Our coverage of the conflict in Iran will resume soon. First, a brief digression…
When I was 10 or 11 years old, my parents bought a shack on a good-sized lake near our home in South Dakota, where, from then on, we lived in the summer. It was rather primitive: we didn’t have hot running water, so my mother boiled water on the stove to cook with. We had no shower or bathtub, so we rinsed off in the lake. We had no telephone and, obviously, no television set. Our roof didn’t keep the rain out. When it stormed, my brothers and I would scramble for pots and pans and put them under the streams of water that came through the ceiling. On most days, we didn’t need to put on clothes, as a swimsuit would do. Our parents had a bed, but my brothers and I slept on Army cots. We had a rowboat and a small speedboat, and we built rafts to pole around the lake on.
In short, it was heaven.
At around the same time, the transistor radio came into common use. For the first time, it was possible to listen to music on the radio wherever we were, and I became acquainted with the popular music of the day. The first number one song that I really remember was Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” It was released in June 1962 and dominated the charts that summer. For me, hearing it still evokes memories of long summer days in a bygone era.
This lip-synced version is the original recording. My favorite part is the two black girls off to the left who aren’t sure whether they are supposed to pretend to be singing backup or not:
Neil Sedaka died yesterday at the age of 86. RIP. His signature song is an artifact of a better time.
