THE TWELFTH OF NEVER

2 April 2002

Johnny Mathis crooned out of the car speakers and sweet memories came back--flip flops in the stomach, knowing love will last forever, believing in a happily ever after.

While driving around the Bay Area this weekend, I stumbled across radio station KABL, a "golden oldies" station. I realize that for a lot of folks, the "golden oldies" were written in the 1990s, but for me, the songs I have the strongest emotional reaction to were written from the late 40s to the early 60s.

Johnny Mathis always reminds me of high school, those first "grown-up" parties, lights off, groping sounds from various corners of the room, me feeling very uncomfortable, and always Johnny singing in the background.

Chances are, your chances are....awfully good...

It's funny how certain songs take you back to a place and a time.

All I need to do is hear Nat King Cole singing Mona Lisa and I'm back at Boys Hot Springs in Sonoma County. I'm in grammar school. All the family is at the community pool. I'm walking to the concession area, my wet feet slipping on the concrete. Nat is singing in the background. I can smell hot dogs coming from the hot dog stand. I'm eating a bar of taffy.

Who sang that? I can't remember. The four somebodys, I'm sure. The first few notes take me back to the waning days of 8th grade, sitting on the grass at Aquatic Park in San Francisco, with my classmates of 8 years, all of us preparing for grammar school graduation and going our separate ways, to various high schools around the city. We would never again be like this, all together in a group. Graduation Day was playing on someone's portable radio.

Whenever I hear Pat Boone warbling Friendly Persuasion, I am standing on Market St. in San Francisco with my friends Joyce, Ann and Margie again. We had just skipped out on some sort of religious conference we were supposed to be attending and instead we went to see "Friendly Persuasion" Or maybe it was "House of Wax." (I always confuse those movies. LOL.) Anyway, whatever the movie was, for some reason that song is tied into my memories of that specific moment, standing outside a theatre on Market St.

Whatever happened to Tab Hunter? He couldn't sing for beans, but his recording of "Young Love" makes me think of standing on another corner in downtown San Francisco, waiting for my first boyfriend, Bill (now a Jesuit), to meet me for our second date. It was "our song." I don't know how long it stayed "our song" -- not long. But the recording takes me back to that afternoon. I can even feel the chill again, as the shadow of the buildings blocked out the sun.

Sam Cooke. OK. The words were never going to win any awards for enduring literature, but I hear that song and I'm riding in the family car. I had decided I was going to buy that record and mentioned it to my father. "Garbage," he said. "It's just garbage." I liked the song, but I never bought it. I didn't want to be made fun of. Just recently, I saw that there was going to be some sort of discussion or retrospective or something about Sam Cooke, specifically that song. I smiled. It might have been "garbage," but it has become the stuff of musical legend.

Music--the stuff of our lives, the stuff of our history, the stuff of our dreams. How poor are people for whom music has no meaning in their lives.