Recently my 80 something year old parents exchanged their leased 2006 dodge caravan for a 2011 dodge caravan, which came complete with Sirius/XM built in the dash and a kick ass speaker system that they can no way enjoy like their 49 year old son. While seeing their audio bonanza made me depressed, it also stirred memories of car rides and Sundays past.
Like many, music brings memories of good and bad days gone by. And when you hear a song or an artist or a genre, you are transported. Watching my Dad show off his satellite channel selections, I was transported back to Sunday afternoons many years ago. Unlike today when you can carry a zillion hours of music in your hand, in the 70s almost every home had a piece of furniture that we called a stereo. It held the turntable and all your records and had big honking speakers that made the music sound like it was filtered through an aquarium stocked with fish.
On Sundays, the stereo was center stage in my house. Sunday, you see, was reserved for the BIG meal of the week; for us that was pot roast. While the meal was being prepared in the kitchen, I would find a cozy spot on the orange shag rug and turn on sports, sans volume, and be forced to listen to the sound emanating from the stereo. Not until I was cooking my first roast on a Sunday did I realize the impact of those days. The memories flooded into my being. And stayed.
I realize now the smell of potatoes browning, onions melding and roasts cooking will be forever blended in my mind with sounds from Mom’s collection. At the time, I was partial to the bubble gum rock I could hear on my transistor radio broadcast from Famous 56 WFIL in Philadelphia. My Mother was (and still is) partial to the crooners of the day — John Gary, Johnny Mathis and Eddy Arnold. Perry Como had a place, as did Nat King Cole and Don Ho — but the turntable typically held J, J and E.
That Sunday music was old school and hated. Hated until I understood where it fit in my life. While my Mom was all about Danny Boy and L-O-V-E, my Dad was Mr. 1940s. Give him a good wartime tune and he’s happy as a boogie woogie bugle boy. Take a car ride with him in the 70s and you would be on a Sentimental Journey too. Whether you liked it or not. Again, I didn’t get the music and would have rather have heard the 1910 Fruitgum Company or Ohio Express sing the hit of the day. Because yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy was far better than anything by Doris Day. But my Dad was bigger than me and controlled the radio.
On those car rides we talked. We talked about baseball and school and life and death. We talked about what it is to be a man and what it means to forgive. As a preteen and teen, I didn’t get that this was what was going on. Now I can appreciate things unsaid and said in the car ride conversations that somehow got through and stuck with me all these years. And every time I want to feel nostalgic, I switch to the am frequency and travel in time.
My parents imparted, both in life lessons and a love of music, on those car rides and Sundays when the potatoes are browning, the onions are melding and the roast cooking. So while I railed against the songs that were forced on me then, I wouldn’t trade them for the world now. I have even included them as some of my zillion songs on my ipod and subject my kids to them on those days when it is most, most important to remember.
So what will I leave for my kids from my time here on this planet? I think back on the hours spent trying to convince the kids that the musical segues from the Grateful Deads Help On The Way/Slipknot/Franklins Tower are things of beauty. The rushing home to share what I called the song of the week with them. The lectures about the state of the music business and how “in my day a dj could play what they wanted..” “When MTV played videos…” I have tried to fill their world with an appreciation for all types of music from all eras. I have exposed them to the relationship between genres of music and shared my musical awakenings and times when music saved me from destruction and despair. My only hope is that it sticks in their memories as much as those experiences from my youth have stuck in mine. That it goes beyond my kids friends saying “With all those Dead stickers on his car, your dad had to smoke pot.”