Sister Golden Hair
A 10-Day Music Memory Series
Well, I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed.
To the contrary, I was rarely depressed. My parents took care of the adulting while loving their only child, me (for the moment), as they worked through their twenties.
Our split-level house lay on a sprawling rural lot a hundred yards from my grandparents’ place. We overlooked rolling acres bounded by meadows bursting with clover, butterflies, and red wing blackbirds.
Music! There was always music playing. Radios, the woodgrain console stereo, and my very own Fisher-Price record player. Oh how I loved playing records! My own Disney tunes, K-Tel superhits, and Star Wars soundtrack headlined my playlists.
I’m forever thankful my parents encouraged me to play their records: Elton, Billy, the Beatles, even the Neils, Diamond and Sedaka.
One song headlines my memory of those glorious five years: America’s 1975 hit “Sister Golden Hair.”
Well, I keep on thinkin’ ‘bout you
Sister Golden Hair surprise
And I just can’t live without you
Can’t you see it in my eyes?
The singer’s affection for this girl flew over my seven year old head. But I soaked in the lyrics and carefree rhythm that conjured imagery of golden hair blowing in the wind cruising down a highway.
Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you meet me in the air?
The air. That’s where my mind begins every time Gerry Beckley’s overdubbed 12-string steel guitar starts the song.
Imagine a camera shot gliding in from 500 feet. My view descends smoothly, speedily above the road, up the gentle hill over my grandparents’ house, onto the endless grass and to the wooden fort my dad built for me.
It’s always a sunny day in peak summer. Marshmallow cumulus clouds paint the blue skies. I’m sipping a thick bottled Coca Cola. Grandma and Grandpa’s two German Shepherds and our two miniature schnauzers rule the range and follow me everywhere.
Now I’ve been one poor correspondent
And I’ve been too, too hard to find
But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind
I have been a poor correspondent, not taking a peek back there in decades. But kind of like Beckley’s lyrics, it doesn’t mean the place “ain’t been on my mind.”
What memories or feelings does music conjure up for you?
CONTEXT: This is part of a series of music memories, inspired by Coffee with Jaimee.
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