I think it was the summer of 1982. There was an Earth Day celebration being held in Central Park. I was there with Shana (and her mother) and I was carrying Shana in a backpack on my back. And as we were wandering around, Shana suddenly started bouncing up and down and saying, “Puff! Puff!”
I listened and picked out what Shana had heard so acutely: Someone was singing one of her favorite bedtime songs, “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Then I realized it was three someones. It was three someones whose voices I recognized immediately.
Her mother and I hotfooted it in the direction of the bandshell and there found, to our surprise, Peter, Paul and Mary singing one of their signature songs. Shana would pipe in “Puff!” every time they got to the refrain.
PP&M were always part of my young adult life. Back in the days when Howie Weinstein was living in NY, he would always organize an expedition for all the local authors whenever PP&M were performing in Westbury Music Fair.
I haven’t seen the trio in years, though, and now I’m saddened to learn that I’ll never have that opportunity again. Nor, even worse, will any of my kids.
RIP Mary Travers.
PAD
• 
“A Dragon lives forever, but not so little boys…”
I heard the news on NPR as I was getting dressed. She wasn’t a big part of my life, but I still feel hole there where something should be now that she’s gone.
Not a fan of PP&M.
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Nevertheless, in my twenties I had PBS on the TV while doing some things around the house and they had a show that came on. I love the metal music so my first response was something like, “Christ, more aging hippies singing peace, love, and non-threatening hug-a-tree music.”
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Before I knew it, I had stopped what I was doing and had watched the entire show. I was entertained the whole time. It was one of the first moments in my life that I began to understand that there is more than my (at the time) narrow view of the world.
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Still not a fan, but I have to give PP&M credit, and a healthy hunk of gratitude, for breaking a mental wall erected by a stubborn bášŧárd named Mitch. Not a simple task, even by today’s lowered standards.
So long, Mary.
Reading this reminded me of an episode of LA Law. An MPD client sung this song to his “alters” as he essentially put them to sleep inside his own mind. It was easily the most haunting version of the song i have ever heard.
On a side note, I had a buddy who had a badly battered, smoke-belching, 4 door hatchback, sorry excuse for a vehicle that he liked to call “Puff, the tragic wagon.”
Thanks, Jim.
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Had me laughing out loud with that.
I grew up with their music. Like your daughter, Puff was often a bedtime song for me when I was little. I listened to their children’s tapes “Peter, Paul, and Mommy” pretty much constantly. As I grew older, I graduated to their adult fair. My first concert was a PP&M concert that I went to with my mom.
I was talking to my mom today, and she told me she can remember the first time she heard one of their songs. She was 13 and at a youth group meeting and she heard “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” The trio have been a part of her life ever since. She told me today that I’m tasked with making sure that PP&M music is played at her funeral.
Listening to Peter, Paul & Mary is one of the few memories I still have of my grandfather, who died when I was 5. They were one of his favorite groups, and I can remember “helping” him put a record on (I’m pretty sure my job involved holding the empty record case…) and then the two of us singing along and dancing around the living room. As a conscientious objector during WW2, their anti-war songs really struck a chord in him. Two of their songs played at his funeral, though I can’t for the life of me remember which ones. I suspect ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone” was one.
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I’ve listened to their music my entire life; I still have albums on vinyl, tape, and CD; and with two of the albums on my MP3 player, I can usually manage to get at least one song on shuffle nearly every day.
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RIP, Mary Travers, you will be missed.
Puff The Magic Dragon isn’t one of my favorite memories.
Children can latch on to the oddest things and become frightened by them. “Puff” was a regular feature of the Captain Kangaroo show when I was little. They would play the song about three times a year, always with illustrations by Cosmo Allegretti. Well, the song and the illustrations combined in my pre-school mind and formed one gigantic sad story of abandonment and loss, and it scared the crap out of me. And ever since then, I’ve associated the song with abandonment and loss.
As such, I don’t like thinking about the song. No reflection on either PPM or Mr. Allegretti, but it’s not a pleasant memory of childhood. And news of Mary Travers death just brought all those buried memories back.
I imagine the news wasn’t much fun for her family, either.
Condolences to them for their loss, but it would be nice if everybody could mention the OTHER hits PPM had. There’s a little four year old kid inside of me who is phobic about being abandoned and doesn’t want to think about Puff right now.