Changing Times, Changing Places

1. Make It With You by Bread

2. Make Me Smile by Chicago

3. (They Long To Be) Close To You by The Carpenters

4. No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature by The Guess Who

5. 25 Or 6 To 4 by Chicago

6. Up Around the Bend by Creedance Clearwater Revival

7. Woodstock by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

8. Spirit In the Sky by Norman Greenbaum

9. American Woman by The Guess Who

10. ABC by The Jackson 5

11. Evil Ways by Santana

12. No Time by The Guess Who

13. Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel

14. Mama Told Me (Not To Come) by Three Dog Night

My father's work took us back to Pennsylvania after my fourth grade year. I was sad to be leaving my new friends, but excited to reconnect with those friends I had had since I could remember. "Would they be different after only a year," I wondered. Grandpa and Grandma Ristau helped find a house for us. It was just down the road from their house, almost right across the street from where we lived when I was born, which was also the house in which my mother had been born. Our new house was a grand old home, built somewhere around the 1900's, I think. Lots of oak woodwork throughout, a magnificent porch on the front, a stairway that split and went both into the kitchen and down to the front entry. There were sliding pocket doors to divide the dining room from the living room. There was a third floor, or walk-up attic, but we used it for a loft type of bedroom for the boys. I loved this house from the minute I saw it (and made sure no ghosts lived there!) It was the old Keenan house and was on Keenan Street in Rogertown, between Clarendon and Warren, not too far from the Glade Bridge. We would live here until I left home to get married, making it the place I lived the longest in my childhood. Therefore, it is "home" to me. So many memories took place in that home. . . . .

Although I had only been gone a year, so much had changed! Actually, I had been gone from the Clarendon friends for two grades, so it was almost like I was brand new! I would attend school back up in Clarendon but they had built a huge new school! It seemed so modern compared to the old one. Some of the old teachers were still there. Mrs. Hansen still taught art. Mrs. Grosch was still there. Mrs. Brindis was there and, of course, my great aunt, Mrs. Maurer was still there! She taught 5th grade. Would I get her? She had taught some of my older brothers so I knew it wasn't out of the question. Well, I didn't get her. We rotated to her for American History and I learned my state capitols from her, but my main teacher was Mr. Davis. Before, the younger grades alone had been at the school in Clarendon with the older grades either in Tiona or at Lincoln. Now we were all together! Most of my friends didn't know my aunt before because she taught the older grades at Lincoln. Most of them didn't really even know that she was my aunt. Aunt Gwen had a reputation for being very strict. Some downright didn't like her. I loved her so much and it made it difficult for me to hear the kids (at the beginning of the year) talk badly about her. Yes, she was very strict, but if you did your work and followed the rules she was lots of fun. She had been the first married woman in the area to be allowed to be a principal. Back then, if you married, you were pretty much expected to quit and stay home. Sometimes you'd be allowed to teach a little while, but it was unheard of to get married and then actually advance to a position such as principal! But she did! She watched out for me but didn't treat me specially. Eventually, everyone knew she was my aunt so the bad talk came to a stop, at least around me! The down side of having my aunt in the room next door is that if I got in trouble, I knew my mom and dad would be finding out about it. There were no secrets! More about that in another entry!

The kids remembered me, which was nice. My best friends, Kathie Notoro, Meg Walker, and Julie Albaugh were still there and we resumed our friendships. I didn't live in town like before so it was more difficult to get together outside school hours, but we managed! Like most friendships, we had good times and then we'd hit spells where one or more wasn't talking to one or more of the others! You could tell if we were fighting because we'd make sure our desks didn't touch. It was silly, but, hey, we were kids! I can think of very few memories where at least one of those three weren't involved.

