Once upon a time in the Kitt household, and I mean once upon a time, there were stacks and stacks of 45 records. You will recall, if you are ancient as I am, that these were small record albums with one song on each side. You will further recall that record albums were large, flat discs of grooved black vinyl that one placed on a “record player” and, thanks to a needle on the end of a metal arm, music emerged.

It all seems so very medieval now. Further medieval (or at least odd) was the fact that the hole in the center of 45s was far too big to fit the turntable’s spindle (terminology check on aisle 3), so you had to snap a little plastic disc into place to make it fit. Our little plastic discs were yellow and swirly — hard to describe, impossible to forget.

Now I will say that I’m juuuust young enough that these 45s had mostly been procured before my time — or at least before I became aware of them. I don’t believe people were still snapping up 45s by the time the early ’80s rolled around. But during the ’70s, my family accumulated quite a collection. So when I was seven or eight, I used to sift through them with some regularity.

They were piled messily on one shelf of a tall, black, wooden cupboard in our parlor (a fancy name for a space that was really a living room with a stereo and a piano). Some were still in their individual sleeves, looking new as the day they’d been purchased; other sleeves were a bit more well loved and tattered; and some of the records were loose, sliding around, liable to get scratched and scuffed. But their condition didn’t matter much by that point. No one really cared anymore.

The labels on 45s had a lot of information in tiny print, circling around the edges. Copyright date, publishing company, that kind of thing. In the middle, in larger print, the name of the artist and song were carefully stamped. And somehow there was space for a big, splashy company graphic — I remember a nice big apple on a Beatles 45, and a tropical island scene on a Randy Newman record.

Most of the groups and songs I didn’t know. But I grew to have a few favorites in the pile. “Short People.” “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.” The unparalleled “You Make My Pants Wanna Get Up and Dance,” which I still bust into with some frequency. And then there was the song I heard this morning, “Werewolves of London.”

This Warren Zevon classic walks a fine Dr Demento-esque line, so I was surprised, but happy, to hear it today. Once my fascination with the 45s died down at about 10 or 11, I didn’t give Mr. Zevon much thought until his battle with cancer became news a few years ago. At that point, I began to dig into his music a little deeper. Smart guy, that. And funny. And wise. And sad.

There’s a tribute album I love almost as much as (OK, maybe more than) his original songs. Two or three years ago (or six? who knows), I visited TGOTS in her Southland home. I’d been visiting some other friends a little farther north with the fella, and drove the couple of hours by myself in our rental car. Somehow I had this CD, and it was the only one I had, and I listened to it repeatedly. I remember sun, and these beautiful songs, and the strange but liberating sparseness of being in a remote car in a remote state. TGOTS, did I make you listen to the CD when I got there? Or is my mind failing again and you actually gave me the CD? Jeepers. All I know is, it’s great stuff.

And I’ve got to ask Ma and Pa Kitt if they still have all those 45s.

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