The Jukebox in My Mind

For reasons unknown a jukebox has been playing in my mind lately along with a few memories. My first jukebox was in a cafe about an hour from home where I sat with my parents and played, relentlessly, the Lennon Sister's "Sugartime." Shortly after that my parents bought a small cafe where the jukebox was perpetually fed with coins painted with a splotch of red which told us it was our money and not a true customer. It was a pretty simple accounting system. The records were changed regularly by a man who came around just for that purpose. But, the song I remember is Lefty Frizzell's "Saginaw Michigan." I have never gotten tired of that song. I still love it after all these years.

In seventh grade, when I thought having a boyfriend might be a good idea, I sat across from Allen at a cafe after our church youth group had taken us down to the YMCA for swimming and general mayhem. Allen is the young man with whom I exchanged a fair amount of kissing back in the days of that youth group; necking was far preferred to bible toting, so that's what I did. On the wall of this cafe was a jukebox that was being fed by the two of us and others sitting in the booth. What I remember was the brief discussion which ensued after the playing of Johnny River's, "Secret Agent Man." Yes, a few fools were certain it was Secret Asian Man, but since I was still considering a future as a secret agent I knew better.

Soon, it turned into the summer of '68 and I'm in an even smaller town where my then current boyfriend was living at the time. He was working at a resort in that same small town so my sister and I went down to a local club another friend's parents owned to hang out while we waited for him. When I walked through the door, my friend, Stan, whom I've talked about more than once on these pages, walked the length of the club with a big smile on his face. Man, he had a nice smile. We stood next to the jukebox on the wall and threw in a coin. What I remember is Bob Lind's, "Elusive Butterfly." We just stood there and listened. He was such a good friend. It's good to have friends like that.