Foghat & Cheeseburgers

I went looking for a new song for my MySpace page this morning, and stumbled across Foghat’s Slow Ride. This isn’t a song that is ever foremost on my mind, so I don’t know how I dug it up, but I did. As I was sitting there listening to it, for just a moment I was thirteen years old, sitting at the counter at Peggy’s Restaurant (which belonged to my family) in Kings Mountain, NC and listening to Slow Ride on the jukebox. Slow Ride was popular at the time, and I played it every time I came into the restaurant.
What amazes me about how the brain connects things is that to this day when I hear Slow Ride, I can almost taste the cheeseburgers from the cafe. When I’d get out of school, I would come to the cafe, which was a few blocks away, to wait for my mother to get off work. Usually when I was waiting I’d wind up eating a cheeseburger and some fries. I’ll say unequivocally that those were the best cheeseburgers ever made (there are plenty of Kings Mountain residents who would agree with me), and to this day I haven’t found any even remotely as good. Although the burgers you can get today at Blackwood’s in Kings Mountain come real close.
Mostly, I’m just marveling at how one random song can dredge up so many memories and sensations. I’m thankful for it. Somehow on the those rare occasions when I play a song like Slow Ride, for a moment the restaurant still exists, I can still taste those cheeseburgers, and my aunt Loretta is alive and joking with the customers, and my aunt Sis is alive and sitting at the far end of the counter, smoking a cigarette and shaking her head at the conversations near her (that she can’t believe she’s hearing).
I enjoyed the moment. But I’m still amazed at the flood of memories that rushed through me because I played one random song. The brain is really an amazing thing, isn’t it? Somewhere in our heads everything we’ve ever known or experienced is still alive and breathing.
I guess all I’m saying is that it’s nice that we’re allowed to visit on occasion.