There was a preschool camp, might be called Camp Playmore. We were packed into busses and sang songs traveling over the bumpy gravel roads. When so wee you go with the herd and the herd sung “oh bus driver we sing-a-ling-a-ling with all our hearts for you”, and the world makes sense. There was a water fountain by the washroom and the water tasted like cuts, Leonard Chizda called it blood water, “are you gonna drink the blood water?” Earliest memories of summer. There were 45s in the mess of records belonging to my older teenage brothers. That’s where I discovered Summer In The City by The Lovin’ Spoonful. I was amazed by the descending minor groove, the harmonies, the car horns in the bridge and John Sebastian. Bought his solo records later when I was fifteen and one time walked in on his show at Hugh’s Room, but not as interesting as that group and that hit and the way the world made sense when I listened to it. The first Blue Rodeo show out of town was at a hotel in Kingston. Somebody told us Zal, the lead guitarist from the Lovin’ Spoonful, owned a restaurant down the street called Chez Piggy. My new goal in life was to meet Zal but it never happened. The closest I ever got was standing next to Jackie Burroughs outside Passe Murraille a year before she died. I didn’t know who she was but she looked familiar and dangerously thin. I knew she was an actress, there was no mistaking her face. The next year I saw that face in the paper and read her obituary and realized who she was and the 60s world where she an Zal became parents. “Walking on the sidewalk hotter than a match head” that’s equal to the epic structure, the smash-em-up one minute, bring-it-all down the next and instrumental ending of the first chorus is like a spy movie. As a teenager I wished I had been able to take in the 60s. It looked so much more meaningful than the things my contemporaries celebrated in 70s high school, like Aerosmith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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