BoomerZoo Almanac for February 4-10, 2007: You’ll have to wash first if you want to hold my hand
Music really does invoke memories, and among Americans, the Baby Boomer generation hit the jackpot. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I grew up in a fairly small town. Transistor radios were still too expensive for kids to own in 1964, and I was much more into sports than music at that time. Still, I was pretty used to Elvis and Neil Sedaka when along came these Beatle guys with their weird haircuts. We watched them on The Ed Sullivan Show in early February, shortly after they arrive in New York for the very first time. We tried to listen to them, but that just wasn't possible, which was maybe why I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. I think they showed up at the right time, though. By then, we were ready for something to take our minds off the assassination of our young president. My mother really liked all kinds of music, but my dad was more of an American Bandstand-type guy. He was happy as long as the music was easy to dance to. We had a beautiful cabinet-style radio/record player, and Mom owned a bunch of 78s and a few LPs. We also owned one—that I can remember—children’s record. Surprisingly, this was not Teddy Bear’s Picnic. The song on our record was Dan, Dan, the Fireman. The record itself was red, which we thought was way too cool. I googled this song, but about half of what I got back looked like it could be porn. The one Web site that had a children’s song about Dan the Fireman didn’t have MY song about Dan the Fireman. Mine had a siren, and this one just had a dog named Bud.
Going back to how much we’re influenced by music, the weirdest thing about the whole Dan the Fireman song is that I have a brother named Dan, who became a fireman.
