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The Snow Turned Into Rain

It's late January 1981 and for some reason, “Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg is played heavily on the radio. Shouldn't a song with that title have been out a month earlier? Regardless, it's one of the most evocative songs I will ever know. He steals behind her in the frozen foods; she went to hug him and she spilled her purse; and then it was off to her car to drink the six-pack they bought at the liquor store because all the bars were closed on Christmas Eve. Dan Fogelberg wrote those scenes like people talk, like people live.

Then as now, I see a particular Foodtown and a particular parking lot where I can imagine Dan and his old lover toasting one year going and one year coming while I'm inside the store rolling a cart down that very same frozen foods aisle, tossing a bag of Bird's Eye Mixed Vegetables onto a pile of groceries I have been instructed to pick up if I want to use the Ford later. There's a Kohl's now where that Foodtown was — and a Bed Bath & Beyond sits on the site of the formerly adjacent liquor store. Still, I see it. And isn't it, well, odd that at least around here on the day in December that 56-year-old Dan Fogelberg died in Maine [1] that we experienced a nasty nor'easter in which the snow turned into rain?

“The Language of Love” by Dan Fogelberg is the No. 352 Song of All-Time [2], but I maintain a particular soft spot for “Same Old Lang Syne,” the only chart hit I know of whose title more or less refers to my birthday…and whose lyrics [3] make me think of buying frozen peas.

P.S. Very first word of “Same Old Lang Syne” is Met.