MORE ABOUT THOSE PROSTATE CANCER TREATMENTS

Music to my Years. The mind wanders as the end of treatment approaches

By Jim Higgins

5/3

Every day I get radiation there is this low volume soft rock station playing in the background. Today I heard Neil Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain” and it took me back to London in the mid 70s when I first heard that song. I was working for a tour company—Suntrekkers, Ltd.—turning used double-decker buses into touring buses with roofless upstairs seating—a sun deck if you will—and salvaged aircraft seats installed below. Most lunch times we would pile into an English Ford and head off to some greasy spoon on the East End. On this day, our boss took us all for a liquid lunch at a strip club where a dancer “performed” to the Sedaka tune. It was the first time that I heard it and every time since, it conjures up that image of an undulating girl (probably someone’s Me Maw today) shedding to “Laughter in the Rain.” A few years ago, we saw Neil Sedaka perform in person and I expected to see a half-dressed stripper appear on stage when he started singing “Laughter.” I did not expect my radiation tech team to do the same today.

The first time I heard Little Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips,” I was in the car with my parents heading to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame. I remember nothing about the museum that day but every time I hear “Fingertips,” I see my 16-year old self “grooving” in the front seat of that car between my tolerant parents who allowed me to pump up the volume.

When I hear Peter, Paul and Mary singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” I remember it as the second most requested song at Camp Casey in Korea where I was stationed as a DJ (“Good morning, Tongduchon!”) in the early 70s with the 2nd Infantry Division. Every Thursday was “Donut Dollie Day” at our station when the Red Cross girls would do a three-hour show talking to GIs and taking requests as I ran the board and spun the records. “Jet Plane” was a favorite request of guys shipping out. To this day the song reminds me of heading home from overseas.

One day prepping for the show I came across a song by the Fifth Estate titled “The Mickey Mouse Club March,” a remixed pop version of the TV show theme song. In the military at that time—as probably now—enlisted troops considered petty orders and make-work details as so much “Mickey Mouse.” So, I pulled the LP and played the cut. Soon, enlisted guys were calling in to dedicate the song to their commanding officer or some non-commissioned officer, all in good fun. Of course, the officers did not see the humor in the light-hearted teasing and word came down to the station that the song should “disappear.” The problem for the brass was that the tune was part of an approved American Forces Radio and Television Services (AFRTS) LP. It resided in a forgotten part of our record library that until then nobody had heard.

Well, the “Mickey Mouse Club March” shot to the top of our request line immediately

I was asked more than once to not play the “Mickey Mouse Club March” so I let the Donut Dollies—who were civilians accountable only to the Red Cross—intro it every Thursday. Not long after that as I was preparing to rotate back to the states, I made a couple of copies of the “March” on tape and stashed them throughout the station, sharing their location with my replacement in case the original LP “disappeared.” I learned years later from an enlisted man stationed at Camp Casey after I left that the new guy at the station was taken away one day in a straight-jacket for having played the “Mickey Mouse Club March” non-stop for hours. Poor guy, I wonder where his mind takes him if he hears that tune today. I have not heard it since Korea, but I am sure many GIs stationed near the DMZ with the 2nd Infantry Division in 1972 have memories of all the Mickey Mouse things to which they had to march. "And that’s the name of that tune,” as Baretta would say.

Five sessions to go. Stay tuned.