(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread. Tuesday December 23rd. Theme: Firsts [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2025-12-23 We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Welcome to my first time hosting a Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. Oh and it’s an open thread — which means you can completely ignore the theme! Whoah. Wait. Whut? No-one told me y’all could just ignore me…. Hey - Help wanted Don’t send the application to me. I just work here. Part time. Probationary. Morning Open Thread is looking for contributors —either occasional, or weekly. If interested, please contact Ozarkblue or officebss for more information. Folks if they let me have this gig the bar can’t be to high… :-) The Theme: First(s) Seeing this is my first time hosting MOT I think we have to make first the theme. Right? Any objection? Hearing none let’s get to it. “first” As in the “first” album or hit song from a band. Or (cause I’m indecisive) The first song or album you purchased, on a 45 or an album or for younger folks, CDs or gasp…a download. conveniently this album this fits both themes for me! Aerosmith’s first album, also my first purchased music. I was walking home through downtown, probably from middle school. There was a small store with a mish mash of products which had a wire rack display with a few albums, including the one above. Actual downtown. Looks about right, both in terms of traffic and age. I clearly recall buying that first album, the eponymous Aerosmith, but not which song I bought it for. Perhaps it was the hit “dream on” but then I realized I enjoyed the rest of the album more than the hit. for example Aerosmith — Make It x YouTube Video It has more grit than dream on. The whole album does. Which probably resonated with me since my walk through downtown also took me literally over the rail road tracks which were busy moving parts to the GM auto plant, and then finished auto’s back out. This actually was the way home from school. About the right era too. The train station was an abandoned mess. Tankers with cement dust on the right. There were flexi flow freight tankers of cement dust that offloaded right next to our neighborhood. a noisy dirty process which I walked through to save a few steps on the way to school. Pools of oily rainbow colored water between the rail switchs. At the time I thought nothing of it. I should have and occasionally did cross the tracks at the station. this was a dozen years before I was walking through, imagine a dozen years of added grime and abandonment. Gritty. But it was Gritty. Did I mention GM? Yes in my lifetime automobiles were built in Massachusetts. Multiple shifts. Workers commuting from long distances, Rhode Island, New Hampshire. And short distances . You could buy a house here on the salary earned there. Some of my friend’s dad’s worked at the plant. Some them followed their father’s footsteps and got jobs there. This train looks like it’s heading towards the old GM plant. But it has a load of cars. You can see them to the right. So it might be heading leaving the plant, the engines pushing the cars. But, it could be bringing in cars built elsewhere to be unloaded at the plant for final shipment by truck. One more thing. The Boston marathon runs on the road to the left of the train. Originally when I wrote this I thought it would be all about the music. But when I teased it today (one week before it’s scheduled) folks were interested in the train. So I started digging up info on the train spur to GM and then on the plant itself. I found this article which lead to this one and learned the reason the plant was closed. at least one side of the story side of the story. I believe it. it involves Governor Dukakis , he of the Massachusetts miracle, and a local power broker, Tony colonna who butted heads with him. from an editorial in 2001: Colonna, who died Monday at age 85, came out of the old school of grass-roots politics. As a young man, he organized Framingham's newest class of immigrants, the Italians, into a political machine that dominated town elections for three decades. Like the party bosses who used to run most of the nation's big cities, Colonna was an all-purpose fixer. If you needed a pothole filled, a legal problem settled or a job to help your family over a rough patch, he was the man to see www.metrowestdailynews.com/... As the story goes GM wanted to expand the plant in order to build new models with plastic body panels and needed to buy some 35 acres from the town. Colonna, head of the DPW commission at that time (and clerk of courts) wanted to build a new DPW facility on that acreage . The town refused to sell. So Dukakis took the land by eminent domain. But the town did everything possible to drag out the process. Finally with sales dropping and unable to modernize the plant, GM closed up shop. Thousands of jobs gone and a tremendous loss to local businesses. By the way, that acreage? the town ended up building the DPW facility there. Named it for Colonna… This is short, good, somewhat balanced biography of Mr Colonna. The old GM plant? It became a huge indoor auto auction facility. They claim to be the largest indoor auction facility in the world. Perhaps. This beast is a snow plow. Gone now, but parked in the rail yard when I was a kid. More grit. Anyways. Back to the album. In my cursory research, I discovered that Tyler wrote the song “Make It” while sitting in the back seat of a car. The entire band was cruising south from New Hampshire, to their newly rented digs in Boston for the first time. He recalled seeing the Boston skyline and writing these lyrics about the feeling of “making it” as a band. Make It Good evening people, welcome to the show Got something here I want you all to know When life and people bring on primal screams You got to think of What it's going to take to make your dreams Make it Don't break it I said make it Don't break it If you do then you feel like the world's coming down on you You know that history repeats itself What you just done, so has somebody else You know you do, you've got to think up fast You've got to figure what it's going to take to make it last Make it Don't break it I said make it Don't break it If you do then you feel like the world's coming down on you Better weather, pull yourself together Don't be catching the blues Better weather, pull yourself together What have you got to lose You're only paying your dues Dues is the price that you gotta pay And if you don't they'll get you anyway Although you know what you've been going through You're on the brink so think what it takes to... Make it Don't break it I said make it Don't break it If you do then you feel like the world's coming down on you Better weather, pull yourself together Don't be catching the blues Better weather, pull yourself together What have you got to lose Whew! first time hosting MOT time hosting MOT my first purchased album purchased album Aerosmith’s first album album first time I learned the back story of GM closing time I learned the back story of GM closing lyrics written on the first trip to new digs i’m first’d out. But in case the first two twists on the first theme ain’t working for for you I’ll add: The word First in the name of the song oh heck … I’m embracing my indecisiveness or any kind of first! Hope you enjoyed the RandomNeuron inaugural Morning Open Thread ramble. If da boss don’t change da locks I’ll see y’all next twosday! 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