If It Didn't Suck....

I was watching something on VH1 about Fleetwood Mac, and was taken with how 1970's everything was. How there was a scent, a sound and flavor of it all, that I could remember though I was only born in 1970. Then I was reminded of the dulcet tones of Freddy Fender (whom I did not know passes last year) singing "Before the next teardrop falls" It came out around 1974 but was played on jukeboxes until the late 70's which is when I heard it and heard it often. So at 7 or 8 I was listening to Mr. Fender on an old 45 played from a jukebox in a bar.

Nicky, a friend of my mothers, used to babysit back then and he would bring me to the bar which was his second home, though he spent more time there than home. When I hear the song I am taken back to those times. Warm beer,cigarette smoke, sweat and desperation assault the olfactory. I can see the shuffleboard table next to the jukebox and some men playing pool all in leather jackets that seem to look plastic to me in my poloraid memory.

I can hear Freddy wailing as the bartender would let me draw on the backs of Reingold coasters as Nicky Babalooch (not sure the of the spelling but its the italian word for snail cause he was slow as shit) would fall deeper and deeper into a pool of his own drool as his stupor took hold.

The woman at the bar, at the end of the bar, who sat in the same seat night after night and would go home sometimes with a different man, would talk to me. I remember she had too much makeup on and look younger from my stool but when I got close could see she was even older than my mother was at the time. Delores was her name and I remember she told me once that if you drink too much your tonsils grow back.

I smiled and thought she was stupid. I eventually woke Nicky up and we played shuffle board. Every time I was at that bar it was the same thing, and that song must have been played a dozen times, every time.

"I'll be there before the next teardrops falls...." and even the verses that were sung in Spanish were as powerful now as they ever were and I can see why the song was played ad-nauseum, and while songs are truly the most powerful harbingers of memories
it seems that these are some that I shouldn't have. Or perhaps I should be thankful for them as any other.