Alabama Rain

I really love this song by Jim Croce:

Alabama Rain

Lazy days in mid-July
Country Sunday mornin's
Dusty haze on summer highways
Sweet magnolia callin'

Chorus:
Now and then I find myself
Thinkin' of the days
When we were walking in
The Alabama rain

Drive-in movies, Friday nights
Drinkin' beer and laughin'
Somehow things were always right
I just don't know what happened

Chorus

We were only kids
But then I've never heard it said
That kids can't fall in love
And feel the same
I can still remember the first time
I told you "I love you"

On a dusty mid-July
Country summer's evenin's
A weepin' willow sang its lullaby
And shared our secret

Chorus

Walking in the Alabama rain

I love just about every song by Jim Croce, but especially the one above. His songs are the theme song of my childhood. Those were such happy, innocent times. I remember I would be sitting in the rotunda in the Redemptorist compound, my feet so small they'd hang above the ground. It was always night time when I came out of the school (I went to St. Francis of Assisi in grade school; no, not the funeral homes, but the school in the Redemptorist compound). My karate class always ended at night. I always hated it when I finished my karate class and I found when I got out of the school gate that my parents were not there yet. I'd walk to the rotunda with fear in my heart, afraid that they'd forgotten to fetch me. I always felt like crying...

Then they would arrive, in our red Nissan turtle-top pick up, and I would run so happily towards them. My mother and I always sit in the front. And I love putting my little face before the freezing blast of the airconditioner, and watch the green light of the controls of the car stereo. I would press on the buttons and skip from station to station. But my father always had cassette tapes ready. We would listen to Jim Croce all the way home (we lived in Pardo then). Sometimes we listened to John Denver, Kenny Rogers, America and Don McLean. And I remember, I always was a very fanciful boy, because I always imagined that I was the one singing those beautiful country songs, and I was performing in front of my classmates at school, putting them in awe at my talent, and serenading them with my songs.

Alabama Rain. I wonder what the place Alabama looks like. Someday if I can really go abroad with my future family I think I'll go to Alabama. I wonder if the place won't look so alien. Of course, it will look very alien. But the name will always be a part of my childhood.