Saturday Soundtrack: Leaving on a Jet Plane

I first heard this song in the late seventies, though it had been around since the mid sixties. I remember hearing it for the first time while riding with my sister in her orange Volvo. I must have been about 7 or 8 years old. I didn't know what the song was about. Still don't. I've been told that back when Peter, Paul and Mary were regularly performing most people thought it was about people leaving their loved ones here to go fight in Vietnam. But that doesn't sound to me like what the song is about. It is a beautifully sad song.

This recording is of one of their reunion concerts in the late 1980s. If you have never Peter, Paul, and Mary before you are in for a treat. Try not to cry.