“MYYYYYY HUCKLEBERRRRRY FRIEND!!!!” A booming baritone
floats out of the Sports House. Usually, when I walk past this place, there are loud blaring sports events blasting out the open screen door, filling the block
with announcers’ nasal play-by-plays and cheering crowds (fake cheers now?)
But this
morning, as I stomp down 31st near the end of my walk, I hear these lyrics,
sung slightly off tune, to Moon River. My favorite song when I was 5
years old. I remember I would go around and announce to anyone who would listen
to me, “You know what my favorite song is?” “No, Carol, what is your favorite
song?” “Moon River!” And I’d dance around in delight, spinning to the
tune of Mancini and Mercer.
I am not sure why I chose this as a favorite song. Probably because it was one of those songs that my parents played in the evenings, cocktail time, Cutty Sark clinking in thick glasses, Mancini pouring out of the stereo. My dad grinning and humming to the music, a peaceful happy aura around him.
The song,
now, brings back this time to me. It evokes feelings of safety and routine. When
I hear this music of my childhood, whether it’s Mancini or Sinatra, I feel a
wave of contentment and happiness swell inside of me, corny as that sounds.
But isn’t music like this? It evokes an emotion and it brings us back to a place and a time when we first heard it? I know that whenever I hear Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, I picture my mother at the piano, hitting those big chords, her hands dancing down the keyboard. I was in love and in awe. With both Gershwin and her.
So today, when I hear Moon River and how it brings me back to my childhood, I wonder if the singer in the Sports House has a story about the song. Probably. He certainly was feeling it! And the line, “My Huckleberry Friend” that caught my ear this morning, I have to smile to myself. I’ve always wondered what that phrase meant—my huckleberry friend. Was this a friend you collected huckleberries with? And what were huckleberries even? And was this a special sort of outing, collecting huckleberries?
I’ve always wondered. It has such a romantic ring to it. The whole song does. Anything having to do with the Moon, right? Clair de Lune, Moon over Miami, Moonstruck---was that a song, or just a movie with Cher in it?
In any
case, Moon River is a song about longing. About taking that trip down
the wide magical river to a place that is far far away from our everyday lives.
And isn’t that
what we are all hungering for right now during this Pandemic? To travel to a
distant, romantic, ethereal place full of magic, movement and friendship…..
As I walk around the block, up Roosevelt, I hum the tune to myself, feeling a warmth rise up within me. I wait at the corner as a driver barely stops at the stop sign, fiddling with his phone or a cigarette, before I turn down my street and head for home.
Cookies and Milk...and Andy
ReplyDeleteYup! Those were the day!
DeletePaul Pasquale former Longtime American Educator
ReplyDeleteAnswered November 21, 2019
Johnny Mercer, the lyricist of Moon River, put this phrase into the popular theme song from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The phrase “my huckleberry friend” refers to the river. Listeners, including Mercer’s friends, were puzzled by the phrase until he revealed that as a child in Savannah, Georgia, he used to pick huckleberries along the shores of a river, (an inlet of which has been renamed Moon River in Mercer’s honor.) Mercer also liked the association of the personally nostalgic phrase to Mark Twain’s character as well as its linking of the phrase to the Southern-born character Holly Go …
Interesting! I knew that the phrase referred to the river, but I could never figure it out. I did think of Tom Sawyer, but I like this detail about Mercer picking huckleberries on the shore. Very cool! Thanks, RJJ!
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