NIGHT WITH NANNY

For my readers -
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Nanny Ethel and I are home for a Friday a summer’s eve.  Pop Herb is at a “meeting” at the Eagles lodge (playing cards) and a while after dinner and the darkness of a summer night comes she says, let’s listen to some music?  

She would bring us some cookies and milk and get out some of her treasured collection of those big 78 rpm RCA's records she stored in her closet.  I loved the dog listening to his master's voice on the label  (They were sold years later for 10 cents apiece at a yard sale when she passed)  She started one going and we would sing along with the tinny sound of her small record player.  The sound out of a three inch speaker was nowhere near as good as a cell phone of today – but we had nothing to compare it to and so we loved it.  There was one song on each side of the heavy discs and you had to flip it over to hear another song.  

And what an eclectic collection she had.  

The oldest one – Enrico Caruso singing something in Italian with the Philadelphia Symphony - I thought it sounded like he was singing in a paper bag not in the great Academy of Music - as reported on the red and gold label.  Hoagy Carmichael was next doing a raspy version of his great tune – Stardust.  Nanny always played that one twice and got a bit misty-eyed over it. 

When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls… – my favorite lyric of all time.  But at 7 I always was wondering why a wall was sleepy?  Next we played Roger Williams Autumn Leaves – even though it was a very warm night in July.   And so it went.  An evening of remembering for Ethel  – of playing the jukebox at Dixie’s tavern and having a high-ball with a cigarette.  

Slow Boat to China…I Walk Alone…Indian Love Call…tunes spun out with lyrics I could understand.  Not one about hating cops or abusing a girlfriend.  This was real sentiment and it was universal.  It was about love gained and lost, happiness and tears.  But mostly about love.  For me – it was about trying to understand the times that produced these melodies and why they made us both feel so good.  I would see the singers in black and white, like most of the movies we saw.

Nanny asked, “Is it too early for some a Christmas carol?” 

“Never,” I said and we sang  Frosty by Gene Autry; It’s Beginning to Look like Christmas with Perry and a slightly off key version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.  Once we got started on the carols it was hard to stop. People walking by must have thought we were a couple of nuts.  But few walked our gravel street on those hot summer nights.

Oh what an evening we had together - one that would make a karaoke devotee envious of our skills. And without TV, Facebook or a bunch of text messages about what somebody had for dinner – those songs were the sound track of my early life…they remain in my head and sometimes I just start singing them again…Sometimes...

 ...I wonder why I spend

The lonely nights dreaming of a song

The melody haunts my reverie

And I am once again with you…