A Good One

This is a song I wrote about my mom and some of the stories she has shared with me through the years. She worked the graveyard shift at the Seasport Landing Restaurant in Newport Beach, California where fishermen would come in at 3 am before they went out on the charter and day boats. She served them breakfast and coffee, charmed them with her million dollar smile, and they tipped her well—so well, that one year she took a trip to Hawaii. She listened to their stories of full nets and the ones that got away. When one of them asked the beautiful waitress if she had frog legs, she said of course, after all, they were on the menu. But when he said her legs didn’t look like frog legs at all, she blushed and laughed along. At 7 am, as the beach town began to wake up and the early morning sun softly touched the water, she hung up her apron and headed home, but not for long. In her movie star sunglasses, she headed for the beach, where she soaked up the California sun and dug her toes in the sand. The voices of seagulls and the steady rhythm of the waves breaking on the sand lulled her in and out of catnaps. It was just enough rest for a seventeen-year-old girl. A few hours later she would be getting ready for a date or cruising down the boulevard in her 1952 two-tone green Chevy Bel Air—a third generation California girl—to the core. Today she lives in Tennessee, but she still falls asleep to the sound of the ocean every night.

Something else I know about her is that she loves a nice ride, and if it’s got some power and speed, well that’s even better. She’s had some nice ones including two Bel Airs, an Austin Healy, a Porsche, a Dodge Challenger, and even a motorcycle. At 84, she still drives with a lead foot, which is why if we go anywhere together, I drive. On a recent visit, her grandson rented a Dodge Challenger just so he could take her for a ride. I know she loved it, but I also know she really wanted to drive.

Whether it was waiting tables, teaching children how to read or adults how to speed read, selling Alpaca rugs out of a teepee, or helping high school students hang in there and make it to graduation, she cared, and she worked. With three daughters, she made a go of it on her own. It was macaroni and cheese, spinach souffle, Hamburger Helper and Salisbury steak tv dinners with peach cobbler dessert in the corner section of the tray. We loved it. We didn’t know things were hard. We tap danced, and took piano lessons, and rode our bicycles with banana seats and playing cards attached to the spokes of the wheels. I wanted to go to music camp–she taught night school. I wanted to ski–she took on a couple of summer jobs. She always found a way, and if there wasn’t one, she made one. She carries hope in her pocket—lucky for me. But most of all, she believes. She believes in tomorrow and in today.  She believes in you, and she believes in me, always.

The things that shape us, the stories they tell, and the memories that bring a smile, they’re the good ones.

Listen to the song here A Good One

A Good One Lyrics

It’s 3 am the lights are shining bright

Through the windows of the restaurant 

Inside a pretty little waitress pours the coffee

For the fishermen sitting at the counter

They tell stories of the catch of the day and the ones that got away 

She smiles, and wishes them luck, and sends them on their way

Drifting in and out of sleep, on a blanket on the beach 

To the sound of the seagulls and the rolling sea

She digs her toes in the sand, 

licks the salt off her lips she’s a California dreamer

She still falls asleep to the rhythm of the ocean waves

With a sound machine by her bed she drifts away

Every once in a while

a good one shows up

And she can’t help smile

when she remembers

The spark in her eyes

it tells the story

Of another time and a place

a happy memory  

It’s a good one 

that takes her back

A postcard from the past

It’s a good one 

yeah its a good one

It was a 1952 Chevy Bel Air 

Two-tone green, the top rolled down 

She drove that car down the Boulevard 

Looking like a star

When the light turned red, she checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror

On green she put her foot on the pedal and left it all behind

Oh tell me a story, one that makes you smile. Show me what it’s like to see the world through your eyes. Please won’t you tell me, oh tell me, tell me a good one.

©2019 Elk Mountain Music ASCAP Trisha Leone Sandora