While recently rummaging through some old files, I came across the ad for various posters that you see below from 1978, that is 39 years ago.

These images are just how I remember these stars, though they are certainly not how they are today. John Travolta has gained weight and Peter Frampton has lost hair—what remains is close cropped and snowy white. Suzanne Somers turns 71, today, October 16^th. Linda Ronstadt can no longer sing as a result of her Parkinson’s disease. Only one of the Gibb Brothers, Barry, is still alive. Indeed, Andy, never an official member of the Bee Gees would die ten years after this ad appeared. Farrah Fawcett succumbed to cancer in 2009. Elvis had already died the summer before.

As for the Bay City Rollers, whose hit, “Saturday Night,” was the first #1 song on Billboard’s Pop chart in the Bicentennial year of 1976, they were already beginning to fade from the scene. (Oh, you remember “Saturday Night.” You know, S-A T-U-R D-A-Y Night!)

It occurs to me that I probably picture myself more as I was in 1978, then as how I actually am now. Oh, I don’t mind getting older (an attitude born of the fact that I have no choice), but the idea that my past stretches back so far is just difficult to comprehend. This is why the past can be so jolting. Events can’t have been that long ago, because people and places and movies and songs and loves forever sparkle in that moment when they were crystallized in our memory banks. Like all crystal, however, memories are delicate. To handle them every day is to risk breaking them and therefore, breaking a part of ourselves. They must admired only occasionally, but the collection itself must be constantly increased.

You see, the most important crystal is not one from our youth or even the last one we placed upon the shelf of our memory. The most important crystal is the one we are about to add to the collection.

Always, look forward to the next shiny moment. Or, as the Bay City Rollers once proclaimed,

Keep on dancin’ to the rock ‘n’ roll

On Saturday night, Saturday night.

Dancing to the rhythm in our heart and soul

On Saturday night, Saturday night.