Anyone who has known me for very long knows of my love for music. It started at a very young age. Some of my earliest memories of music in my life are my mom playing the huge wooden console radio that sat in the corner of our dining room. WAKR was the station and that was back in the day when they played all the top hits. As she would lay out sheets on the dining room table and sprinkle them, one of her favorite songs would come on the radio. As she would be ironing sheets, I would be playing on the floor near her and we would sing "Red Roses for A Blue Lady" by Dean Martin. To this day, I can't hear that song without that vision coming to my mind.
On my brother's thirteenth birthday, I was three and I remember him getting his first record player. It was a portable in a red and white leather case that you had to take the top off of to play records. I think that I loved that gift even more than he did. A few of his first records were some of my favorite. One in particular, Lemon Tree by Peter, Paul and Mary was my absolute favorite. Looking back, I feel bad for my poor brother, every time the record player came out, I would beg him to play that record for me. He finally got so sick of it that he either threw out the record or gave it to a friend. I was never sure which, but I missed that song. From there, I learned the words to most of Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons songs. I still love their music.
For my first five years of school, I went to St. Paul's Catholic School. They never had much in the way of music class. In my fifth grade year, after having five long years of not fitting into the catholic school dogma, my parents finally put me in public school. Much to my delight, they had choir! A class where I could actually get to listen to music and sing for the whole hour! That quickly became my favorite class. From that point on, all I wanted to do was to be able to sing and play instruments. Unfortunately for me, I had relatively little talent in either area, but that never stopped my love and desire for music in my life.
I was never able to take piano or dance like most of my friends did, but that never stopped me! I would tag along with them to their lessons trying to pick up pointers as I sat quietly and watched. When my friends would get new dance costumes, I would gladly take their old ones and I would have them teach me the steps to the dances that they used them for. This led to my love of feeling the music move through my body and moving me to dance. This was one of my requirements when Mountain Man proposed to me. Will you always dance with me? The answer was obviously yes. We've been dancing now for 26 years.
All through the rest of my schooling, I always participated in choir and Singers. I've never figured out if the instructors had pity on me since I had such a sincere love of music or whether they were that desperate for bodies and voices. Either way, I loved every minute of it. I even got to sing a few solos throughout my high school years.
In my early adult life, my love of music stayed strong. I was now able to buy all of the albums then eight tracks and then onto cassettes and CDs that I wanted. My choice of music was widely varied. Once my Mountain Chillin' came along, I made sure that they had a variety of music in their lives also, starting with classical when they were newborns.
As life progresses, as it does sometimes, some of your favorite things fall by the wayside. Life gets too busy to make time for yourself and the things that you love most. This is what happened with me and music. For the last 10-15 years, sadly, music was not high on my priority list. I felt as if I had lost a close friend. A part of me was missing.
As Mountain Man and I are settling into our new house and our new community a little more, we are finding something that I had known in the past but I had not really thought about. The people of the south have music in their souls. They have a great amount of talent, a love and appreciation for it, and a desire to share it. Since we have been in the mountains, my old friend, music, is coming back to live on in my soul again. Every Friday and Saturday evenings, there is a free concert somewhere to enjoy. Fridays are usually at the old court house with a wide variety of music from blue grass to jazz. Saturdays are where everyone of the local bands is playing. The rest of the evenings are a step back to my childhood. We sit on the porch swing and listen to the radio. I still have all of my music collection. The only things that I have gotten rid of were the eight tracks. I was sad about that, but I had nothing left to play them on. I have replaced most of them with either cassettes or CDs.
I am so happy to have my old friend back again. My music fills me up. It moves my soul and more times than not, my feet. Welcome home, my dear friend, welcome home!
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