1985 : Every Time You Go Away

Paul Young - Every Time You Go away


I always considered my family a singing family. I grew up thinking this was normal... breaking into song in the car, at the dinner table, whenever a song came on that we know. My mom encouraged it, when I think most others might have been annoyed. Until high school, I always had trouble hearing the actual lyrics. Many times I'd just make up what sounded good.

I spent many summers at a cottage in the Wisconsin Northwoods. We would pack up the wooden sided Oldsmobile diesel station wagon and spend weekends or even weeks at a time up north. At the age of 5 this was bliss. I brought clothes and some He-Man guys and I was set. He-Man got to fight Skeletor in all sorts of new places up there... on the dock, on a tree stump - sky was the limit.

The closest town that had good shopping was about 45 minutes away in a town called Rhinelander. I vividly remember hearing Paul Young's "Every Time You Go Away" while sitting in the station wagon going up the driveway. The end of the driveway went uphill a bit, where in the fall I could pick blackberries. When the song came on, we started singing, this was a song I could not decipher lyrics. My lyrics became singing, "You Take a Piece of meat with you."

To me, that was like "packing a lunch." The real words are "take a piece of ME with you." At the age of five, I'm not sure I would have understood that... sounds in a food perspective slightly cannibalistic! But the lyrics, to my mother, prompted a serious "birds and the bees for five year olds" pep talk. I seem to remember her talking about how fast I was growing up and how I would "someday meet a girl from up north yada yada."

Once we got to the store, I picked out some shoes that looked like a car from the side and bottom profile. I remember these shoes being expensive, and I could wear the tread off shoes in two weeks. My parents and siblings were always in awe of the sight of how fast I could wear out a pair of shoes. So from talking about growing up to picking out car-looking shoes, I still had a lot of growing up to do. My mom would be right about fourteen years later, I'd go on to meet a girl in college from WAY up north in Wisconsin, and ended up being the person I dated pretty much throughout college. Moms are always right, or they at least know what's going on.

Whenever I hear Every Time You Go Away... I think about putting meat in a ziplock bag, and riding in that station wagon up north with my car shoes on.