A good song lyric is worth a thousand pictures. Particularly those of my beloved golden-oldies that can suddenly grab me, shake me, and throw me right back into a distant place and time I was fairly certain I never wanted to visit again. But once the melodious transportation is complete, I’m almost happy to be sad again.

I was pulling into my Billings motel last month when a late-80s tune I hadn’t heard since then suddenly sent me away. I was back in 1989, gently suggesting a temporary return of the engagement ring, just for a little time alone to ready myself. “Should we date others?” she asked between sobs. “Well, I won’t, but it’s OK if you want to.” Yep, I actually said that

Months later, just before her Billings wedding, Milli Vanilli began taunting me with “You said you didn’t need her; you told her goodbye. You sacrificed a good love, to satisfy your pride. Now you wish that you still had her; and you feel like such a fool. You let her walk away, now it just don’t feel the same …”

Sure, brothers Milli and Vanilli were later exposed as lip-syncing frauds, but the chorus wasn’t any less haunting: “… You’ve got to blame it on something; blame it on something. Blame it on the rain that was falling, falling; blame in on the stars that did shine at night. Whatever you do, don’t put the blame on you … blame it on the rain, yeah yeah.” (It was a clear day when she broke the news, so I blamed the sun in my eyes).

Twenty-four hours later, as I’m exiting the motel parking space, I made another unplanned arrival in 1974 Johnstown, Pennsylvania with that dang “Silver Fox” Charlie Rich rudely invading my Camaro space. “… Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world, and if you did, was she crying, crying … Hey, if you happen to see the most beautiful girl, that walked out on me … tell her I’m sorry; tell her I neeeed my baby …oh won’t you tell her, that I love her?”

That song played constantly when I returned to Pennsylvania after a Cody baseball summer and my high school sweetheart who had sent a Dear Doug letter. Working on a hot hose-nozzle assembly line at a company called Gilmores Mfg., the nightly, blaring warehouse stereo just wouldn’t shut up. Ringo Starr teamed up with Charlie to torture me: “… Now all I’ve got is a photograph, as I realize you’re not coming back anymore.”

I even became intimate with the hurtingest songs of all: country/western. I don’t even know who the tormentor was who poured salt into the deepest wounds of my heart with:  “Somewhere there should be, for all the world to see, a statue of a fool, made of stone. An image of a man, who let love slip through his hands … and then, just let it stand there all alone.

“And there on his face, a gold tear should be placed, to honor the million tears he’s cried. And the hurt in his eyes would show, so all the world would know … concealed is a broken heart inside. So build a statue, oh and build it hiiigh, so all the world can see …” By that time, my hands would be so shaky, I could scarcely hook the little clip onto the nozzle, and then the crescendo booming throughout that echoing warehouse: “Inscribe ‘The World’s Greatest Fool,’ and name it aaaafter me!”

Oh, but I had asked for it. After graduation, I had left sweet Diane for my second summer of Cody baseball, but cherished her perfume-laden, almost daily love letters. But by summer’s end, I had begun dating Boone’s Farm Wine and Pabst Blue Ribbon.  When I arrived back home for the winter, just as Milli Vanilli would sing 17 years later, I “said I didn’t need her,” spending more time with drinking buddies than her, and occasionally chasing not-so-sweet, other girls. When we parted again that next spring, I told her I’d reconsidered and “maybe we shouldn’t date other people this summer.”

Oh, but damage had been done and the seed had been planted. I could hear George Jones, Three Dog Night, Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” and even Conway Twitty warming up in the wings. And now, decades later, Vanilli, Milli and Mr. Rich were reopening the wounds in a most bittersweet way.

As I passed through Bridger, an odd sentiment breezed through my mind:  “Maybe I should start dating again. I’ll fall in love, take her for granted, and then get my heart broken. I sure do miss those days!”