I Love You Too Confessions of a Serial Marrier - The Prequel part 2

My earliest memories of life are music and the smell of a swamp cooler. My father was a member of the SPEBSQSA when I was just a toddler. SPEBSQSA, you ask? Yes, and I am not making this up, The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America. It sounds better if you say it with a southern accent. OK, everyone say it with me, "Sasightee for the Presavation and Encurgement of Baber Shop Qwartet Sangin' in Amerca."

I have a vivid memory of lying under the ebony six foot grand piano in our small living room and absorbing the descending vocal chords of Tumblin' Tumble Weeds and Lida Rose. There is something about the blending of four voices singing in perfect barber shop style intervals that produces an overtone that isn't even really there. The fifth tone. It makes the hair on the back of your  neck stand up. I was hooked. Harmony was the greatest invention of mankind.

When I was three years old my father, an engineer at the huge "bomber plant" as it was known, had to travel to White Sands New Mexico to conduct missile testing. The demands of the tests required him to be away for about six weeks. My mother, as most of the wives of men on the team, was not about to stay alone with her children for that length of time. We packed up our worldly goods and went to Cloudcroft New Mexico to live in the Buckhorn Cabins for the duration of dad's assignment.

One evening Dad was in the cabin's kitchen eating Cheese Whiz on saltines. I wandered in to pilfer a cracker and he sang my favorite Everly Brothers song. "I can make you mine taste your lips of wine anytime night or day. Only trouble is Cheese Whiz I'm dreaming my life away". This, my readers, is hilarious when one is three years old. A pun! I got it! I laughed and he sang it again and again. I sang it with him. I sang the harmony. He looked and me and said, "sing that again". We did. "You have a great ear", said my dad.

That explains it, I thought. I'm gifted! I have talent! I am pretty sure I strutted in my romper.

While this may seem small, very, very small. I had a new sense of life. Music was my favorite thing and I could sing. Dad said so. Dad is a musician so he would know. And so at the age of three I began my wait. I was willing to be patient. Someday, I was going to be famous. Move over, Rosemary Clooney, here I come.