I knew most of the other kids, too, but some I was just getting to know. Clarendon was a tough little town. I don't think we had gangs, per se, but there were plenty of kids who were "streetwise." They'd had hard lives and lived by hard rules. They weren't opposed to fighting and they let you know that they weren't afraid of you. This made me a little afraid of them, though! There were a few families in town that had a reputation. The parents were rough and the kids even moreso. Some of these kids were in my fifth grade class. They were the little sisters of the bullies in my older brothers' classes. Being the sort of new kid, I guess it was important to them to let me know that they weren't meant to be messed with. One day I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when one of them walked up to me, calm as could be, and before I knew it, she pulled back her fist and then let if fly forward, quick as can be, right in my face. I had no time to duck, to even form the thought in my mind that I was about to be punched! Her fist met my face and it sent me backwards, still in my chair, to the floor. Message received! She got in trouble. She didn't care. Her parents probably didn't care either. Her and I would actually be friendly to each other after that over the years, but I never forgot what had happened and what would happen if I ever did anything to "cross" her.

This playlist marks a very pivotal time of my life. In all of the reflections on my life it seems to break down into what life was like before Arizona and what it was like after. I don't really think that Arizona had anything to do with it, although I did think that for a very large part of my life. But, now, I think if you look at the years, that what was going on is what it mostly dealt with. It was a pivotal time in history. Everything was changing in America. We were saying goodbye to our last shred of innocence - not that reality didn't exist before then - it's just that people got tired of pretending it didn't exist. We took our ever-present smiles off of our faces and put it on t-shirts, wishing everyone a happy day!

Another impression I have of this time was the music. Music was changing. My brother, Ed, was now listening to groups like Creedence Clearwater Revival and Steppenwolf, to name a couple. This music was different. The voices weren't the smooth polish of The Association or The Seekers. The messages weren't about bubble gum or sappy love songs. The songs were increasingly about freedom - from morals, from tradition, from authority. America was fed up with a war that they didn't understand and double standards they were tired of being held to. Voices were raspy and edgy which conveyed the urgency. Beats were primal and driving. References to drugs were either straightforward or in code, introducing new slang to our vocabulary.

Experimentation was everywhere - in music and in social scenes. Drugs seemed to explode on the consciousness of America. Had they always been there and I had just been cocooned enough that I hadn't noticed? Probably - but I just had never been familiar with all this new terminology that was fast becoming part of our everyday language. Horror stories of what people were doing while strung out on drugs caught me completely off guard. People were jumping from windows, crashing to their death, thinking they could fly. The news showed footage from concerts where people were holding down others and shooting them up with drugs. Seemingly everyday, normal people were dying in such tragic ways. We heard of this huge rock concert back east, close to "home," where all of these hippies went to this farm in New York and had a party that lasted for days. Free Love - Peace - was what their banners were proclaiming but it seemed to be anything but peaceful. News coverage was sketchy as to not show the nudity, but you got the idea that there was a whole lotta free love going on there - even my little nine year old mind grasped this. The drugs seemed to make them act so strange. I had a hard time making sense of all of this commotion.

I was approaching my teen years so I would still seek and find my own heart throbs, as does every generation! The Jackson 5 came onto the scene seemingly over night. The Carpenters would provide musical balm for the masses, a respite from protestations and a reminder that, beneath it all, we still liked to sing about love and sweet things, too. Karen Carpenter's voice was as soothing as honey - a comfort. I love songs that are fraught with meaning and leave messages, but, sometimes, you just want to hear a song that is easy and doesn't demand or command. The Carpenter's are one of the main groups that filled that niche in the music industry at the time. Bread provided easy listening as well and I was a huge fan of them as well.

Personally, from the rock scene, I was loving the songs of The Guess Who, the first Canadian rock band to really hit it big in the USA. Burton Cummings' vocals still please my ear today. His original rendition of American Woman is unmatched. Lenny Kravitz did a nice cover - I enjoyed it greatly - but, honestly, Burton makes that song come alive. Who didn't love CCR? They are iconic of the era. Three Dog Night would go on to have many iconic songs as well. The story of the song on this playlist is one I pondered often as I was growing up. What would I do if I went to a party and found out that drugs were being used? How would I react? Would I be able to recognize that that's what was going on? Really - this song made me think a great deal about that situation. Simon & Garfunkel were in a class by themselves with their amazing vocals and orchestral arrangements. This whole playlist is a testament to the powerful music I am so proud to proclaim as "my" era. The music was rich and deep and would give birth to a place in history unmatched since, in my opinnion.