Pop Song of the Week: "Those Were the Days"

A song I used to listen to with my sister when we were way younger.

“Those Were The Days”: An Appreciation

“Those Were the Days” -- Mary Hopkin. Oh, geez. Those of us who were born in the early 1960s (the tail end of the baby boom) never had a chance. Not only did nostalgia for decades we had never lived through turn out to be the big trend of our teenage years (not to mention our twentysomething years, our thirtysomething years, etc.), but songs like this were embedded in our memories during childhood, making it almost impossible to enjoy our youth without wondering if we were going to turn out like the poor woman in this song.

My mother used to own an album with this song on it, and even as a child, I had a mixed reaction to this song. Was I supposed to feel sorry for the woman in this song who had apparently seen her youthful dreams slip away like so much dust and ash? Or was I supposed to feel more sorry for her friend, who at the end of the song seemed way too oblivious to realize that he was supposed to feel sad about anything?

And even allowing for the fact that the song is a remake of an old song, how odd is it that this particular version was being sung by a woman who wasn't even yet twenty when she recorded it. Was she waxing nostalgic for junior high? Grammar school? Kindergarten? The womb?

No wonder my generation was so obsessed with nostalgia. Welsh singer Mary Hopkin was already pushing the stuff upon us big time before we were even old enough to have a youth for which we could wax nostalgic.

“Those Were The Days, My Friend...”

I'm missing my hometown of Detroit something awful this week.

For that matter, I'm missing my father's hometown of San Francisco del Rincón a lot too. San Francisco del Rincón -- or San Pancho, as its residents sometimes call it -- was the town where I met my first girlfriend. She was the type of girl that could turn a guy's head -- and why I lost contact with her, I'll never know.

I'm really tempted to kick myself sometimes...