The Soundtrack to My Youth

"I think George Michael may have died..."

I was sitting at the dining room table at Mom's, having just finished Christmas supper, when I received the text.  The year two thousand and sixteen, already cursed with so much darkness and death, had claimed yet another.

I suppose you never know how news like that will hit you until it does.  But amidst all the usual Christmas gaiety - the excitement of the nephews and niece, the adults talking, some Christmas movie on the television -- it took everything within me to keep from weeping openly.

I walked down the hall for a moment to gather myself.  When I returned, I told my sister the news.  She looked shocked for a second, then sang a couple of lines of "Faith" and moved on.  She didn't get it.  She was a bit too young then.

"Then" being somewhere in the vicinity of 1988.

Faith.  Father Figure.  Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.  One More Try.  Careless Whisper.  That music was the soundtrack to my youth.

For me, it represents those sweet spot days of thirteen to nineteen.  First cars and awkward first kisses.  Bonfires and pep rallies and hanging out at the mall.  Falling in love and first broken hearts.  When the real world had mostly yet to begin to erode the innocence.

I remember being on a field trip.  We were going to Helen Keller's birthplace, I think.  On the bus, I had strategically positioned myself on the seat in front of Annalisa Gray, on whom I had a little crush.  She was listening to the "Faith" album on her Walkman, which made her even more appealing.  

Though I had both the "Make It Big" and "Music From the Edge of Heaven" cassettes from the Wham! days, I had not yet procured my own copy of George Michael's first solo album.  I daydreamed that we might share headphones while listening to it, but as reality would have it, I think she loaned me her Walkman long enough to listen to one song.

The next year, she and I would perfect the art of the tongueless kiss.  (Is art the right word?)  I got my own copy of "Faith" and flat wore it out.  As it almost always does, the music outlived the crush.

I guess eventually the music outlives us all...

"I'm looking out for angels, just trying to find some peace..."

Act the Second

(This is the conclusion to a story I began a couple weeks ago.  If you missed part one, you can check it out here.  Unless you're a member of law enforcement, in which case, there's really nothing to see.  I consider this a motivational story.  As in, it motivates me to post something else soon so this won't be the first thing people see when they come here.)

Punishment was swift.

The following Monday, most of the student body was in the gym for the intramural finals.  The principal walked in and pointed at the three of us -- Axl, Neil, and myself --and called us to his office.  We unceremoniously made our way down the bleachers and out of the gym in front of all our peers and every girl I'd ever made out with or wanted to.

Actually, if I hadn't had the worst game of my life in the intramural semifinals the week before, we probably would've been playing and they'd have had to stop the game to pull me out.  So, it could have been worse.

When we got to the office, I saw LJ first.  He had graduated the prior year.  They had contacted him and made him come back to the school!  This had to be bad.

Then we were led into another room -- the actual principal's office -- where sat the middle school principal, Mister Mims.

He was Ferris Bueller's Rooney, The Breakfast Club's Vernon, and every other self-important school administrator starving to wield what little power they'd been afforded rolled into one.  I was certain he had waited for this day his whole life.

The basic gist of the meeting was that we would perform 100 hours of "community service" which would largely be made up of painting the middle school.  In exchange, he wouldn't press charges, nothing would go on our record, and we would all be able to graduate as planned.

It seemed like a power play then, and still does.  Intimidation and scare tactics at their best.  I'm sure they needed someone to paint the school.  Here was a chance to get someone to do it for free.  But what choice did we have?  Felt like none.

They had also contacted our parents.  Axl and I would miss our senior trip, to the beach.

And so that became the summer we learned to paint, and bonded, with each other and with the middle school custodian, Ms. Bullard.

Ms. Bullard was sort of a manly woman.  Not all that fetching.  It wasn't hard to imagine her in younger days plowing ten acres nine months pregnant, stopping to squeeze out triplets with no medicinal assistance, then going right back to plowing.

She was no nonsense, but good as gold.  I got the feeling she didn't agree with the principal's punishment, and she made that summer as bearable as possible while still ensuring we got some painting done.

One thing I remember most about that summer are the days when every single thing she said seemed to be a euphemism for something sexual.  OK, so most days are probably like that when you're seventeen.  But this one day, she was having a problem with the tractor (seriously, like a lawn tractor, she was mowing) and had Axl and I on the ground looking underneath it.

