A Blast from the Past

I may have mentioned in a post awhile ago that I have been participating in the CD trading Web site called Lala. This Web site allows you to post CDs you have and make a list of wants and facilitates trades. They provide the mailing materials and for $1.00 (+$.75 shipping) you get rid of unwanted CDs and get "new" ones. It's great fun. Anyway...I just got Patty Larkin's "In the Square" and am very delighted-here's why. When dinosaurs ruled the Earth and I went away to college I did not have an easy time of it. My original roommate was a disaster, I did not handle well complete freedom well, and my streak of melancholy was a mile wide. Fortunately for me, my roommate swapped with my new best friend who was roommates with my roommate's best friend from high school (both of whom transferred out of school by the next year). So what about the CD?!! So...I'm away and struggling and sad and my uncle sends me $8.00 with instructions to buy Laura Nyro's Eli and the Thirteenth Confession because he has the inside track to Woesville and knows I already listen to Joni Mitchell's Blue more than I should. But Patty Larkin comes to town one night to play our school. She's a Boston-based acoustic singer-songwriter and my gang attends the performance. We LOVE her. I buy the tape, yes the tape, that she sells afterwards. Her songs are witty and political. We are rallied and transported. The one about the mall makes us roll because we hit the Holyoke Mall all of the time when we want to get off campus. Her song "I'm White" is funny, especially to us privileged, intellectual, liberals. It's been almost 22 years since I first heard Patty Larkin and I am in a very different place. That other self is more like a character I recognize from a movie I have seen over and over. When I put the CD in the player and listened to those songs again, it wasn't the struggling or the sadness that I remembered. It was the goodness. It was crisp autumns that I don't have anymore. Driving in my first car (a red Renault Alliance convertible) along winding New England mountain roads with 3 best friends I would have forever (I kept 1 of them). Fresh apple cider from Atkins Farms and homemade fudge...and blue skies that when I see that color, even today, I call it Mount Holyoke Blue. Best $1.75 I spent in a long time.


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