I Left My Heart on Blueberry Hill

If you’re ever going to drop a full pint of blueberries on the floor it helps if you do it within hours of mopping the kitchen floor. That’s what I did today and they rolled every where within an ten foot radius. The dog heard the box hit the linoleum, came running and carefully picked one berry up at a time and carried them to the living room to eat them on the carpet. I would have closed him in another room while I gathered up the fruit but I couldn’t take a step without squashing berries underneath my Crocs. I was trapped.

While I was picking up the berries it brought back some great childhood memories. In those days we spent the summers at a cottage and this time of the year the surrogate grandfather to all the kids on our road would go out early in the mornings to pick wild blueberries on State land. He would come back with five gallon pails of berries and the women and girls on the road would gather at picnic tables in our front yard to sort and clean the berries. Later on in the day the smell of freshly baked blueberry pies or cobbler would fill the air. As the blueberry season went on some of those berries made their way in to batches jam or came back to town to put in the freezer. Maybe it’s just my memory playing tricks on me but those wild blueberries were more flavorful than the factory farm berries produced today.

When Don and I first started dating one of his favorite songs was Fats Domino’s I Left My Heart on Blueberry Hill. It was the very first song he ever sang to me. Now you might be thinking he was copying Richie Cunningham (aka Ron Howard) from the Happy Days sitcom because he would often sing, “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill” when he’d see a pretty girl he either dated or wanted to date. But Don sang it to me four years before Happy Days made its first appearance on TV. Over the years Don accumulated a copy of Fats Domino’s version of the song in every media that came along---45 records, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs. When I sold his classic Vette with an 8 track player in it I included his 8 track collection in the deal and, yes, ‘blue berry hill’ was on one of the tapes.

“I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill, on Blueberry Hill when I found you.” Did I mention that one of the first times Don and I made love was on a summer night and this song was playing on a portable radio? We were at the local lookout hill---a beautiful cityscape view at night, but we managed to pick up a good case of poison ivy in the process. Some of the things we foolishly do when we’re young sure can make you shake your head in amazement when you’re old, can’t they.

I often think I’d like to buy an i-Pod to download the music that has become the theme songs of my life. One of my fears of the future is about going to a nursing home and having to listen to someone else’s idea of what old people want to hear. I envision having a nurse’s aid who’ll flip the radio to the ‘50s Classics’ station every day and that would drive me crazy. I’d have songs from my youth on my i-Pod that have meaning to me, of course, like I Left my Heart on Blueberry Hill and Happy Trails to You but I’d also download stuff like Toby’s Keith’s I Want to Talk About Me and I Should Have Been a Cowboy, Michael Buble’s Sway, Grandpa Elliott’s Stand by Me, Joe Cocker's You can Leave Your Hat on, and Natasha Bedingfield’s Take me Away. The only thing stopping me from getting an i-Pod is I’m not tech savvy enough to know if they’re in danger of joining 45 records and 8 tracks on the obsolete shelf soon after I buy one. I hate when that happens! i-Pod? Or i-phone or i-Pad with music apps? I wish that decision was as easy as sorting blueberries on a lazy summer afternoon. .©