Brains are weird. I was biking to work down Flatbush Avenue a few weeks ago and as I was passing by Duane Reade a voice entered my head from out of nowhere that I hadn’t thought of since I was probably 10 or so. It said this:
“Ruth and Johnnie side by side… went out for an auto ride.”
When I was 5 or 6 I listened to records a lot (I’m so glad I had those to spark my imagination and not the internets). I couldn’t read a lot of the small print that was on the covers but there were a few that I could easily identify by the covers: The Willy Wonka soundtrack, Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Hudson Brothers…
…And then this thing:
This record (which came with an accompanying book that I don’t think we had) taught young me how to be afraid of our basement. I used to sit and stare at that cover and wonder what was behind all of those windows. See that thing in the upstairs window above the porch on the left? That’s fuckin’ creepy. Or so 5-year-old-Me thought. At some point I drew eyes on all of those blobs surrounding the house to make them look like giant ghosts.
Ruth & Johnnie was one of my favorite tracks. It was short, spooky, and got right to the point. The only problem with the track is that it was buried somewhere on side one of the album and I had to listen the record from the beginning to get to it. Being that the record was full of constant talking and blowing wind sound effects there were no dark black grooves on the vinyl giving any sort of visual indication of where the tracks were divided (this is what we had to deal with in the old days, kids). I had a whole backstory for Ruth & Johnny in my head. I only remember snippets of it but it involved them visiting The Haunted House before ***SPOILER ALERT*** Ruth’s unfortunate demise.
Although all of our phonographs were upstairs this album would occasionally end up in our basement where I’d spot it and start looking at the cover. A few minutes later I would still be looking at the cover and realize that I was down in the basement by myself. I’d start getting freaked out that something was going to emerge from our crawl space, grab the record, head for the stairs, and hurry my little arse up them to the safety of our kitchen. I always felt the massive aura of a non-existent monster chasing me up the stairs when this happened. Once I made it to the kitchen alive and shut the basement door I was okay. Apparently the pretend monster in my head was afraid of the upstairs area of our house. After the chase was over I’d head up to my sister’s room to put this record on and wait for Ruth & Johnnie to appear.
Why did Ruth & Johnnie come back to visit my brain while riding to work all of these years later? I don’t know, but I felt they needed their own Iced Ink song. When I got to work that morning I Googled them and poof – there it was on YouTube – the record that scared the bejeebus out of me over 3 decades ago. It was fun to hear again.
I started this at around noon yesterday and it was done by 9PM. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be – a musical painting of the many ways this record freaked me out. Thanks for the memories, Ruth & Johnnie. Here’s your very own Iced Ink song:
