Elvis | johnageddes

Tonight I came across a box of about 150 old 45 RPM records that I had not listened to for a very long time. I ended out picking out several that were songs I listened to in my early teen years – pre-Beatles – from the summers of 1960 to 1962.

They reminded me of warm summer nights at our cottage at Bluewater Beach on the outskirts of Goderich, Ontario. My friends and I would gather in the evening on a piece of dirt behind the Nothof family cottage and set a record player in the window so we could hear. We would dance to the same few records over and over. And over.

There was a restaurant on the highway that had a Juke Box and every month some guy would come and change the records. We would find out when he was coming and ride our bikes out to the restaurant and he would sell us the records he was replacing for a quarter. Treasures.

Tonight when I listened to Elvis singing I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You I could close my eyes and sway and sing the words and re-live dancing huddled over Ruth Ann Nothof. Where is she now?

The music brought back such vivid memories. Almost sixty years ago and the recollection is as clear as a bell. I still know all the words and even know where each little scratch is on the record. Several of the records have little pieces of adhesive tape with my name written on them. My writing has not changed that much in all those years.

What a treat (on the eve of my 71st birthday) to spend an hour or two with this music. And to remember these moments from my youth. Could be yesterday.

Here are just a few of the songs I listened to. Do you remember any of these?

Check them out below.

Roy Orbison – Crying – July 1961

Elvis Presley – I Can’t Help Falling In Love with You – October 1961

Freddy Cannon – Palisades Park – April 1962

Don Gibson – Sea of Heartbreak – July 1961

Beach Boys – Surfin’ Safari – October 1962

Ricky Nelson – Today’s Teardrops – March 1962

Everly Brothers – Til I Kissed You – January 1960

Del Shannon – Runaway – January 1962

In the last week I have learned three new words. All of them sound like they are close to an obscenity. In some respects they are.

Last month we were bombarded on internet news sites with Miley Cyrus doing a sexually provocative dance that I later learned is called twerking. Not being into Hannah Montana, I didn’t exactly know who Miley Cyrus was before all this twerk hit the fan. At least I am not admitting to knowing who she was. In my day the twist was sexually provocative. And Elvis Presley’s hip gyrations were deemed unsuitable for the Ed Sullivan show so they only screened him from the waist up. It seems that the dance form is prone to pelvic thrusts and rotations as some sort of warm up to something else. The twerk is just the latest name for something that has been around for quite a while. And Miley appears only to lack subtlety and talent rather than be doing anything new.

Today in the news it was an anti-fracking protest in New Brunswick that gained attention. I was caught pondering WTF (what the frack) was all about. Turns out it is some process whereby pressurized liquid is injected into rock, fracturing it and opening up small veins in the rock along which hydrocarbons and gasses can be extracted. At least that is what I think it is.

If life hands you lemons, make lemonade. If you get salt…why not a salt lake?

It kind of reminds me of what I learned happened mining salt in Tuzla, Bosnia. This region had a lot of salt under the ground (Tuz, I think, is an arabic word for salt) and they had been extracting it by putting water down underground, dissolving the salt and withdrawing it. Buildings that had sunk right into the ground, the dissolved salt forming a kind of crater. Whoops. The town, ever resourceful, turned the area into a salt lake for swimming and as a tourist attraction.

I don’t think George W is actually phubbing. He is trying to figure it out.

And then there was a CBC show this week on The Current on Phubbing. I hope I never become a phubber. It refers to snubbing someone in a social circumstance by paying more attention to your phone. You know the people – the ones who take their phones out and put them down on the table beside their plate when you go out for dinner with them. The people who suddenly are talking to someone else when you are strolling beside them. The people who interrupt your conversation to read and answer a text from someone obviously more important than you. I didn’t know that this ignorant behaviour had a name to it. But now I know. And so do you.

There is even an anti-phubbing website (stopphubbing.com) and Facebook page (Stop.Phubbing) dedicated to pointing out and decreasing this antisocial behaviour. It has downloads for posters for restaurants or table cards you can put out at a wedding to discourage phubbing. Something that Sage Flowers could offer, perhaps, along with the beautiful bouquets.

If I EVER Phub you, please cut me to shreds over it. And if you EVER do it to me, you can expect the same. I will tolerate you Fracking me and even twerking me from time to time but thumbs down on Phubbing.