Kokomo in the Rockies

The Beach Boys sang about Kokomo.  John Denver lauded the Rocky Mountains.  Johnny Cash heralded the South and James Taylor sang of going to Carolina.

What do all these songs (and more along similar veins) have in common?  I realize some Luddites can only answer that question with a snarky rejoinder about the quality of the song, but let’s just ignore them.

What all these songs have in common is that they are about places that don’t exist.

“Now, wait a minute!” even those of you who liked all or some of those songs are objecting, “Kokomo, the Rocky Mountains and Carolina are all real places!”  Some of you are especially incensed and objecting declaratively, “The South is a real place even if somewhat ambiguously defined!”

Yes, I will agree that there are places on the map, globe, atlas or world wide web that have these names, but I contend that the places in the songs do not exist.

There is a place in the Florida Keys called “Kokomo” and it’s probably a fantastic place to vacation, but not everyone there is obtaining a “tropical contact high” just from being there.  There are, I would venture to guess, bodies in the sand (living, I hope), but I doubt that even they know what the hex a tropical contact high is!

The South is a wonderful place, but it has some problems. Flooding, for one (“How high is the water, Mama?” notwithstanding).  The Rocky Mountains are a beautiful place, but sometimes they are on fire and other times—lately, anyway—they smell like marijuana.

See, the thing is, maybe James Taylor said it best when he said he was “gone to Caroline in his mind”.  The place he wanted to go was/is better when imagined than when experienced.

We all know this.  We’ve watched the shows on TV about the “perfect vacation”—and we’ve had some good ones ourselves—but we also know the “joy” of being awakened at 3 in the morning from a fitful sleep on a hard hotel bed because some joker pulled the fire alarm.  We’ve gone skiing only to find the “packed powder” was more like “pounded ice” and the “lightly clouded sea” was masking a hurricane.

The Beach Boys were right: “everybody knows a little place like Kokomo”.  Not the real Kokomo (which is probably lovely, I’m not trying to denigrate any living, breathing Kokomites), but the one of the song.  You may have no interest in either a sunlit beach or a tropical contact high (in fact, if you’re like me, you’re starting to worry about the very phrase), you’ve been to Carolina once and weren’t all that impressed, and the South gives you the hives.  You’re not real keen on the Rocky Mountains, either.

But you do have a Kokomo of your own.  That one, special, place you daydream about retiring to even though you know it doesn’t really exist.  There’s a place sort of like your dream, but you know—way back in the recesses of your brain—that, even there, toilets occasionally clog up and things have to be dusted.

That’s OK.  Sometimes, it’s enough to take a moment out of the stress or boredom of today and think for a few minutes about Kokomo … or Kalamazoo or Aspen or Middle Earth.  It’s only a problem if you don’t come back.

[Note: the above was written for our local on-line "newspaper".  Below, let me add a couple things.]

None of the above-mentioned songs are "Christian" songs.  But I think they all address—however indirectly—what I believe is a Christian truth.  I think we were all designed with a built-in desire for the presence of God.  Not heaven--that's just gravy.  The real desire is for the completeness and fullness of God's presence.

We won't find that here, in this life, but we get little glimpses of it.  Moments that seem perfect.  And, sometimes, it's a place that—for just a little while—seemed perfect.  So we desire to recapture that moment, or get back to that place.  It can become a problem (if our family is going hungry because we’re spending all our money going skiing or we can’t focus on tasks at hand because we’re daydreaming of somewhere we’re not).

We were designed, as I understand Hebrews 11, to not be satisfied with here.  We can learn to be content, but I think we were designed to know that—even if we have the best house in town or a boat on the best lake—we were made for something even better.  We are aliens and strangers here.

Let’s go to Kokomo.