Pour a glass, cup or mug of your favourite and get comfortable. In this week’s column we’ll be taking some trips by canoe and car. Each trip has a song associated with it.
The year is 1968. After driving Highway 400 northward for about 216 km, we’re in the District of Muskoka. We slip the canoe into the placid Moon River. “It’s late in the afternoon, so we’ll do a U-turn before we reach Georgian Bay. Somewhere along the way we’ll make a fire and fry up these steaks with some onions.”
The setting sun, the full moon slowly lifting above the pine-punctuated horizon and the crackling fire cast a spell upon us. Time meant nothing. To make an idyllic story short, I’ll just tell you that we got back to the car at 300 am.
I return every time I hear Andy Williams or Audrey Hepburn sing Mancini’s “Moon River”, I return to that evening, that moon and my companion of long ago.
Next song, another place, but no companion: the year was 1969. After driving north on California’s El Camino Real (Coastal Highway 101), I was exhausted. It was dark. I found a single lane dead-end gravel lane, hoping to get a much-needed sleep in my 1966 VW.
Unknown to me, it was a service road for the main railway line between LA and San Francisco. Every half-hour or so, I was shaken awake by a speeding train hurtling through the darkness, its horn warning any user of the nearby level crossing that it was approaching.
I awoke early next morning, in a fatigued stupor, with no idea how to get to the next town on my planned route. I stopped at the nearest gas station, asking, “Do you know the way to San José?”
The attendant was much sharper than I was. With a smirk, he replied, “Do you want me to sing it? I see your Ontario plates. Are you just a bit lost?”
Just a year earlier, Burt Bacharach had composed this catchy tune for Dionne Warwick. Hal David provided the lyrics which described the California lifestyle to a T.
Another stop on life’s musical road trip took me to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1972. It was near the end of our 45-day exploration of the Atlantic provinces. It was time to say farewell to Nova Scotia. A hurried drive back to our Toronto home and jobs was ahead of us.
The curtain was about to fall on the Fishermen’s Festival. Because it was an open-air event, there was no curtain. However, in its place, a dense fog was starting to descend over the ridge of hills that formed the concert’s natural amphitheatre. The crowd paused in their retreat to their cars when they heard Ann Murray start singing her last piece, “Farewell to Nova Scotia”. So many of its lines still resonate in me: yes, “The sun was setting in the west…Will you ever heave a sigh or a wish for me?” Of course I do. Sometimes I even cry. “Farewell, farewell to Nova Scotia’s charms, for it’s early in the morning and I’m far, far away.” To be exact, 1,874 km far away.
And now, it’s your turn. I want you to tell me about your place that has a song pairing: nuthilltoo@gmail.com, or if you prefer, write it on the back of a crisp fifty-dollar bill, then mail it to Box 623, Ingleside, Ontario K0C 1M0.
