Charloft Saturday

I was born in 1906. Ragtime was popular then but I didn't get to hear much of it growing up in Kansas. My dad heard it once and didn't like it, so that meant we didn't listen to it. We didn't have a phonograph, so it wasn't as if I could save up my money to buy records and play them on the sly. We didn't even have a radio, but Dad did have a guitar and would play us hymns and folk songs on it. That was it. When I moved to Los Angeles in the 20's, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Imagine never being allowed to listen to anything you can dance to and suddenly having everything available to you. It's been decades since I went to a speakeasy and let loose with some pretty girl on the dance floor, so I can't really remember what was popular back then. I suppose if I looked it up, there are some things that would ring a bell or spark a memory.

A year that was important to me was 1989. My boyfriend was killed in October of that year. The one song that I kept playing over and over again when I couldn't do anything but grieve for him was "Miss You Like Crazy" by Natalie Cole.