"Do you see anything sticking out?"

"Just feel around under there until you find it."

"Don't make me have to get down on my hands and knees."

On and on it went, for like ten minutes.  I swear she was doing it on purpose.  If ever I was going to pee my pants from laughter, that would've been the day.

Another thing I remember about the summer is that somehow LJ had managed to keep the whole ordeal hidden from his parents.  When we found this out, we began "accidentally" splattering paint on him so they'd figure out something was going on.

To counter this, he started bringing extra clothes every day and changing in the car before he went home.  That's when one of us got the wise idea to call his parents, and when they said he wasn't home, we'd say "Oh, is he not back from painting the school yet?"

It seems like a crappy thing to do now, but guys are like that sometimes.  We rag each other incessantly, make up fun games where we punch each other in the upper arm to the point of bruising, and sometimes... tattle on each other like whiny babies.  Evidently.

Mostly I just remember the hours.  The painting.  The long days.  The camaraderie.  Talking about anything and everything to pass the time.  Listening to the radio.  You haven't lived until you've sung "Daytime Friends" by Kenny Rogers out loud with three of your best male friends while sweating profusely in the June Alabama humidity at what amounts to little more than a glorified work release camp.

When it was finally over, I can remember a feeling of "what do I do with all this free time now?"  I might've even had a touch of Stockholm syndrome.  It's easy to understand how people who are in prison for a long time can no longer function on the outside. 

I suppose the worst part of it all was disappointing my parents.  And Neil's mom.  Neil was two years my junior.  She had always trusted me to look out for him, and I had let her down.  One day when I knew he wasn't home, I went over and apologized to her face to face.  She forgave me absolutely and completely, I know.  Still, few times have I ever felt lower.

And of course, missing my senior trip seemed like the worst thing in the world.  It would be another five years before I saw the ocean for the first time.

Despite all that, most of the negative feelings have simply faded away with time.

Someday when I recount this tale for my great-grandchildren -- running a paint roller up and down LJ's shirt, Ms. Bullard and the tractor, getting to see the inside of an actual teacher's lounge -- one of them (while marveling at how sharp my memory is for a 104-year-old) will ask, "Sir Bone (I get knighted in my swingin' sixties), why are you smiling?"

And I'll reply with a hint of a gleam in my eye...

"Not now, what's-yer-name.  Go play in the yard or something.  It's time for my bi-hourly nap."

A Tale Not Proudly Told

I suppose I can write about it now.  Enough time has passed.  Although you can never be too careful with stuff like this.  But I think it's safe now, what with the statute of limitations and all.

It was the spring of my senior year of high school.  Must have been well into April, perhaps even early May.  I only say that because it was warm that night.

Six of us -- Archie, Ben, Neil, LJ, Axl, and I -- had gone to town.  Well, the next town over.  I don't remember for sure what we did, maybe went bowling or something.  I would say we went to the mall, we were always doing that, but that wasn't Archie's sort of thing.

On the way over, we were joking Axl that one of the teachers was gonna have the middle school gym open that night for basketball.  He did that sometimes, just not tonight.  But that really got Axl going.  He believed us.  And he wouldn't let it go, even on the way home from bowling.

First I should say, we were in two cars.  Archie had borrowed his brother's Corvette.  Who lets their 17-year-old brother borrow their Corvette?  But he had.  I don't remember who drove the other car, it's not really important, other than to say it wasn't me or Ben.  And it dang sure wasn't a Corvette.

At that time, Neil would've had a black Hyundai hatchback, before anybody even knew they made Hyundais.  We used to con him into letting one of us drive it, because he didn't know where he was going half the time.  We'd have to stop a few blocks before we got home and switch back so his parents wouldn't know.  Axl captained about a 1974 Oldsmobile houseboat-on-wheels, from back in the good old days when they still made cars that seated eight comfortably, and wouldn't fit in one lane.  I would've been in the gold, four-door '85 Cavalier I'd "inherited" from my parents, but like I said I didn't drive that night.

I know I didn't drive because I remember Ben and I fought over who had to ride back with Archie.  I don't even know why, other than it would have been more fun to ride in a car with four than just you and Archie.

