My closet rod fell for the third time in as many days!  Solution?  Replace it with two rolling racks that fit perfectly in the space.  But alas, they buckled, creating a mound of mingled colors and textures that had to be dealt with one more time.

Till someone handier than I can install a stable rod in my bedroom closet, I decided to separate the tangled threads and relocate them to the empty closets upstairs, in the room that was mine during my last year of high school and during summer breaks in college.

Up the twelve stairs  I marched with load # 1. As I hung it up, my glance landed on a Hostess fruitcake tin seemingly in the spotlight once I slid the door open. That tin is among some of my earliest childhood memories, as is the…indescribably yucky… cake that was inside.

Hesitating to halt my task so soon, I gave in to the need to know and plopped down on my knees to work it open to survey the forgotten contents.

45’s! No, not guns.  Records!

I looked through the top few, then took the whole tinfull downstairs to play on my record player.  Yep, I have one of those, and yep, I still have an adapter to play them.

By the time I reached the bottom stair, I had a plan to keep me focused on the task of making the multi-trips necessary to move my entire wardrobe 12 stairs at a time. Put on a 45, grab a load, boogie on up and back down again before the song ended. 

Maybe the teen who used to listen to those records could boogie up and down that fast, but this, uh-hmm, young-at-heart grandma going on 39 for the third time found that a bit challenging.  Who am I kidding?  Impossible it was. That necessitated a slight change in procedure: (1) turn up the volume; (2) grab a lighter load;  (3) move a bit faster. 

From somewhere came the idea to play them  in the order they were stacked in the tin.

Why?  I don’t know.

Why not? No reason not to.  There was no one around to  ask for an explanation.  If it motivated me to  complete the monumental task I had begun, it was rational reason enough for me .

But, might there be another purpose?  Might there  perhaps  emerge from the random selections a message to mull over? A message meant only for me in this  moment in my existence?

Decode a personal message from wacky music from the hippie era, played randomly from a fruitcake tin? And to think I frown upon those who search for meaning from tarot cards or crystal balls!

I resisted the urge to dig out my one pair of bell bottoms, light some incense and go braless. Two of those three tasks would definitely impede progress.

Stopping long enough to list the song titles and artists’ names gave me time to catch my breath and deal with  joints. Nope, not that kind!  My knees and ankles ! They began to complain about the many ascents and descents thrust upon them without warning.

I have yet to discover a personal message in the melodies, but my mind’s musings and meanderings as I sang along while marching through the house and up and down the stairs entertained me to the end of my exhausting chore. (There were some great lesson plan ideas that surfaced, but those days are behind me).

Melodies are  magnets for memories. If you are in the mood, let your eyes mosey down this list. Linger and remember. Who knows?  Maybe the hidden message is just for you!

Order as stacked top to bottom, and as played:

• Rainy Days and Mondays                            Carpenters
• Pave Your Way Into Tomorrow                  Glen Campbell
• Happy is a Bumpy Road                                Supremes
• Gettin’ Together                                             T. James & Shondells
• We Can Work It Out                                       Beatles
• You’ll Think of Me                                           Elvis
• I’ll Take You There                                         Staple Singers
• Darling Am I the One?                                   Troy Collier
• I Won’t Get to Love You Tonight                  Troy Collier
• So Wrong                                                           Edwina McCauley
• The Legend of JR Baker                                 John Wesley Ryles
• The Restless Ones                                            Grason
• He’s Everything to Me                                     Grason
• Railroad                                                              Melanie
• This Guy’s in Love With You                           Herb Alpert
• Rock and Roll Part One                                    Gary Glitter
• Windy                                                                  Association
• Leaving on a Jet Plane                                      Peter, Paul & Mary
• You Know my Name, Look Up my Number  Beatles
• Baby Blue                                                            Badfinger
• I Love to Laugh                                                  Richard Sherman
• Mrs. Robinson                                                     Simon & Garfunkel
• Keep on Smilin’                                                    Wet Willie
• Jingle Jangle                                                         The Archies
• Woman, Woman                                                   Union Gap
• She’s Got It                                               Little Richard                     
• Harper Valley PTA                                        Jeanie C. Riley
• I Can See Clearly                                            Johnny Nash
• We’ve Only Just Begun                                  Carpenters
• Close to You                                                      Carpenters

(Don’t worry if  you don’t recognize the tunes sung by Ryles, Collier or McCauley.  They are hometown songs/artists.)