"The Way We Heard" - All you need is Love- 1967

I placed Shelly, my little white, with brown patch over her left eye, puppy into the basket of my Schwinn bicycle. She settled down, excited for our excursion to the avenue. It was our thing, riding down the sidewalks of Brooklyn, carefully crossing streets, on our way to the stores that lined the shopping avenue.

My little transistor radio next to her in the basket was set to a station that played the top hits. I tuned in a frequency that cleared the static and the familiar drum beat to Little Bit O’ Soul’ came out of its tiny speaker. The sound filled the late summer day as I peddled around people on the sidewalks heading towards my destination, a little record shop located between the toy store and the ice cream parlor on the avenue, half a mile from home.

Music was the heartbeat of my day, with two older sisters at home playing their albums all the time in the large bedroom we shared I was inundated with and, by osmosis, became a fan of their preferred music. Nine and six years younger than my sisters, I was the bothersome kid sister. So, I had a group of my own friends and of course my dog, Shelly, to hang out with, but music was the happy medium that connected us at home. Donovan, Dylan, Baez, and *Sinatra - *my older sister’s favorite singer- and of course The Beatles. Their songs played on a constant loop in our bedroom from morning till night.

Today, I raced down the blocks but used caution when pedestrians were around and flew by when they weren’t. I loved the freedom of riding my bicycle everywhere I wanted to go.  We didn’t have a family car, we had to ride a bus or subway train to get to most places as a family and it was fine to get around that way, but I preferred the feel of the road under my bicycle tires.  

It was already August, in 1967 and only two weeks away from the dreaded first day back to school. I was determined not to think about the looming start to the next school year as I skidded to a stop outside the record store. There were two places in my little community of Brooklyn I loved to visit, this record store, that let me carry my puppy inside, and the local library that understandably didn’t.

Music and reading defined me and apparently today, most of the youth of my neighborhood felt the same way about the former.

The little record store was packed with people looking for a specific single or recently released album of a favorite singer or band.  In front of me a teenage boy  was asking the store owner for The Doors latest single, ‘Light my fire’ and his girlfriend, I assumed it was his girlfriend because they were holding hands, was asking for the Beatles newest Album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I was there to find a single too. I never bought albums because with an allowance of a dollar a week ,  that I usually used on a cheeseburger, vanilla malt and an Archie comic book on Saturdays, made it impossible to save up for a whole album, but a 45rpm was doable.

The singles were in individual square box shelves on a wall with removable labels under each that had the song title and artist on it. It was easy to find a single because they were boxed in alphabetical order by artist.

I scanned past the A’s and found the single I wanted in the B’s and reached up to pull a 45 from the stack. The song had taken up residence in my brain after hearing it on TV. The Beatles had done a national TV show to release it and the radio played it occasionally, but I wanted to own it and play it anytime I wanted to. It had an upbeat sound and a happy message. In fact, the message felt bigger to me than just lyrics of a song. I didn’t know why it felt that way but it did.

My sisters had made me aware that times were volatile, even in my under aged youth I understood that a war was happening that shouldn’t be. Strong opinions between the twenty-something generation and the rest of the population were causing turmoil and protests seemed to be everywhere.

 I wasn’t sure of all the issues but the news every night was hard to watch. So, I didn’t linger after dinner when the news came on the TV. I’d go into the large bedroom and turn on the record player.

Tonight, I put my newest purchase on the turntable and with my adolescent voice sang along to the words, but it was my heart that understood…All we need is love.