I’m Going Away My Own True Love-With Bob Dylan’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather” In Mind   

By Sam Lowell

Lana Jamison had been frustrated for most of her twenty-eight young life years. Frustrated by her whole past, her past that included a serious bout of a childhood where she was not listened to by her parents, was treated like dishrag, was told to be silent and like it by her tyrannical father and her go-along-with-father mother. Had spent years in therapy after college trying to get to the bottom of what that dishrag business did to her psyche and had come up with few good clues as to how to proceed with her life without feeling she had to look over her shoulder every time she made a remark that expressed her true feelings. That situation had been made worse by the seemingly inevitable run of boyfriends and lovers who had decided on the basis of her demur presence that they could treat her like a dishrag as well. They collectively with few bright spots which usually didn’t last because of Lana’s moodiness  didn’t feel the need to expect that she might have an opinion of her own and tried might and main to direct her life for her. That woeful series included one husband, Jeff Mullins, who made an art form of putting her down wherever she had an idea that did not jell with his. That marriage had fallen apart of its own weight after a couple of years when Jeff decided one night to run off with the next best thing that came along and left Lana cold.     

Then Fritz, Fritz Taylor came along, came along like a fresh breeze after that disaster with Jeff. She had met him one night when she was feeling lonely at a bar in Cambridge that she would frequent before her marriage to Jeff and where they played country music of all things in the heart of Harvard Square. That country music thing had been a throwback to her days on that silent father upstate New York hard-scrabble truck farm and he would play the stuff on the radio every day. Fritz’s interest had been more recent, what he called his outlaw country music minute when that genre had a run even in urban areas of this country. The Wheat-stack had been playing, a group that he followed and which played Willie Nelson covers among others and so he had shown up there one Friday night and kissed fate. He had spied her, so he said, while he was sitting a bit forlorn at the bar since he had recently been divorced from his own didn’t understand him wife. Spied her sitting like heaven’s own angel at  a corner table with her girlfriend, so he said as he told her as she passed by his bar stool as she was going to the Ladies’ Room. She had been impressed by his light touch when he invited her to sit down upon her return from the Ladies’ Room, his giving her room to speak about what interested her, and most of all by the no pressure way that he handled the idea of calling her up once she insisted that she really had to go home with her girlfriend and not with him someplace. But she gave him her phone number. In response he gave her the most gentle good night handshake she had ever received from a man. And so started their love affair.           

Fritz proved, mostly, to be as advertised that first night, except his own bouts of withdrawal and distance which he told her he had inherited from his own dismal childhood down among the working poor by parents who were way over their heads trying to raise six kids on an unskilled worker’s pay. He called them, he and she, soulmates and that stuck, stuck as true as anything he ever said. Lana could take those bouts of darkness for a while as long as they were mixed in with days of happiness. But that mix had of late fallen on hard times. Many times burned she needed some space, needed room to think things through and so one day she mentioned to Fritz that she wanted to head to California by herself, wanted drive across at her own pace and see the country she had missed seeing all her sweet young life. They battled back and forth on the matter for weeks. Fritz telling her that he would improve his disposition and she, having heard it all before and really wanting to get away, arguing for her space. Finally one morning out of the blue he gave in, wished her Godspeed and that she should keep in contact with him in case anything happened along the way. The idea being when she left that she would return and they would try to start over again, start their love on a higher plain.                

So one sunny April day Lana took off in her Chevrolet, a car filled to the brim with seemingly every possible thing that she owed. No pioneer woman trekking across the country bare-boned and intrepidly, not Lana. Told Fritz as they kissed good-bye that she would call him when she hit Philadelphia. Would see when she got there if she couldn’t find him some nice gift to make him feel better, make him get through their separation better. Fritz said in reply simply that he didn’t want any material gift but that the thought of her speedy return was enough to keep him going. That brought a tear to her eyes but she still insisted that she would get him something. So in Philadelphia she called him up one night and asked him if he wanted a nice gold ring that she had seen in a jewelry store that would be a sign of their friendship and love. Fritz begged off again saying he only wanted her own sweet love. They left it at that for a while, didn’t speak of the matter of a gift again when they talked on the phone every couple of days.          

Out in Denver she made a call one night asking Fritz once again whether he wanted a beautiful silver Native American-made bracelet that she knew he had mentioned that he would like to have one time when they had gone to an Intertribal Festival out in Charlton one fall. This time Fritz got his hind legs up, started getting angry since he had previously made it clear that all he wanted was for her to stop roaming and come back home. Did she find another guy in her travels? No, she said almost too quickly. Then he told her that she must not be thinking very highly of him, must have been more interested in travelling and being free to stop and go as she liked. Maybe wanted to stay in California since she had not stopped talking about it for weeks before her departure. Maybe Fritz wasn’t good enough for her. No, no she kept saying with less and less conviction. They got off the phone not on the best of terms. Fritz had asked when she expected to be home again.  Her non-committal answer she had said she was not sure, a few weeks many a month, maybe more. Fritz was steaming.      

One hot late summer night Lana called from Phoenix and before she could say much of anything Fritz said that he would wish her Godspeed and hoped that she would be happy in California as long as she expected to stay there. He was bailing out. Had had it. Before he got off the phone realizing where she was then in the heart of Native-American country he told Lana that she could sent him one of those  Native-American-made silver bracelets that she had mentioned in that  earlier conversation. Enough said.