I Wanna Go Back

Ann and I decided to go out for a breakfast date this morning after we dropped off the kid at school, so we went to the newest 85 Café Bakery location which isn’t too far from us. We’re not the full-on, greasy-meal-complete-with-all-the-fixin’s kind of couple. We just can’t start the day off with a heavy meal. In fact I find it extremely unhealthy and, more to the point, gross.

Baked goods, especially those from 85 Café (a Taiwanese company just starting to branch into the US), are another story. There’s no arguing over this. We must exercise a great amount of self-control when we go there as it is amazing. Half of the café serves bread right out of the oven while the other half sells specialty items like this strawberry tiramisu.

But since we found ourselves on the short end of the money stick this week*, we opted for baked goods of a lesser monetary amount. And in case you’re dying to know what that looked like, well, here you go.

The UCC Kona coffee is mine. They don’t sell it there and I enjoy it with my pastries and/or donuts.

And yes, I unapologetically and shamelessly post pictures of food on my social media accounts for everyone to see, even if they think said pictures are the fruit of Satan’s loins. I’m not there to live up to anyone’s standards, approval, or expectations. I like to do it so if pictures of things like freaking food offend you, look away. And lighten up. Yeesh.

Ahem. Anyway.

As we sat across from each other engaged in serious conversation about everything and nothing, music played in the background to fill the void that the hustle and bustle of a café filled with customer’s couldn’t. Most of the music went unnoticed until a familiar tune fell upon my ears.

(An aside: even after almost 22 years of marriage, Ann and I almost never sit next to each other at a table, and didn’t even while we dated. We are always across from each other. Eye contact is key for us.)

I had to think about it a moment. It was an instrumental played on what was probably a Hammond B3, the quintessential instrument of choice in blue-collar homes or concert venues in the 60s and 70s.

“The Girl from Ipanema”?  No no no, it wasn’t that. Close maybe, but not exactly what it was. And being it’s impossible (at least for me) to think of one song while listening to another, I had to sort of block it out while I thought a little harder about it.

Hmm. I have it my collection. So familiar. I started to sing along…

Someone to hold me tight, that would be very nice
Someone to love me right, that would be very nice

I had gotten that far.

“Someone to Watch Over Me”? Nope. While a real song, that wasn’t it either.

I had to grab the phone and do some sleuthing, finally ending up on YouTube: it was Astrud Gilberto’s “So Nice.”

Oh man. The organ, that voice and the way it reverbs, the way the instruments are channeled. Put all of those together and songs like this were arguably the sexiest ever recorded. Seriously. Nothing in recent memory comes close. And let’s not forget all of the instrumental sex that one Henry Mancini created.

Reel it in, man. Back on-topic.

As I sat across from Ann chatting about the song, my mind was suddenly teleported back to the time I spent at the mall when I was a teenager. The local malls were our social network at the time; a place where we would hang out and watch things unfold, meet people, discover new music, and just enjoy being with others – in real-life, not on a computer or smartphone screen.

Now unless you grew up during that time, you have no idea how an organ ties in with that memory. But if you did, let this video jog your memory.

This version here is extremely similar to what I heard in the café and what I might have heard while strolling through the mall past Chess King, Spencer Gifts, Red Eye, or Clifton’s Cafeteria all while taking in the smell of burnt caramel corn or fresh-baked pretzels. No phones, no worries. Just good times.

One of the staples of every mall was, in fact, an organ store where the salespeople would be standing at an organ near the front of the entry while demonstrating how easy it was to play songs like this one or “Spanish Eyes.” But even by then, the once mighty Wurlitzer was quickly becoming a thing of the past with youth becoming more focused on things like the brand-new Walkman. Why bother with an organ when I can take my music anywhere?

While I’m on the topic, I came across this article while searching for “mall organ stores” which Google suggested might be “mall oregon stores.” You know your industry has become archaic when even Google tries to forget it ever existed.

Anyway, you can read it here and laugh at how it is suggested that organs are aimed at people who are 45-50 years old, “sedentary” and “don’t go water skiing.”

Wow. Seriously, with all the conveniences we have now that have the potential to make us even more sedentary, today’s people in that age group – myself at age 46 included – are nowhere near as lazy as this article suggests they were back in its published year of 1981. So basically, we were dead once we hit 45? WOW!

Soooo, with all that said, I miss going to the mall and sharing a bag of caramel corn with my friends while we listened to a toupee-wearing salesman tickling the ivories.

Bet you never saw that coming.

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*We all learned a valuable lesson when Anthony’s classmate got him “free iTunes credit.” It was actually a $15 gift card purchase that was deducted from our debit card. He then bought an album thinking he had said credit but he hadn’t redeemed the code yet, deducting yet another $16 from our account.  PARENTAL RESTRICTIONS, PEOPLE.