Up Like Thunder

Made a mistake the other day (big deal – some days I can make as many as four mistakes before breakfast) but at any rate – Set the cell phone alarm for an early evening tv show I wanted to watch, and evidently hit am instead of pm.  So it obediently woke me at the crack of dawn.  I struggled up angry, then glanced out the window, and –
I’ve been looking out that window just about every morning since 1954, and never before seen a sunrise like that.  The sky was a huge heavy red over most of our backyard and those on either side.  I considered the word “aflame” but this wasn’t fiery -- flames are a more delicate orange or even yellowish red.  And this was none of your rosy-fingered dawn either.  The phrase that came to mind was Kipling’s -- this Dawn Came Up Like Thunder.
Which reminds me – what ever became of the “On the Road to Mandalay”?  When I was a girl, the song was all over the radio.  Now I haven’t heard it in years.  It’s not even that easy to find on youtube, either.  I kept running in to stuff about Burma during World War II.   But finally I turned up three performances, and Don Ameche (who had a wonderful voice himself,btw)  introducing it as “one of the best loved songs in American music.”   Frank Sinatra’s version doesn’t count -- he wasn’t even there in those days.  If you’re interested, let me recommend Nelson Eddy, star of all those great movie operettas, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER4TB60qE_A, or you can try Laurence Tibbett of the Metropolitan Opera:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahU2lUUKBC4 .

Trust me, you’ll be humming it all day.  It’s rousing!