Danny and I were having lunch at 75th Street Brewery on Saturday. One Fine Day came over the speakers. I made the comment that I preferred Karen Carpenter’s version of the song to the one they were playing. Danny said, “They did this?”

Danny’s a little too young to be part of the Carpenters generation. Not me. I had all their albums. (OK, I just googled the web site. I didn’t have all their albums, nowhere anywhere close.) Played them on a little red stereo record player I’d purchased with my paper route money. Spent many a Sunday afternoon between morning and evening services with my friend Gary from church, who also loved the Carpenters.

Gary and I, well, there was something special between us. We connected in some way we never really talked about. Can’t really remember specific conversations we had. But it seems like we had a lot to say. I remember feeling like he was one of the first real friends I had. You know, the kind of friend where there was never enough time to say everything you wanted to, and you couldn’t wait to be with them again, and continue the conversation?

I had only one or two other friends at that time in my life. Another, who was like that, whom I’d met in seventh grade at Cherry Valley, and another who befriended me at Guilford High in Rockford, though in retrospect, I can’t say how/why we came to be friends. We got kicked out of the Library for talking and laughing too loud on more than one occasion, while doing our Geometry homework! Guess I’ll have to post more on that later, if/when I can conjur some real memories of our time together.

The Carpenters’ version of One Fine Day is part of a medley of early 60s music from their album Now and Then. It wasn’t that I loved that song, particularly, nor their version of it. It was just part of the album, the only song on the album I liked was I Can’t Make Music, it definitely didn’t get air play. The songs of theirs I loved were almost never the hits. I loved other songs on their albums. Their versions of two Leon Russell songs fit into the log of songs I still love. A Song for You and This Masquerade.

Back to Gary. Gary, if you’re still out there, you’ve been remembered. The feelings of my memory, strong. Yet undefined. Had I been as self-aware then in certain aspects of my life today, as I am today–we might have been a different sort of friend to each other. I loved you. Would I still? I hope you are well. I cherish this memory as it stands. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you. Nor you, David! Nor you Tom!