Fooled Around And Fell In Love

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I've been trying to organize things for the past few weeks. We will be moving to Atlanta the second week of June and there is much to organize. While sorting and packing and throwing out, I've been listening to music from the 1970s and 80s. Hearing songs that were popular in my youth and in my 20s bring back memories in a way that nothing else can. It is simply amazing what certain songs will actually do to me. Sometimes, I have to just stop everything I'm doing and sink into the memory. The memory typically intensifies as the song plays and I find myself seeing, smelling and most importantly, feeling exactly what I was feeling at the time.

One such event happened just a week ago as I was sorting through yet more "things" and listening to 1970s top 40 tracks. The song was by a one-hit "wonder" by the name of Elvin Bishop and the title was "Fooled Around and Fell in Love." It immediately transported me to the summer of 1976 and a trip we took to attend the graduation of my sister's then fiancée, Doug as he completed his studies at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was the summer of our Nation's Bicentennial celebration and Gerald Ford was President. I was 11 years old and had just completed my 6th grade year at Holy Rosary Grade School. The song peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts in May of that year and by June it was in heavy rotation. It was on the radio quite frequently (when dad couldn't find a suitable "oldies" station) on that long road trip.

The trip turned out to be our summer vacation as my sister Amy and I were carted from destination to destination including a skin pickling humid Washington D.C. and Colonial Williamsburg as well as the obligatory diversion to Bordentown, New Jersey to see my Grandma Collier and her husband--my step grandfather John. Of course, the main point of the journey was to attend the graduation at Annapolis. Naturally, there are lots of individual memories of this trip but the singular memory I associate with this particular song happened in Annapolis. Why? I can't say. Perhaps the song was playing in the background on someone's radio. Perhaps it had just recently played and was still stuck in my head. We were at a little gift shop--the kind that tourists frequent--on one of the main streets in historic Annapolis. It was hot. Not as hot as it had been in D.C. but still hot. I wandered off on my own and looked at a few of the overpriced trinkets. One of these was a very tiny miniature reproduction of a military cannon. It came in an equally tiny box with a picture of the canon on the front. I was, for whatever reason, simply fascinated with this tiny thing made in Japan. Being a souvenir shop it was ridiculously overpriced. Mom, who usually gave in to my demands, was not budging on this one as she told me "no" repeatedly. Of course, I'd made an art form out of persistence so eventually she gave in and bought the thing for me. I still have this little "toy" in it's original box. I have no idea where it is amongst all these boxes but I'll eventually come across it and, just as the song from so many years ago triggered the memory of that moment in time, the souvenir will do the same--perhaps evoking another memory.

Looking extremely "happy" in this photo most

likely taken by mom at the Smithsonian Institute

Museum of Natural History. June, 1976.

Washington, D.C.

Mom and dad looking snazzy on the trip!

(Pictures of the "miniature hand painted antimony cannon." I finally located several months after this entry. I may have actually been more attracted to the colors on the box than I was to the contents!)

Thomas Boylan · Fooledaroundandfellinlove.WAV