Memories . . .

It's funny the things we remember from when we were kids, isn't it?  Yesterday, when I was looking for a song, I nearly picked the one I'm sharing with you today, but then made a different choice at the last minute.  And then, later yesterday I learned that Gerry Marsden had died. 

Ferry Cross the Mersey was a hugely popular song in the mid-1960s when I was a kid, and I have a very vivid memory attached to it.  We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and a favorite thing to do that didn't cost anything was to go downtown and see the Buckingham Fountain.  My mom would say, do you want to go and see the fountain?  And of course I always wanted to go, because there's nothing quite like it on a summer night when it's lit up.  Plus, it was time with my mom, and we often would stop for a Rainbow Cone on the way back, which was an even bigger treat.  

My mom would usually skip the expressway downtown.  The Fountain is accessible from Lake Shore Drive, and the best way to get there was to get off the expressway just south of 95th Street, go to 95th Street, and then take Jeffrey Blvd. north up to the Drive, as it's called in Chicagoland.  Here's a relatively little known fact - the best view of the Chicago skyline is from the south end of the Drive heading north.  There's a spot that curves to the right, and the entire skyline just unrolls in front of you . . . but I digress.  

Anyway, she would often take Jeffrey Blvd. instead of the expressway, I think probably because she and my dad lived in South Shore when I was born and before he died.  Jeffrey Blvd. is major thoroughfare in that neighborhood, and I think she just liked to drive nearby.  The north end of Jeffrey ends at the south end of Jackson Park and turns into Lake Shore Drive, and then you keep heading north to eventually get to Buckingham Fountain, which brings me to the memory that has been attached to this song for my entire life.  

We were coming home, heading south on the Drive after having seen the fountain and we got all the way south on Jeffrey Blvd., back to 95th Street where there was a Walgreens store.  I think it's still there.  I remember we wanted to go to Walgreens for some reason (I no longer remember why we wanted to stop), but as we pulled into the Walgreens parking lot, this song came on.  And we stayed in the car to hear it all (my mom liked it too, I think).  Waiting in the car for a song to end was something you did back in the 60s and 70s - oh hell - sometimes I still do it.  We sat there, in the parking lot, listening to Gerry and Pacemakers singing about how much they loved the place from whence they'd come.  I think about that and about how much I love where I come from.  I mean, Dorothy said it best, I think - There's no place like home . . . 

The song ended, and we went into the store.  I've no idea what we bought, but it doesn't matter.  What matters is that I can see my 9-year-old self sitting in the front seat of the car, listening to this song with my mom, in the Walgreens parking lot.