Tuesdays stunning developments: Boca Raton staffers discuss what’s up in Boca and beyond

Boca Raton staffers discuss what’s up in Boca and beyond

By now the James Taylor-Carole King concert is old news—and universally applauded. A version is on PBS now, in fact. I happened to luck into tickets from my friend Sarah, whose boss gave them to her——in a suite, no less. So there we were in our summer dresses, way too early, watching the BankAtlantic Center fill up as we sipped our little Chardonnays.

It was 2010 and I was in a private suite, but all I could see was my dorm room in Broward Hall 40 years ago at University of Florida. There was a poster of Clint Eastwood on the wall in his poncho, an Indian bedspread that probably smelled faintly of Patchouli oil, a tiny stereo with a smoked plastic top and a stack of albums. Sweet Baby James was front and center back then, wearing his blue work shirt, his dark eyes staring at me as I struggled through my physical science homework.

‘How did I get from there to here?,’ I thought, the way all of us do, wondering what might have been. But when the music started, all of it came flooding in—not just that freshman year at UF but all the other memories that followed, the first job, the first marriage, the year albums changed to cassettes, then CDs. And all along the way, there were these two—James Taylor and Carole King—playing backup to the memories. I mean, the tears well up just as easily now as back then, when she asks why nobody stays in one place anymore.

So it was a fine concert, a warm and nostalgic summer night. But it was more than that, too. It was touching your own history again, your shared generation. When everyone in the BankAtlantic Center was singing out loud to the songs they grew up with, I am sure James Taylor and Carole King knew that yes, indeed, they had a friend. Several thousands of them—starting with me.