For the record, I love records. Those giant CDs you probably have stuffed in the back of your attic—pull them out and play them before they become a lost art like wax cylinder music. (If you need to Google these you understand my concern.)
Dust off the record player and sit close because if you remember you have to set the needle to the song you want. There is also a flip needed after about eight songs. My kids found my collection in the storage room a few years ago and I felt I had failed as a mother by not introducing them to LPs earlier in life. I now have a record player in the family room ready for a dance party at a moment’s notice. Mysteriously many of my albums have disappeared since my daughter received her own record player. Seriously…is she really listening to The Carpenters?
I started listening to my parent’s records at a young age. We had Puff the Magic Dragon and the Crickets Christmas album played until the grooves wore thin. (Although you could make any album sound like the Crickets by changing the record speed from 33 to 45. Johnny Cash has a great Cricket voice.)
Then we switched to comedy albums. Hey, hey, hey…. Bill Cosby was hilarious! I might need to swipe these records from my mom next time I’m home.
The first record I ever owned was John Denver’s Wind Song. I bought it at Mike’s Holiday in Grand Marais when I was in the fifth grade after I scrimped and saved about 10 dollars. I loved John Denver…. he was my first crush and looked just like my real life crush, Matt. He was an older man in the sixth grade. He looked a lot like John Denver with long blonde hair and glasses. I never became Matt’s girlfriend and I never met John Denver so I wasn’t so lucky in love in the fifth grade but that didn’t stop me from playing my records over and over again.
In the ninth grade I gave a record album to my first boyfriend as a gift. Ted Nugent, Cat Scratch Fever. I kept the letter he wrote to me to say how much he loved this record. (I wonder if he still has it?) I was in California visiting my cousins at the time. This is where I was introduced to Van Halen…. my cousin David was a big fan. Funny but he looked a lot like lead singer David Lee Roth. Another blonde with long hair…I see a pattern here.
School dances meant a trip to Joynes Ben Franklin for a 45 record of our favorite song. Of course we had to wait for Casey Kasem to tell us the latest top 40 number one. This is where I probably fell in love slow dancing to Boz Scaggs Love Look What You’ve Done To Me or the Styx song Babe…. if you don’t believe it’s possible to fall in love during a slow dance I challenge you to wrap your arms around your sweetheart and listen to either of these songs…you’ll be a goner. I received both of these record albums as gifts from boyfriends in high school, treasured memories of great times.
You can’t relive the past, but for the record, you can relive the feelings through great music
One good thing about music,
when it hits you, you feel no pain.
Bob Marley
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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