate blown off its hinges, anything that wasn’t nailed down shifted.  Nothing you can do about it.  Weather is some serious business.  Weather knows who’s boss.  Weather does its thing and you best stay out of the way.

Only thing you can do is listen to Stefan when he says: take it like it comes.

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