The globe-independent. (Hagerstown, Md.) 1943-19??, 1946-11-21

;grarn and remi- &
nisCing about 'AaAss'a
people and events out of the crowd
led past, The music was low and
sweet and geared to my mood and
got TO thinking about how popular
tunes weave themselves into the per
iods of ones life.
! can think of nothing that brings
the past so forcibly to mind as tune.
half forgotten and suddenly heard
again. That night it was the old song
l''Diane," that / hadn't heard or
thought of for years.
Suddenly l was back in third
story walkup on Chicago's Drexel
Boulevard. It wasn't much of an
apartment, as apartments go, two
rooms to be exact, but it was big and
sunny-the once elegant third floor
living room of lovely homeland it
had the added advantage of being q
room with a view.
The big bay window gave on the
boulevard with its endless stream of
traffic and its wide, center parkway,
where nursemaids and mothers con-
gregated with their young of morn
ings and afternoons.
Diane" made me remember how
lovely the boulevard looked from
our windows on rainy nights, when
the sire cts were miraculously
changed from dull concrete to black
satin that caught and tossed back the
golden reflection of the lights and
dulled the slap slap slap of tires to a
soft purr.
When Diane" first swept the coun-
try we were very young and very
poor and having an amazing amount
of fun in spite of it. Big, noisy, 1usty,
breezy Chicago was great advent
ure
Listening to Diane" | remember
6r how on hot summer evenings we
would take our first-born for bus
ride out to Jackson Park and after
she was tucked in bed behind her
screen we would sit on the daybed
in the bay window with our two
good friendS-law students and fra
ternity brothers of my husbands
and harmonic on old school songs
ard fyfpor of tba dow
We worked up some really wicked
harmony ON such mum b ers as
Georgia Moon"-which deserves to
be revived for barber-shop purposes
- the Nebraska University song
(Tom and John were both Nebraska
graduates) and Shelter Me Al
ways" a gommily sentimental Delta
Tau Delta ballad. Oddly enough, al
though we could be heard for quite
a distance up and down the boule-
ward, no one ever complained about
our catterwauling, and the baby
slept blissfully through it all.
In the days of diane" we all used
to save our pennies and treat our
selves to the theatre about once a
month, topping the evening off with
waff1es and coffee in the little shop
next to the Chicago theatre.
My weekly trip to the library was
an event in my life and since the
number of books one could take out
was unlimited, always arrived, huff
ing and putting after the long climb
to our aerie, literally loaded down.
One of the high spots of this weekly
adventure was tea and cinnamon
toast at Huyler's on the Boul Mich
with other poor but gay and stirnulat
ing friends from Indiana.
In the three minutes that the
strains of @Diane" were waiting
through our living room I rernem-
bered all this and a great deal more.
1t all happened more than twenty
years ago. Twenty years, did say?
Nonsense. Twenty minutes,
A little later the radio gave out
with another old favorite, might
and Day" that carries an entirely
different set of memories. This time
the days of the great depression.
What little we had saved had long
since gone. was working on a
newspaper in Anderson, Indiana,
and living with the children at my
grandmother's home in the little
Indiana Quaker village of Pendle-
ton. nearby.