A Song in your Head or "Hot Child in the City": blog entry #4

It was the 1977 deer season. I was sitting on the side of a cold snow covered mountain in Elk County, Pennsylvania. . I was part of a deer drive. Five members from our hunting camp were walking through the woods, evenly spaced out, hoping to push deer towards five of us posters. If there were any deer between us, they would hopefully push them past us (preferably a nice buck). Some deer drives can be very short, some can take longer. The length of the drive depends on the distance that the diver must cover to reach the waiting hunters. When you are waiting for drivers to approach, you listen for their sounds in the distance. Some times deer drivers will bang sticks against trees, yell, even whistle. They do whatever they have to to startle deer and move them towards the waiting hunters.

I remember hearing the approaching drivers that day. I could hear them from a distance. Their sounds were echoing through the woods. To my surprise, the five approaching drivers were singing!

They were singing in unison and off key!

They were singing a popular by the 70's musical group, The Carpenters. The song was, "Top of the World". It was a sweet happy syrupy song that topped the music charts for months that year. They obviously were having fun and not caring how bad they sounded. Everybody enjoyed it and shared a good laugh. One of the drivers said he had that song stuck in his head and started singing it out loud. The other four drivers felt inclined to join in on the chorus. I always remembered that day and a group of hunters that sang 'Top of the World", a song stuck in their head.

We are all guilty of it at any time. We all get a song stuck in our head. Some of these songs are beloved classics. At times we get a tune lodged in our skulls that we simply HATE!!! No matter how hard we try, we can not get that song out of our heads. This happened to me one day when I was hunting in the late 70's. That song was fixed in my head so much, that I still remember that day vividly. I was thirty feet high in a portable tree stand. I was archery hunting. I was there for the day, the only way I would come down was if I got a deer with my bow.

Needless to say, a song got stuck in my head. The song was titled , "Hot Child in the City". The song was sung by a One Hit Wonder, named Nick Gilder. When Nick Gilder sang, he sounded like a woman. Truthfully, I hated this song, "Hot Child in the City", I still do hate this tune to this very day. For some unexplained reason that day, I kept singing the chorus in my head over and over the whole stinking day! "Hot child in the city, running wild and looking pretty". I tried every thing possible to get that annoying tune to cease. I thought about girls, math, movies, and sports. Nothing worked. At the day's end, I remember leaving the woods still singing that blasted tune in my head.

Its funny, but yesterday, when I thought about writing this topic for my blog, "Hot Child in the City" was playing on the radio in my truck. SCARY!!!

Humbly submitted for your approval:

Jerry "Hot Child in the City" Strennen