Soundtrack

They had come to the ranch years ago but they were moving on and clearing out thehouse.They decided to have a garage sale to get rid of the last few remnants and they put announcements in all the mailboxes, but it was mostly an excuse to get together with friends and toast an era’s end. They stood on the deck greeting people, and they set out shrimps and cocktail sauce, sour cream and onion dip beside a bowl heaped with chips, and several bottles of wine. I wish I had been wearing a silk caftan.

The interior of the house was sunlit and almost bare,with a few faded prints on the walls, a stray piece of furniture here and there, and an enormous elk head above the stairs waiting for a new owner. In a shadowy corner to the left of the staircase was the record collection, all of it up for grabs, and I was drawn to it immediately.

Truth is, I don’t even own a record player, but I wasn't planning to shop. I just wanted to enjoy the pleasure of perusal. And I perused with tenderness, for as I scrolled through the albums, it was clear to me that I was leafing through the history of a family, an audio documentation of the time in which they lived, and the soundtrack of their lives in varied epochs.

I came first upon an album -- and here I mean album literally, the kind that is a hard-covered book and in between are pages holding separate 78s -- of Big Ten College Songs. Underneath that, there was a Victor Musical Masterpiece collection entitled NegroSpirituals Sung by Dorothy Maynor with Unaccompanied Male Choir. Okay, I admit it: I had to own the latter one, and I bought it for $3. Who could have resisted classics like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” or “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” sung by a soprano whose voice was once described (by Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitzky) as a miracle and a musical revelation? Tucked inside there was even an added bonus:a record of Marian Anderson singing “Deep River” and “Dere’s No Hiding Place Down Dere”. So this was my treasure trove, and I am looking forward to listening. My friend Marc said he can put it on an mp3 for me as long as I am not in a hurry.

There were lots of LPs, of course, in random profusion: symphonies by Mahler, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, Scott Joplin tunes played by the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble, piano hits of Roger Williams, ballads sung by Burl Ives, and the same Broadway musicals I listened to as a kid, with covers as familiar as old friends.One glimpse of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza on the cover of South Pacific, and I was hearing “Some Enchanted Evening” in my head. A glance at Mario Lanza on The Student Prince, and his dulcet tenor tones were serenading me about moonbeams and dreaming and I could drift along forever, and yes, this is the stuff that was playing in my house while I was growing up. Especially eerie was the sight of Whistle While You Work: Music With A Lilt to Lighten Your Housework and itswhimsical illustration of a woman circa 1961 in a striped dress and white apron with a schmata on her head, dancing jubilantly with a broom. We owned this record too. Did everyone?

There was a kids’ corner as well: The Chipmunks Sing Again,Bozo on the Farm, Songs of the Wild West, and Fire Station songs with a 29-cent price tag still on the paper jacket. I skipped a group of 45s and wandered over to the talking LPs of the early sixties. We all remember The First Family by Vaughn Meader, when Camelot was spoof-able. Here too was Tom Lehrer’s That Was The Year That Was, and Mort Sahl, Look Forward In Anger. These were the artifacts of our youth and shared history.

It was a time capsule, that’s what it was, and oddly poignant, as garage sales always are. And when the lady of the house came up to me and sweetly said, “Just take them all. I want you to have them”, I declined.

It wasn’t just that I couldn’t play them anyway. Or that Monte would be furious if I came home with three or four big boxes filled with stuff, whether old or new.

It wasn't even the unexpected lump in my throat.

It was just a very strong sense of already having more than enough.

A sense of being full.