As I said in another thread, we’re watching Kingsman: The Golden Circle. ‘Merlin’ likes John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. I’ve noticed that that song seems to be popular and known worldwide. Like, in addition to this movie, I think it was Anthony Bourdain who found himself in a carful of strangers somewhere in Asia, everyone’s been drinking, and suddenly everyone started singing it. (‘You haven’t lived until you’ve found yourself drunk in a car in [Cambodia/Vietnam/Wherever] with a bunch of drunk strangers singing Take Me Home, Country Roads’, or something like that.) But that’s a topic for another thread, which someone can start if they want to.
This thread, is about being a ‘stranger to blue water’. I was born in L.A. County, near the Long Beach Naval Station. I lived inYokosuka, JP, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Birch Bay (on the Salish Sea). Even Lancaster, in the Mojave Desert, was only a couple of hours from the ocean. Basically, I’ve lived near salt water all of my life.
Are you a ‘stranger to blue water’? Do the Great Lakes count?
Right now I am 55.58 miles from Capistrano City beach, which is the furthest I have ever lived from salt water. The places I’ve lived not in California have been cities on the shore.
If it’s just a matter of being out of sight of the shore, then the Great Lakes should count. If it’s a matter of water conditions, then probably not: We don’t get tides, and our waves only match ocean waves in extreme storms.
The song doesn’t specify, but I’ve always taken it to mean that the ‘Miner’s lady’ lived too far away from salt water to have ‘known’ it. When I think of my kayak, I’ve never had it in fresh water.
What time was it when Denver finished writing Country Roads? Almost seven.
Same here, but recently I started thinking maybe it was also because she lived in one of those “mining towns” (like Sixteen Tons – “I owe my soul to the company store.”) where you never make enough money to clear your debts and/or save enough to leave. Just a thought.
I grew up in a little town just across the muddy Ohio River from West Virginia, as it happens, but my family often vacationed on the beaches of the Outer Banks, so I don’t think I was ever a “stranger to blue waters.”
My family lived on Sumatra for three years when I was little, but even there, we were in the mountains. We traveled to the beach a few times, but it was a long drive and this was during 1965 - 1968, when there was a coup and a lot of unrest, so it wasn’t always safe to be on the roads.
I’ve lived in the desert Southwest most of my life, and I’m a bit leery of the ocean. I can swim very competently in a pool, but you get the sense that the ocean is really willing to kill you. No thanks (but it is pretty to look at).
To answer the OP, I’ve lived most of my life within a mile of the Great Lakes (Erie, specifically), but I’ve also visited and swam in both the Atlantic and Pacific. So I’m not a complete stranger to the oceans, but I’m closer acquainted with their little brother.
In US Navy parlance “blue water” is a couple hundred miles offshore where you’re beyond the continental shelf. The “brown water” navy is riverine, and the “green water” navy operates in the comparative near-shore shallows. By those standards, most of us are green water folks unless you’re a serious offshore sailor or deep sea fisherman.
I lived my first 18 years in SoCal within two miles of the beach, and my college residence was 11 miles inland. I ended up living mid-continent about 22 years total of my almost 65. All the other 43 are coastal. I’m now a whopping 2500 feet inland from the Atlantic, and I’ve lived closer than that in the recent past.
Around here the water is more turquoise than any other color.
That is true, and I thought about it when I posted the OP; but in the context of the song, I’m sure Mr. Deutschendorf meant ‘the ocean’ in general and didn’t make a distinction.
I’ve lived near the edge of the Atlantic my whole long life, other than going to college 100 miles or so inland, but since the family vacationed at Lake Winnipesaukee, I’ve always been a lake swimmer, never liked ocean water sports.
I grew up in Iowa so about as far from an ocean you can get. Before moving to the UK I lived in Houston, about 50 miles from Galveston. Now I’m 35 miles from the English Channel. My GF lives just over 300 yards from the Irish Sea.
My 22 years of mid-continent time was ~500 or 550 mi from the ocean, but only 250-300 mi from the Great Lakes. And I spend 12 of those years living on a small lake with a dock & boat in the backyard. That was definitely brown water; greenish brown. But could appear blue on a sunny day viewed at a shallow angle.
I grew up about 300 yards from the Chesapeake Bay. For the last 20 years I’ve lived about 10 feet from Puget Sound. When I lived in Chicago I was 2 blocks from the lake. I have lived for short periods away from big bodies of water. At those times, I didn’t actively “miss” the water, but I certainly prefer to be near it.
The song was primarily written by husband-and-wife songwriting team Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, though Denver helped the two of them to finish it, and then became the first to record it. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, none of them had any particularly military or naval experience (though Denver’s father was an Air Force pilot). My suspicion is that they picked “blue” for how it fit in the lyric, and maybe in reference to the ocean, but that’s it.
