What’s Your Song?

             For many of us, there is that one song.  It’s THE song.  The song that upon hearing it, we are immediately drenched in memories.  Smells, tastes, thoughts, feelings all come back to us like it was yesterday.  It is as if we safely seal our memories in an envelope that quickly opens as the song plays.  These memories are as unique as the songs with which we associate them.   Some are sad.  Some are happy.  Some are romantic.  One man from Milwaukee recalls his song:

             “On a warm summer evening in the 1960s, I accompanied my father to the local beer/soda mart in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where we lived. As was the case that night, my father would often buy me an ice cream cone at a nearby custard stand on Oklahoma Avenue as a   gratuity for my patience while I waited in the car and he shopped. As he departed the vehicle, he would ask me if I wanted the radio left on. This was usually my only opportunity to change the radio channel from my father's preferred easy listening station to WOKY, a popular        Milwaukee rock-n-roll station. My answer of course was an emphatic 'YES.'  In his absence, as the disc jockey began playing 'Cathy's Clown,' I noticed an attractive young girl wearing a white patch over her left eye seated in a parked red convertible. As she casually glanced my way I felt an unusually strong attraction for her combined with sympathy. Her range of vision seemed obscured by the eye patch and I doubt that she even saw me, although my adolescent heart wished otherwise. It was also the first time that I had heard 'Cathy's Clown' played on the radio and I was enthralled by the tight vocal harmonies and the crescendo passages. Upon my father's return we slowly drove away to the sound of 'Cathy's Clown' and I regrettably looked back at the girl who had unknowingly captivated my heart. Thankfully, my father did not turn the music off. I never forgot that day nor the song. 
             Nearly twenty years would pass before I retold this story for the first time to my wife while playing 'Cathy's Clown' from a recently-purchased Everly Brothers greatest hits album. Astonished, my wife began to ask several questions: 'Where was the beer/soda mart located? What color and kind of car was the girl sitting in?' and 'Which eye did you say the girl had a patch on?' To my amazement my wife Kathy admitted to frequenting the same beer/soda mart with her father who drove a red 1967 Buick convertible at a time when she had an infected left eye requiring a patch. I strongly suspect that the little girl was in fact my current wife, Kathy. We both agree." -- John  in Wisconsin           

             Most of us have at least one experience of our own which music helps us to remember.  Maybe it was a song playing over the radio during your first dance, or that song that was playing on your first solo drive in a car.  What ever it is, that song, THE song will always make us remember these experiences.  So, what’s your song?