Favorite songs conjure up memorable moments

Heard Linda Ronstadt singing "Long, Long Time" on the radio recently and that song carried me back 40 years -- to the Port of Call tavern near the ocean in south Redondo Beach, Calif. I was just out of the Navy and for a time that little tavern with the nautical decorations was a gathering spot for a bunch of friends. Our Cheers, you might say.

I pumped a lot of quarters into the Port's jukebox, mostly playing Ronstadt's lonesome lament and Joan Baez's lilting version of Dylan's "Love is Just a Four Letter Word." The whole world was ahead of me then.

It's amazing how songs on the radio can transport you back to a time in your life --sometimes an exact moment. For me these time-traveling songs are tied to moments of discovery, immense joy, a woman, sometimes sadness and loss . . . and summertime.

There's a Sara Vaughn song, "Broken Hearted Melody," that transports me to the summer of 1959. I'm smiling as I hear Vin Scully's mellifluous voice calling L.A. Dodgers games on my little transistor radio. Vaughn's  song was big then and so were the Dodgers who went on to beat the White Sox in the World Series.

When the radio plays Del Shannon's haunting "Runaway" or  the Four Seasons' "Sherry," I see classmates and remember the fun and personal discoveries of eighth grade at Seaside School. Nothing like Frankie Valle's falsetto lead to get my toes tapping. I love the Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."  When it's on, I'm carried back to my first dance party at Jane Haney's. The lights are dim, the girls are pretty and the music is so fine. Ahhh.

The Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl" was popular when I was learning to drive and Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" makes me think of meeting at Nollenberger's house after class. Sometimes when I hear the first notes of Ray Manzarek's organ on "Light My Fire", I'll remember driving from Oakland across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco with that long Doors' tune blasting from the radio, a musical jambalaya of organ, guitars and Jim Morrison's raging voice.

I was in the Navy in the South China Sea when I first heard Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" coming though a tiny speaker in a compartment aboard the USS America. I'd been overseas for months and loved hearing fresh music from home.

Toots and the Maytals' joyful "Reggae Got Soul" was played over and over during some wild dancing with Cedars of Lebanon nurses at one of Glen Coburn's famous parties in Hermosa Beach. What a song. What a night!

And years later on a family vacation, we were headed south from Oregon to sunny California when Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine's catchy ballad "Words Get in the Way" came on the radio. It was a big hit. And before that 2,000-mile round trip was over, we heard that song a couple of dozen times more. I call it the Summer of Gloria.

I can think of other tunes that are tickets to the wayback machine. Maybe you can too. That's the magic of music.