Do you remember the first song you ever heard? I mean the first song you recognized as a commercial entity on the radio. Mine was “Those Were The Days” by Mary Hopkins.

I’ve always been morning person. As a child, I would wake up, crawl into my parents’ bed with my dad. My mom would already be up getting ready in the bathroom. When she was done, she would go downstairs to make my dad’s breakfast – which consisted of coffee and oatmeal.

While Mom was getting ready, Dad would lay in bed having his morning cigarette with the clock radio playing. Most of the time, I would crawl in on Mom’s side while Dad faced the western window, which was usually dark or beginning to gray with the morning light.

When the room was darkest, it would always be lit by a crack of light coming from under bathroom door. With that I could see the smoke dance softly between Dad and the western window. The lit tip of Dad’s cigarette would magically dance up to the darkness of the ceiling. I would nestle under the sheets and blankets and squeeze up against Dad. Sometimes he would reach around and pat my leg but most of the time we laid together listening to the clock radio.

Dad would lay in bed propped up on his right elbow smoking. Occasionally knocking his ashes in one of those old beanbag ashtrays that he kept in the bedroom. The clock radio sat in the headboard of their bed with its analog face and its glow-in-the dark painted hands staring back at us. I would watch the second hand tick around its face from the bathroom light, while I was laying in mom’s pillows under the sheets and blankets. And cigarette smoke continue to rise and slowly curl around Dad and I.

When this song would come on, I remember wondering what ‘days’ she was singing about. The song was released in August of 1968. That would have made me 5 years old. The mandolin gave the song it’s ‘old country’ sound. I hadn’t learned about Europe yet, but I knew about the dreaded gypsies from my monster movies and they always played this kind of music – the music from the ‘old country’. Of course, that depended if that particular monster movie had enough budget to waste on gypsy music from the ‘old country – most didn’t.

I thought the woman in the song sounded sad. Obviously things were not going well for her. As a kid, it seemed adults always thought things were so much better in the past. Yet when I saw them, they seemed pretty happy – to me, a five year kid. This woman seem to be thinking of the recent past – because she was still young, or so she said she was.

There were lots things I didn’t know about this song. For example, that it was the first single from the newly formed Apple label that started by The Beatles. That Paul McCartney produced the single. And that Mary Hopkins covered the Byrds’ “Turn Turn Turn” for the flip side.

As I kid, I was learning that music existed outside of our church. That it was more than just commercial jingles, or interludes on our favorite sitcoms and morning cartoons. I learned that I could come back tomorrow morning and the clock radio could play this song again. And I would think about the sad girl and the old days.

And in this realization, as the song played and I would follow the smoke trail from my dad, to the window, to the clock radio and through the darkness of the room. And I would watched the little red tip dance from my dad’s face to his extended arm. My dad must have been very tired in the morning because occasionally he would miss the ash tray. When it was his turn to get into the bathroom, he would leave the bed and I would take his place. Next to me would be burn holes in the sheets where he had missed the ashtray with his red tip. And I would finger the burn holes, despite my mom constantly telling me not to.

Eventually I would traipse downstairs into the kitchen where Mom would be making his oatmeal. I would sit on the bench that dad had made for all us kids to sit around the kitchen table. I would talk to my mom and our days would begin. I don’t remember hearing that song any other time but those mornings, or maybe it was the fact that those memories were just so strong.

One of music’s strongest features is how it can capture memories. So when we hear that song that memory is released. And in the release a desire to relive it is passed through to the song. Most music people, which I consider myself, will seek out that song so they can relive that memory. Thus begins a music expedition, a quest. Back then you were only given hints – some times a brief melody or a few lyrics. mere clues to what the song is called. Some music expeditions will last for years. Some as short as talking to a friend at a party. Nowadays, these expeditions are solved with a google search or app. The enjoyment of this expedition has been lost in this internet age.

For me this particular expedition lasted 17 years. While I eventually found out is was a song by Mary Hopkins, it was not easy to get a copy of the single. My expedition ended when I explained to my friend Ralf that I was on this expedition for this song. And as we were discussing our first musical memories at his house one evening and I told him about “Those Were The Days.”

He knew the song very well.  He said “My parents used to play that song all the time all the time. My dad’s old tailor buddies would come over and they would all be singing it, especially my mom. Hold on.” And he left the room and reappeared minutes later holding the original 45 in his hand – “Here ya go.”

I had not heard the complete song since I was child. We played in Ralf’s room that night and I was transported back to those early mornings as a little boy. The fact that Ralf and I would smoke while we listened to music just completed the transformation. Turning his den to a bedroom of seventeen years ago, with smoke curling in the dark.

And it opened a new perspective to me on this song. I could picture Ralf’s parents and their friends all gathered in a room, in an apartment somewhere on the East Coast, singing their hearts out, as the evening wore on and the drinks loosen their voices. And the next morning, in a little tri-level home in Des Plaines, Illinois a little boy and his dad laid quietly listening to that same song.

Those were the days, my friend.