Frogprince-

I'm sorry I didn't run across you in my recent revisit to Michigan. I met several other new friends there who seemed like "old friends." I'm sure we would have gotten on well too.

Another song that Kitty does which regales her youthful first excursion to the Atlantic Ocean on the shores of Nova Scotia, way back in 1969, is titled "When I Was the Queen." It forms a set with another of my favorite songs by Kitty titled "When the West Wind Blows":

When I Was the Queen
(Kitty Donohoe, © 2008, as recorded on Northern Borders)


It was a summer like we'll never see again;
We were restless, we were golden,
And I think we knew it then;
We felt like gypsies on the highway,
Angels on the run,
We crossed the border
With the early sun.
We were looking for adventure,
We were looking for the sea;
I was going for a blue-eyed boy
Waiting there for me;
The world seemed big and friendly,
And we were young and green -
Oh, life was good when I was the Queen.

Riding on a flatbed truck
Through Ontario,
Past fields of green tobacco,
Row after row,
Singing songs and talking
In the belly of the moon,
In those sweet and final days of June;
Then on we went to Montreal -
We stayed a day or two,
Got stranded on a cold wet night
In Riviere-du-Loup,
Rescued by a Frenchman
And his aunties all in black,
They gave us beds and shelter
And asked for nothing back.
Next morning there was bread and coffee
To get us through the day;
We said good-byes and thank-yous
And went along our way;
We must have been the strangest thing
They had ever seen -
Oh, life was good when I was the Queen.

So sure of the power of my hand,
So sure of the mercies of the land,
So sure of a love at my command.

At last we heard the ocean,
Smelled the salt and saw the pine;
We rolled into Halifax
On an evening rare and fine;
The bars were full of sailors,
The boys from Newfoundland,
With their words
We could barely understand.
Making barroom confessionals
With their whiskey and their beer,
Of the girls they'd left behind them,
Of the catch they'd lost that year;
We were friends by midnight
As we stumbled out the door,
With promises to meet again
When next they came ashore.
Our time there was a blessing,
Hail Mary full of Grace,
We left our hearts behind us
In that wild and lonely place,
And I'd hardly trade a day away
For all that's come between -
Oh, life was good when I was the Queen -
Life was so good when I was the Queen.

Charley Noble