1973 Gil's Pub; 1970-1982 Irish American Home

Shiltone recently had a post up at If I Ran The Zoo , waxing nostalgic about the music in a jukebox from his (her?) childhood.

There are two jukeboxes that figure in my childhood. The first one was at Gil's Pub in Hebron, CT. When my parents moved to Hebron in 1969, it was a dry town, but sometime between 1969 and 1973, Gil's Pub opened up on Main Street. Every now and then, my dad would take me to Gil's with him. There wasn't much for a kid to do there - the pool table was usually in use, and the dartboard was off limits to me, but I do remember getting quarters for the jukebox, and even then, I was obsessive compulsive in the way I listened to music. I remember a couple of songs that I listened to, but the one that really leaps out is Tanya Tucker's recording of Delta Dawn. I would listen to that one over and over and over again. I learned all the words, and I would sing it when I went home to my mother.

The second jukebox was at the Irish American Home, which was a lot more fun. In addition to the bar, they had a big field for sports, playing cards, snacks, and drunk men who would give me money because I was Billy Howley's daughter. When I was very young, my favorite bar snack was sardines and crackers (cue my children: Ewwwww!), and I would listen to The Unicorn over and over again. Yes, my tastes as a child were not refined. I thought it was so sad that the unicorns never made it onto the ark.

I went through a phase of listening to Horse With No Name, You Are The Woman That I Always Dreamed Of, and one of the last songs I remember playing on that jukebox was My Sharona - after that, I deemed myself too old to hang out at the boring club with my father on Sundays after church.