Eighty-eight year old Johnny Mathis walked onto the PPAC stage last Saturday night to a packed house, and there was a collective hush.

Was this the crooner from the fifties and sixties whose music Joyce and I listened to on the car radio while parking at West Hill Pond?

Was this the prolific singer who over the years has recorded close to 80 albums?

He sure didn’t look like the Johnny Mathis I grew up with. Of course not. After all, he’s two years older than I am, and we do change over the years.

But there he was, backed by a terrific full orchestra singing what seemed like a hundred songs he had recorded over these many years.

O.K. He couldn’t always sustain or reach all those high notes all the time, but there were moments when he did, and they were greeted with applause and cheers.

Mathis went smoothly from one song into the next, mixing the years with his favorites and ours, never looking at a playlist or stopping to take a drink during two hours of loving memories.

“Wonderful, Wonderful” was a strain on his vocal cords, but the audience didn’t mind. They still cheered as he brought back memories of where they were and what they were doing when they put their nickel in the juke box.

“The Twelfth of Never”, brought a tear to my eye as I grabbed the hand of the woman sitting next to me, the same person that sat next to me when I first heard the song.

Thank you, Johnny, for bringing back those wonderful, wonderful memories.