Just drove across the state to Onalaska, Wisconsin. On the way, I was surfing the FM dial looking for tunes for the trip. I forgot to charge up my iPod before I before I left and the battery died about 90 minutes into the trip. Ena and I swapped cars for the day so she had my car which has an iPod charger and my iTrip. Re: the original iTrip – it kinda sucks. The sound quality isn’t that great and you have to play a song file to changes the frequency that it broadcasts on.

Back to the topic at hand. I was surfing looking for tunes as I was driving. There is lots of God and Country out here in Southwest Wisconsin. I did run across the Dan Fogelberg Song “Longer”. It goes something like “Longer than, there are fishes in the ocean, higher than the… etc.” It was a pop hit love song in… let’s see I can figure this out – 1976. I began to laugh. This song was a HUGE hit and was everywhere (at least in Salt Lake City) in my 9th grade year. That was the year of my very first girlfriend – Jennifer Mills. We heard this song everywhere we went. We joked (or where we serious?) that it was “our song”.

There was a brief rush of memories – walking in the Spring back to her house and we got caught in a rain storm that drenched us both in a couple of minutes. She was wearing a lemon yellow cotton top which was soaked through. We reached her house and she said, “I think I’ll change my clothes”. I said, “you don’t have to as far as I’m concerned.” She laughed. I remember her making a carob cake (better for you than chocolate) and her wearing Earth Shoes. It was those 70s I’m talking about. She was very cute. My brother and his friends all commented on how cute she was.

It is amazing that a little snippet of a ghastly puberty love song can bring back such a rush of memories.

– JJP