Logan Lucky: Mountain Mamma, Take Me "Home" Country Roads?

Last August I saw the movie 'Logan Lucky' at a cinema I was used to driving to from my old home, but this day I went a way I had never taken before along the back of Mount Cotton Road, so I could get used to the shorter route from the new home I was about to move into.
Last July I sunk most of my free cash into the purchase of a new home in Logan City, which is just outside of Brisbane, the city I spent the first twenty years of my life living and growing up in.
I've always considered Brisbane my home town, because that's where my childhood home was located and where I did my growing up.
Which is why I started this blog with the moniker Brizdaz (Brisbane+Darren) by combining my hometown Brisbane or BrizVegas as the locals like to refer to it, and my first name Darren.

The truth is though that I have spent more of my life living and working in Logan City now than I ever have in Brisbane, so maybe my moniker should be Logdaz instead of Brizdaz?
That rolls off the tongue like a log, so I think I'll be sticking to Brizdaz, since that's where I'm from, even if it isn't where I live.  

When I was married and raising my two boys with my now ex-wife I rented and then owned (or was paying the bank back more like it) two houses in Logan City (not at the same time though).
Then when I was divorced I rented a townhouse on the outskirts of Logan City right across the road from my beloved Brisbane Lions AFL club, which is in Logan too, ironically enough.

Looking out the window of my old rented unit in Logan City

And while I went to a lot of Lions games while living across the road from the club, I only ever set foot inside the club a handful of times while living across the road from it.
The road to hell and all that, I guess?
Now I would have to catch a cab or drive to the club from my new place of residence.
But as much as I love going to the football to watch my team play and cheer them on, I'm not really one for hanging around clubs and pubs anyway, I guess.

Funnily enough the Logan City council sent me a welcome pack in the mail, as if I was new to the area, just because now I owned property again, I was a new ratepayer in their eyes.
But it did open my eyes to the things around me that I had taken for granted while living and working in the area, and I had to laugh when I opened the little booklet a few weeks later that the council sent in that welcome pack called 'Experience the City of Logan' and saw the black and white butterfly which I wrote about in this post -
A Butterfly That I Felt Was Worth Crowing About

I haven't seen another butterfly like that around my home since that day either, which makes that butterfly's visit rather synchronistic to me.

My new home with my pictures on the wall

The Metaphorical God of Good/Bad?
I didn't plan on buying a home, and I was just going to keep renting, until my mother decided to sell the family home and divide the money between her kids and downsize into a home more manageable for her declining health.

My brother and I in our old house in Brisbane

It was rather bizarre thinking the old house I called home and spent nearly every Christmas Day in was now home to somebody else, and not only that, but my father's ashes had been scattered under the tree in the backyard by my mother and sister after dad died.
So, my ties to the old home and hometown were pretty much permanently severed now, as there was pretty much no family living in Brisbane anymore, except for my eldest son who rents a room with friends near the Brisbane CBD.

Pretty much all of my immediate family is now living in Logan, but I was planning of a move to another Australian state, as Logan held good and bad memories for me from my previous marriage and work life and I wanted to get away from the city for a fresh start.
Trouble was I didn't know where I wanted to call home now.
I love Cronulla and Sydney, but the price of living down there is out of my reach.
I had thought of moving to Canberra or even Tasmania, but my mother's health isn't good and the thought of traveling back and forth over those distances if her health declined put me off the move.
When my father's health declined in the last year of his life I was glad to be able to visit him in the home he was in nearly every second day.
Had I have moved interstate I couldn't have done that, so that thought is on my mind with my mother's health now.

Looking out the window into my new backyard

I didn't want to sink my money into bricks and mortar and especially not in Logan City once more, but I was sick of renting and feeling like a wanderer at the whim of landlords and real estate agents and the uncertainty of when or if they would sell the place from under me like in the last place I was renting, and having to put up with strangers coming through for open house in a place that wasn't even mine.
F#ck renting I say, but owning has its downside too.

I guess I'm just not much of a minimalist

The trouble is when you own stuff you have to have somewhere to store it and moving the stuff around with you every-time you move house is frustrating and costly.
So, it's good to be able to move home when you want to and not because you have to, I think.

