Music brings back memories

Funny thing, music.

Sometimes I think it, and thus hearing, can conjure up memories much quicker than the other senses. You can have your smells. I'll take my tunes.

Woke up about an hour early this rainy Wednesday morning. Had some time to kill, time to contemplate. So I grabbed my iPod and clicked on "top rated" tunes.

Up popped the Oak Ridge Boys, "Ozark Mountain Jubilee," from 1983. Suddenly, I was 5 again, back in the house on Norris Freeway, back in my bedroom, playing that single on my Fischer Price record player.

Let me get on the Frisco Silver Dollar Line, take my time, to see all I can see...

That memory merged into another one, from about a year later. Mom and Dad had divorced by then and we were living in an apartment in Halls Heights. It is a credit to both my parents that what could have been a difficult development wasn't.



Dad dropped by one night to bring me the Oak Ridge Boys' full-length LP, "Deliver!" I can still remember running to the record player (I had upgraded from the Fischer Price) and ever so gently easing the needle over to the correct track.

Fiddler rosin up your bow; we'll have our own, Ozark Mountain Jubilee...

I lay there at first light, lost in my music, lost in my memories.