I’ve always wanted to write a song about the halcyon days of my childhood...and so, this song came out of an assignment at one of the great Bob Franke’s song writing clinics. The process stirred up many precious memories, as well as discovering treasures in my huge family’s photo albums.This song is dedicated with love to my late parents, especially my mother, Rose, for encouraging my appreciation of music, song, the joy of singing, and to my own sons, Seth and Jesse, who I sang to sleep many times.
Lyrics
I’m hopping down a sunny street
Kick-ing pebbles in my way
A carriage pushed by Mom and me
Babies lying in its shade
Late on Sunday afternoons
Steaming from my bath
Wrapped in my blue dressing gown
A church goes singing past
In summer time we take a trip
By steam train to the sea
We leave home in the afternoon
My brothers, Mom and me
My cousins, aunts and uncles smile
The train steams and stops and hisses
We jump down on the platform
For more smiles and hugs and kisses
We’re going to stay at Grannie’s place
In her kitchen in the sun
I love to see her smiling face
Cooking soup and meat and buns
She sang about the Mockingbirds
Rose sang Side by Side
She’d sing The Great Pretender
Sometimes she’d sing and cry...
Mom took us on Sunday drives
To the lake and to the zoo
Windows wound down open wide,
Rosie sang the whole way through
I’d ride on daddy’s shoulders, broth-
-er’s holding mommy’s hands
Lions draped on boulders
Ice cream melting in the sand
On Sundays in the summertime,
too hot to stay inside
We’d pile into our car, And to...
... my cousin’s house we’d drive
She’d sing the Unchained Melody
Ghost Riders In the Sky
She’d sing about Old Lonesome Me
Rosie would sing and cry
So when I put my boys to bed
In darkness sing my song
I hear her singing in my head
It’s Rosie’s singalong