I don't plan on hanging around in Logan for the rest of my life, but for now it's home ... and you know what they say about telling God your plans, right?

So, I signed on the dotted line and bought a townhouse in July and was waiting for the tenants to move out at the end of August, so I could move in.
I was wondering if I had done the right thing by sinking my money into this new home in Logan and I thought I would take my mind off things by going to the cinema I usually go to, but instead of going the usual way I wanted to try a new route which was a quicker way from where I would now be living. 

I didn't know what was playing at the cinema when I decided to catch a movie and when I looked up what was on it didn't seem like much, but there was a movie called of all things 'Logan Lucky', so that got my attention, but the trailer I watched made me wonder if I would like this movie at all, because I hate stock-car racing, or any car racing for that matter.
But I thought what the hell, I'm only really going for a drive down a road I hadn't been down for a very long time ... Mt. Cotton Road.
"The road is notable for connecting three adjacent local government areas of Queensland: the City of Brisbane, Redland City, and the City of Logan.

As there are no highways in this region east of the Gateway and Pacific Motorways, Mount Cotton Road often provides the fastest link between the three cities (more so regarding the south-east of Brisbane and north-east of Logan)."

I had often traveled down the front part of Mt. Cotton Road as far as the Sirromet winery to see musicians play at their 'Day on the Green' concerts the winery puts on regularly.

Higher Love?

But I haven't traveled the back part of Mt. Cotton Road, which apparently is the most dangerous part of the road with signs along that part telling you it's a high crash zone and if you Google up pictures in Google images of the road you will see pictures of some very nasty accidents had along that stretch of road, like some of these pictures below.

Ironically the first band I saw play
at Sirromet was 'Steely Dan'

Crashes along Mt. Cotton Road,
Logan/Redland City, Queensland

Reading those high crash zone signs along the side of the road I thought I might be lucky if I even made it to the cinema to see 'Logan Lucky':-)

The 'Steely Dan' song 'Home at Last' is off the 'Aja' album which celebrated its 40th anniversary on my birthday this year (September 23rd).

I never knew the back part of Mount Cotton Road was so dangerous and ironically there is a driver training centre right across the road from a crematorium on Mt. Cotton Rd, not to mention a winery up the other end of the road.
Burning of the Vines

If this drive to the cinema wasn't going to put life into perspective for me, then I don't know what would.

That was until I got to the cinema and sat down to watch 'Logan Lucky' and this very familiar John Denver cover was sung by Farrah Mackenzie.

John Denver was born in Roswell, New Mexico and killed in a flying accident ironically, and has been dead 20 years this year.
John's ashes are scattered in the Rocky Mountains.

Sweet Surrender
Like a lot of people who grew up listening to John sing,
'Take Me Home, Country Roads' it always stirs up feelings of childhood memories of home, even though West Virginia means nothing to me personally, and I don't even know anyone associated with West Virginia .... hang on, OK, maybe one person who lived in West Virginia.

Of course, 'Logan Lucky' is set in West Virginia and a border state, so having that John Denver song sung by Farrah Mackenzie in the movie makes sense, but I'm sure a lot of movie goers will equate WV to whatever idea the words "take me home country roads" means to them personally.

After watching 'Logan Lucky' and not being able to get 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' out of my mind I remembered I had bought John's greatest hits album on iTunes and had it on my phone, so I thought that instead of playing my radio in my car on the way home I would plug my iPhone into the car's speakers and put it on random and see if any of those songs off John's album would come on as I was driving..

They didn't, but Pete Townshend's song 'Crashing by Design' came on as soon as I passed one of the high crash zone signs on Mt. Cotton Road, freaking me out and thinking this was some kind of Trickster sign from the universe just before I was about to meet my end along this stretch of notorious road.

Boy did I drive very, very carefully watching for cars coming at me from the other direction while this song played out.
I actually hate that song off the 'White City' album and have been thinking about deleting it off my iPod list.

One thing I learned on that drive to the cinema is that I don't know what home means anymore, but for now my home is Logan and I'm probably lucky in many ways, but life is a journey and not a destination, so home is really where the heart is and has to do more about who and what you love rather than some physical space where you store your stuff.
But it sure is good to be back home again in one piece at the end of the day.