93.5 FM — Easy Listening — Hollywood, Florida
As youngsters in the late forties, early and mid-fifties,
Growing all-too-cumbersomely into who we'd become,
Whatever we knew about the gentle, sensual art of romance
Emanated, radiated, rose like steamy heat vapors,
From every square inch of the black-and-white silver screens
We'd see illuminated, weekends on end,
In neighborhood Pageants, Tivolis, Shady Oaks, Esquires, Hi-Pointes,
Films captivating the post-WWII nation
We'd inherit from our nine-to-five, button-down-collar parents,
Who were too invested in the American Dream
To notice us emulating the "risqué," Hays-approved innuendos
Pulsating from closeups of Hollywood's starlets and heartthrobs —
Rita Hayworth, Clark Gable, Dorothy Lamour, Cary Grant,
Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Tyrone Power.
And even as that era gave way to the airwave-stages of television
(Living rooms aglow with Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ed Wynn)
And radios trembled and resonated to the gyrations and vibrations
Of Bill Haley and the Comets, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley...
Even as those "salacious" acts became passé, ancient hat,
With the advent of Haight-Ashbury's acid-laced passions,
Vietnam's Agent Orange/My Lai nightmares,
Nixon's lies and Dubya's Goebbels-like jingoistic propaganda,
We pre-baby-boomers remained fixated in that innocence and naivete,
When everyone swooned to "Earth Angel," "I Only Have Eyes for You,"
"Silhouettes," "In the Still of the Night," "Sunday Kind of Love,"
Believing that "life could be a dream (sh-boom),
If I could take you up in paradise, up above (sh-boom),"
Which, for you and me, Linda, all these long years later, it is indeed.
04/21/11
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