Country music history is filled with beautiful songs, songs of love and loss, of happy and heartbreak. Songs you love, you turn up, you sing along, sometimes without even realizing what you're singing. They are, in three words, just plain good!

And then, every once in a while, every once in a great while, a song comes along that, well, hits you smack dab in your wheelhouse. More than beautiful, more than more than happy or sad or something in between, it wraps itself around your head, gives you a light slap and says...remember?

So it was for me (and honestly, millions of us around the country) in 1991 when we heard an unknown guy named Hal Ketchum sing about a 'Small Town Saturday Night'.

Hal was largely unknown at the time because this was his first national single (not bad for a debut!). And while I can imagine there were some 'big city' folks that listened and thought 'Well, that sounds boring', at the same time all of us who grew up in or near a small town closed our eyes, sat back and took a trip back to the best time of our life.

But the song did something else.

It made me realize that, while we're all individual's with our own likes and dislikes, we are all, in a sense, the same. Or least least have shared a same wonderful experience. I'll wager that whether that small town you grew up in is in Oklahoma or Pennsylvania, Texas or California, Florida or, like me, in Minnesota...there's more than one line in 'Small Town Saturday Night' that you smiled at, because it happened to you.

And isn't it great when a wonderfully talented artist like Hal Ketchum can sing a song about us all....and just about me...at the same time?

Maybe part of it is the fact that Hal and I are just about the same age. But I'm willing to bet a dollar against a good hunting dog that whether you're a hundred or twenty-one, if you were a small town kid, you'll identify.


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