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Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record
1960: Rate-A-Record Honors…
My brother’s birth
It feels like the edge of forever since I wrote a Rate-A-Record column. Maybe you’ve wondered if I’ll start a new one on that other great American Bandstand feature:
THE SPOTLIGHT DANCE.
Actually, that isn’t a bad idea, so as I think about it more, you can ponder this question:
Where were you in 1960, the year my brother Mike was born? You don’t know this, and maybe he doesn’t remember either, but as his older brother, I took on the duty of providing him with his given name. I named him after my cousin Mike, who was rumored to be moving out of state, causing me to fear I’d never see him again. Well, my cousin did move away, but then he moved back and we got into a dispute about duplicate Batman trading cards.
He had the duplicates and refused to give me ANY to complete my own collection. Nothing beats family, right?
In any case, by the time his fear of sharing sunk in, I already had a brother named after him. And fortunately, my brother Mike is nothing like his namesake.
In Alabama, in the year of my brother’s birth, we experienced a severe snowstorm that left several feet of white powder on the ground for New Year’s. Was that…