Sibling Assignment #67: The Drifters: An Awakening

The sixty-seventh sibling assignment comes from InlandEmpireGirl. Here's the prompt:

What songs take you back to a summer growing up?

Share the song and the memories that are attached to it.

InlandEmpireGirl remembers jukeboxes and Todd Rundgren here and Silver Valley Girl recalls Captain and Tenille here.

When I was ten years old, I'm not sure I knew yet how extraordinary it was if our family did something out of the ordinary.

I knew that every summer Dad got a two week vacation and that we piled into whatever model of Chevy we owned at the time, left Kellogg, breathed in clouds of second hand cigarette smoke, endured the August heat, felt like puking, and made our way to Orofino, Idaho to see Grandma West and family and then reversed field and traveled to Spokane to see Grandma Woolum.

In 1964, we did something different for the only time I can remember in all the years we vacationed in Orofino and Spokane, before and after '64.

We crawled over Lookout Pass and motored the wilds of US Highway 10 the approximately 140 unknown miles from Kellogg to Missoula, MT. Mom and Dad chain smoked. Mom braked the floorboard of the passenger's side even more than usual.

It felt like we were going to Flushing Meadows to the New York World's Fair to see the Carousel of Progress.

Silver Valley Girl had just turned a year old. I doubt she remembers much about this odyssey to Missoula. For me and InlandEmpireGirl, our visit with the Runnings family meant listening to Dean Martin croon "Strangers in the Night"while driving to fish the Clark Fork for crappie with Ron, our first go at putt putt golf, hearing our father fall drunk and naked down the Runnings' basement stairs, and an enchanted visit to the bucolic wonders of Mother Goose Land in nearby Lolo. (This picture is not of me; it's a generic post card of Mother Goose Land.)




But it wasn't until we left Missoula, had scaled the Lolo Pass, and were coasting along the Clearwater River on Highway 12 that a single song awakened me to the pleasures of pop music.

You'd think this awakening would have happened back on February 9th or 16th or 23rd when The Beatles appeared on consecutive Sundays on the Ed Sullivan Show; you'd think it would have happened around April 4th when The Beatles occupied all five top positions on Billboard's Hot 100 or a week later when they held 14 positions on the Hot 100.

You'd think hearing Debbie Schaffer and Karen Ives singing Beatle songs at the teatherball pole on the Sunnyside school playground would have awakened me.

But The Beatles didn't do it.

The Drifters did.

I didn't even know for sure what a boardwalk was. Once when we visited Uncle Bob and Aunt Ronnie in at their trailer in Elk River the town still had wooden sidewalks, but I couldn't imagine anyone meeting underneath them, let alone "having some fun".

So it didn't matter if I knew what "Under the Boardwalk" meant. Something in the rhythm and harmonies and sound of that song jolted me awake, jolted a new love in my heart and from that moment forward I began listening to pop and rock music with a zeal I told no one about.

"Pretty Woman", "Ringo", "Leader of the Pack", "Get Off of My Cloud", "Wooly Bully", "You Really Got Me", "Downtown", the Beach Boys, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, The Animals, all styles, all songs, whether "Tobacco Road" or "The Name Game", I loved new songs and loved hearing on KWAL's evening pop music show what the week's number one song was and talking about it with Scott when we walked to school in the morning or with Valerie and Claudia, InlandEmpireGirl, and the Absec boys when we talked under the streetlight in front of Mr. Anderson's house.

That day on Highway 12 somewhere near Kamiah or Kooskia had a lasting impact, an impact I love to this day. I'm an almost indiscriminate lover of music and songs.

I love the geniuses like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and The Beatles and I love Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow and I love Journey and Asia and Toto and I love hearing Eddie Vedder and the Drive By Truckers. I enjoy the Bee Gees, pre-disco and disco. I love Donna Summer. I once thought "Precious and Few" was the greatest song ever written and once listened to Bread's Greatest Hits in a motel room I lived in with a black light on.

I like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, and Wishbone Ash.

I don't know exactly why I think The Drifters started me off right. Something about "Under the Boardwalk" opened me up, freed me to enjoy music whether it's Joni Mitchell or Olivia Newton John.

I usually keep my indiscriminate tastes in music secret. I enjoy listening to friends rhapsodize about how great The Who are or about the sublime pleasures of The Grateful Dead or Phish.

These friends have principles. They have reasons for why they love what they do and can cite evidence to support their assertions and justify their taste. They also know how to rip what hate.

But, if I were to pipe in and say I really like Steve Miller or get a kick out of Cyndi Lauper or love listening to old Herb Alpert and the Tiajuana Brass tunes, I'm stuck as to why.

It was like when I first heard "Under the Boardwalk".

I just like how they sound.