Here Come The Terrible Twos

I don’t have any memories of seeing Neil Armstrong stepping on to the surface of the moon fifty years ago this evening. I was only five, my sister not yet four, and it’s doubtful that my parents would have tried to keep us awake for the event, which took place just before 11:00 pm Eastern. Unfortunately, I never thought to ask either of them about their recollections after I was grown.

What I do remember is the newspaper from the following day that sat in a basket, along with Mom’s collection of Good Housekeeping magazines, at one end of the couch in our family room in Stanford.

The whole front (I’ve cut off two stories that appear at the bottom: “America Held Its Breath With Tension Of Landing” and “Visionaries Led Humanity To Its Destiny In Stars,” the latter by French sci-fi writer René Barjavel) is devoted to the moon landing, with several of the stories carrying over to the back page. I re-discovered it in a drawer in the basement of my parents’ townhouse four years ago while clearing things out–I have no idea where it resided in the intervening time. News flash: I come by my pack-rattiness honestly.

(A side note: that back page of the Herald informs us that 7/20/69 is also the day on which R&B vocalist Roy Hamilton died, at age 40, from complications related to a stroke. Hamilton had recorded one of the three versions of “Unchained Melody” that were in the Top 10 simultaneously in May of 1955.)

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In other news, this blog is now two years old–time to party!

Like last year, I present the twelve most-viewed articles of the past twelve months:

1) Last year’s July 20 post
2) Saying farewell to the women’s dorm at my alma mater (August 30)
3) The collection of paintings my grandmother produced before my father was born (September 23)
4) Observing the sixtieth anniversary of my in-laws’ wedding (December 27)
5) Remembering the syndicated radio show hosted by Humble Harve Miller I heard back in 76 (June 6)
6) Two of my February charts (it’s on the list courtesy of a link provided by this guy) (February 11)
7) The gift my sister received for her fourth birthday (October 2)
8) That time I recorded my college radio show (August 14)
9) A presentation of moving averages of the number of debuts on AT40 over a twelve-year period (October 7)
10) Looking at odd chart journeys in the late 70s (June 1)
11) The construction of Transy’s campus center, which opened in 83 (December 18)
12) Noticing how a band’s songs appeal—or don’t—on different sides of the ocean (November 25)

And here are ten others I liked, in chronological order of appearance:

1) A guest post from HERC (July 24)
2) The other side of sorority Bid Day (September 16)
3) Re-taking a hike (October 16)
4) Father, son, and their relationship to the college they attended (December 6)
5) The contents of the tape I helped put in the campus center’s time capsule (December 20)
6) The very few Partridge Family trading cards I own (February 21)
7) College visits, past and present (April 7)
8) A retrospective of my mother’s years between high school graduation and marriage (April 12)
9) My father’s health scare and that call in the night (April 14)
10) Remembering a beloved Cincinnati Reds broadcaster (June 10)

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This is post #546; apparently I still think I have things to say. I noted this last year, but it remains true: while this blog is primarily both a memory dump so that my son can know more about his old man’s younger days and a means of dealing with parental loss, it’s also been a vehicle for meeting and exchanging bon mots with fellow music-lovers of a certain age. This last bit has been truly gratifying, and I hope it continues. I do appreciate everyone who has dropped by for my ramblings, be it only once, regularly, or somewhere in between.

I have some goals for the third year. Of course, I plan to continue Destination 89 through the end of December, as I re-live the music and life events of thirty years ago–no promises at this point on a theme for 2020. I’ve got skeletons of a few longer pieces in my head that I hope to flesh out; perhaps in conjunction with that, I plain want to work on improving my writing. And I’m pretty certain that I will do a modest site re-design in the reasonably near future, maybe even upgrading so that visitors don’t have to deal with ads anymore. (Back in March, Facebook decided my URL was not trustworthy any more, and I think that’s affected the nature of traffic–maybe the new domain that comes with an upgrade would overcome that.) There are a few features I’d like to add that might make the site more navigable, too. We’ll see how long it takes to make remodeling a reality.

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In what is apparently now a tradition, here’s our annual visit from the Vulgar Boatmen, a reprise of my first Song of the Day.

Thanks for swinging by–I hope you’ll find it worth your time to come back.