With the promise of lower health insurance premiums when I go on Medicare next month, I decided it was time to get a second cell phone so Don won’t have to borrow mine anymore.

I switched providers and for only $20 more per month, we now have two brand new iPhone SEs (which look suspiciously like my 4-year-old iPhone 7).

All that by way of saying we also got one year of free Apple TV (something I never would have subscribed to, but hey, it’s free). Great timing because it turns out Apple recently announced a new “docuseries” about music in 1971, titled (wait for it) … 1971.

Far out.

We started watching last night and I’ve gotta admit it was pretty good. So of course, today I googled “1971 music” and realized that my then 15-year-old self was in transition from AM to FM radio.

That was the summer I started hanging out at the baseball fields and basketball courts on Shelter Island. The guys would pull up their cars and blast their radios while playing ball. I learned a lot about Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill and how many people could fit in a VW bug … went to dances with live cover bands and beach parties with bonfires … which is to say it was a coming of age summer accompanied by that incredible 1971 soundtrack.

At first I thought I’d just list a few of my 1971 favorites … Wild Horses, Won’t get Fooled Again, Riders on the Storm … but then I thought, how cool would it be if you google them yourself … and maybe share some of your favorites in the comments.

Back home, as I entered my sophomore year in high school, things were far more tame. Most Saturday nights were spent watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show while babysitting for the Vogels’ three boys aged 3, 6 and 7 … for 75 cents an hour if I remember rightly, and rounded up to the nearest dollar if I was lucky.

I spent my hard earned cash pretty equally on rock & roll albums ($3.33 on sale at Korvette’s)

and Elsa Williams kits (which you can still find on eBay) …

That was about the time I started to try designing my own needlework. Envious of my cousins, who had traveled to Norway to meet their dad’s relatives, I tried to imitate the counted thread needlework they brought back to the states. So I splurged on a yard of Elsa Williams Belgian linen and bought variegated Coats & Clark embroidery floss from the 5&10 on Hillside Avenue. Too late I realized the linen wasn’t even-weave, which meant all my designs came out as elongated rectangles. Sadly, those early pieces are long gone and with them, any memory of what they looked like.

But the loopy flowers of yesteryear …

are still clearly visible in my mind’s eye, which I suppose is understandable given how many of them were doodled into the margins of my high school notebooks. Those notebooks may also be long gone, but the drop-the-needle memories remain.

Peace, love and thanks to Tina and Deb for their dyed cloth.