2/29/2024 0 Comments Build me up buttercup cover![]() We spent more time with the older kids the next day, we played “Build Me Up Buttercup” again, I had some time to deepen my crush on this girl I knew nothing about, who was hopelessly older than I was, who was just a symbol of womanhood to me. I would have remembered it anyway, but when I woke up John gleefully informed me that I had been saying “CeeCee” in my sleep. And by the associative property, “Build Me Up Buttercup” was absolutely magical. To me, based on the couple of hours that I had known her CeeCee was absolutely magical. Knowing almost nothing about someone, you can fashion them into anything, everything. Gobsmacked, in that way you can only be when you’re that young. Probably she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. All I really remember is that CeeCee put a coin in the jukebox and played “Build Me Up Buttercup.” Maybe she did a little dance along to it, maybe she sang along. I know she was older than I was, but was she 14, 16, 18? No idea. Here’s what I really remember about CeeCee: her name. One of them was a sassy, curly haired brunette girl named CeeCee. (None of that had been part of my previous experience I was the oldest kid in my extended family, with limited exceptions, by a lot.) There were a couple of other older kids there, too. We were hanging out with older kids, kids old enough to drive, kids old enough to run snack stands. ![]() We took it back to the Sugar Shack, set up the candy boxes, and hung out drinking what memory says was outrageously flavored grape soda. I didn’t know you could just drive to Amsterdam and get candy by the boxful. I had no idea about wholesaling, had no idea where small stores and concession stands and the like got their candy and sodas. I know that we all had to jump into her boyfriend’s car and take a drive into somewhere in Amsterdam to pick up stock for the shack - I remember going to some candy wholesaler where we picked up boxes of Hershey and Payday bars, and a local brand of soda whose name I have forgotten. John’s sister worked the Sugar Shack, if I’m remembering this right - maybe she even ran it. It was a white, wooden-frame concession stand of sorts, selling soda and candy, and it also had a little porch on which was a jukebox. Galway camps were divided up into what are called “groves.” The grove that John’s camp was part of was near an open field, and on the edge of that field was a building called the Sugar Shack. So, we were unsupervised, which wasn’t terribly unusual in the ’70s anyway. This blew my mind.) But they were teenagers in love, and didn’t need little kids around. That sister had a boyfriend, age indeterminate. It was eye-opening, in several ways.ĭuring that week, our days were completely free - John’s parents were at work during the day, and we were ostensibly under the supervision of his 17-year-old sister. Other than Boy Scout camping trips, it was my first time away, really, and certainly my first time being invited into another family’s dynamic for days at a time. I was invited to spend several days up at their camp with the family that summer. It was only 20 miles away, but a lovely wooded getaway camp colony (back when they were actual camps, not elaborate second homes) on a reservoir that had been built to support the rug industry in Amsterdam. John’s family had a camp on Galway Lake, which is where all respectable Scotia residents had camps. The back cover copy (by “Gemini,” of course, because it was 1968) explains the album’s concept: live on on side, studio on the other. I spent endless hours hanging at his house, listening to records, riding bikes together, messing around with chemistry sets (nearly setting his house on fire, but that was just the one time) – all the stupid stuff pre-teen boys get into. we were fixated on Mad Magazine, we spent hours listening to George Carlin together, I’m sure we had the same tastes in television. I was good friends with a kid named John who was in the class below me. My school had split-grade classes, so my fifth-grade class also had fourth-graders in it, my sixth had fifths. I was 10 or 11, the summer after either 5th grade or 6th. I used to know exactly when this happened now it’s not so clear. It was a big hit in 1968, but I associate it with a summer idyll a couple of years later. Though I appreciate the effort a composite took in 1968! And no, I don’t know who put a 2 in a circle, but that’s certainly not what I paid for it.Įveryone knows “Build Me Up Buttercup.” Everyone loves “Build Me Up Buttercup.” It’s a fantastic, good-time pop love song. I know this is supposed to be all hippie-dippy and flowerchild and love and all, but somehow, it’s creepy. And it’s going to be perhaps the earliest story from my life that I’ve told regarding any of these records. This one is going to be more about one song (yes, that song) than it is about the album.
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