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One of my finest musical memories of a child was the first day of my summer vacation, between the 2nd and 3rd grade. June of 1971. I was eight years old and I can still remember exactly the circumstances. I was allowed to sleep on the couch in the downstairs living room which was a privilege because at the time, I shared my bedroom with my brother. So it was a big deal for me do be able to do that. I felt like I had the whole house to myself.

Also, from the vantage point of an 8-year-old child, September and the return to school seemed years away. As school had just let out, I had the ecstatic feeling of lazy summer days stretching off into eternity.

Being school vacation, I got to sleep late and so I was sleeping when my mother came down to the kitchen and turned on the top 40 station on the radio - her morning routine. As I laid on the couch, with the mild breeze blowing through the screens and the curtains billowing, these three songs played in order:

"My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison
"I Woke Up In Love This Morning" by the Partridge Family
"Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" by Fifth Dimension

It was the perfect running order for those three particular songs and I just laid on my couch, still in that quasi-dreamland between being asleep and being awake. As those upbeat pop songs played, I was thinking of all the lazy summer mornings that were still ahead of me and how I didn't have a care in the world.

Now I wouldn't know the artists of those songs until years later but those three songs stuck in my memory and even when I hear one of them today, they always remind me of endless summer days and the complete freedom from responsibility that a summer vacation represents for an 8-year-old child.