As Time Goes By

March 4,2001

SSLau

As Time Goes by ---Sound Track

I was channel surfing, watched a few scenes of the recent Washington earthquake, recalling my half dozen times or so of earthquake experience. As any of our CA lighters can tell you, it is always a scary and helpless feeling during a quake.

I watched this and I was that on the screen, and all of a sudden I 
came upon the fund raising event of the Public TV Channel. PBS 
usually has fund raising every quarter or so and they showed some of the best special programs during these events. I first heard Sarah Brightman sing " Time to say goodbye ", Andrea Bocelli in Concert at Tuscany, watched Jonathan Pond lecture on estate planning and  financial matters etc. all during the PBS fund raising events.

Tonight PBS had the " Lawrence Welk" reunion show. Dear Lighters, LW was a very popular TV program in the 60s. The show was called the "Champagne hour". Every Saturday night, I seem to recall, Welk came on with Champagne bubbles blowing on stage and spoke in his rather distinctive Wisconsin-German accent. Oh, yes, the show was in black and white in those days.

I remember very well watching this show with Bobby in 1960 at the Berkeley home of his relatives on Spruce street, soon after the " 40 days and 49 nights in a labor camp" episode. On that night Bobby and I watched intently the Lennon sisters perform. There were four of them, don't remember any of their names. The sisters were pretty, and the youngest was 16/17 or so, slim and cute. They sang well together, and knew all the songs that the Lighters are familiar with... " to know him is to love him", " Changing partners", you know. As the years went, the sisters grew up. One of them seemed to have some problems, but I am not sure who and what.

The program I saw tonight, apparently taped recently, was quite  different from the one Bobby and I saw in 1960. Welk was gone, no one on stage was young. Some of them look familiar but they were not their former selves. They still sing, dance, and play music well. Of course, they sang all the oldies. What a treat for me.

I have not seen the Lennon sisters for a long time, and was searching for them, but nowhere to be found. Toward the end of the program, they were quite emotional and some of them wept openly without embarrassment. Then I saw the youngest Lennon sister in a red top. She is now a Platinum blond and no longer slim. I barely recognized her, but the facial features were there. I sighed, thinking time and tide wait for no man ( or woman).

I glanced at the window and saw my reflection, there was a stranger looking back at me.