Archie wasn't a bad guy.  He wasn't.  He was just... Archie.  He would get all mature on you sometimes.  But just sometimes.  His family was well-to-do.  His dad had started some industrial supply company and they were the first ones to sell those big arctic cooling fans that NFL teams used on the sidelines.  I mean, surely they weren't the first, but that's what Archie told us anyway.  I don't know, maybe they were the first.  But he really wasn't a bad guy.  Not in the least.

So Ben rode with Archie, and the rest of us rode back together, and we went to the drive-in restaurant, the six of us in two cars.  Then, because Axl just wouldn't let it go, even though we told him they weren't shooting basketball at the gym that night, we decided to take him over there so he would drop it.

At some point, we must have gone and gotten our own vehicles -- Axl, LJ, Neil and myself -- because I remember all our cars were parked outside the gym.  Somehow we beat Archie and Ben over there.  And being sophisticated as we were, we decided we'd run down to the old football field and hide on the bleachers so they couldn't find us.

The middle school used to be the high school, and the old football field was just an empty lot they used for a playground at recess.  But on one side, there were these concrete bleachers built into the side of a hill.  So we all laid down where they wouldn't be able to see us.  They looked and looked and hollered for us, then finally gave up and decided to leave.  We all thought it was the most hilarious doggone thing ever.

That's one thing about being seventeen.  The stupidest things are funny.  Maybe that's why seventeen is such a magnificent age.  Actually, I think most of us were eighteen.  But saying we were seventeen sounds better.  It makes it all seem a little more excusable.

In hindsight, Archie and Ben leaving turned out to be... what's the opposite of fortuitous?  Because Archie would have been our moral compass.  There's no doubt in my mind about that.  I think Neil would have objected, too, had he not been two years younger than us.  But as such, he didn't speak up much.  I didn't think his mother would ever forgive me for what we were about to do, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and all.

The recently-departed Ben oft regaled us with stories of guys -- older guys -- who were always sneaking into the gym on Saturdays to shoot ball.  Ben grew up in a house across from the school.  And not even across a road, just a dead-end alley.  I spent the night at his house when my sister was born.  Well, that was after I threw up in the waiting room at the hospital.  God forbid I miss a day of second grade.

Apparently, the back door to the gym used to be broken or something and you could get right in.  But that was Saturday -- "day" being the key syllable there.  I think you see where this is going.

We tried the door.  It was locked.  Had Ben lied?  Surely not.  Probably they had fixed the lock sometime in the past ten years was all.  

This is another thing about being seventeen, at least for me.  We were always looking for a place to play basketball.  It could be an old goal in the dirt in somebody's backyard, an outdoor court with no net at a local church, or, in this case, a locked gymnasium.

So there we were on a warm spring night 'neath the Alabama stars, a few weeks yet until graduation, the real world seemingly still far away.  An entire gymnasium with its two beautiful basketball goals, just sitting there, beckoning to us from the other side of a brick wall, a locked door, and some windows.

Ah yes, the windows.  Those big tilt-out windows that gyms always have.  Did I mention several of them were open?

I'm not sure how long we debated it.  I do remember having qualms.  Not many qualms, but a couple of qualms.  I think poor Neil may have even objected at first.  But peer pressure's idiocy knows no bounds.  So after ten or fifteen or thirty minutes, the four of us, a real crack group of world-class decision-makers mind you, settled upon a plan.

We would hoist Neil up to the ledge by one of the open windows.  He was probably about 5'10" and fairly slight of frame.  He would be able to climb through the window, make his way over to turn on the lights, then let us in the back door.  I don't recall why, but we seemed fairly confident the back door would open from the inside. 

It did.

And there we were -- in basketball xanadu!

We started out playing some "21," then two-on-two, and eventually broke off into two games of one-on-one.  I was taking on Axl, while LJ and Neil went at it on the other end.  I don't remember much about the basketball portion of the evening, which is a bit strange, as it is the whole reason for the story.  I just remember Neal kept killing LJ.

He would yell things like, "Bone, I beat him 21 to 4."  "Bone, I beat him again." "Bone."

"Bone!"

I had stopped even listening.  Then both their voices -- LJ and Neil -- were yelling my name.

"Bone!!!"

To this day, I never knew why they yelled at me.  I mean, why not Axl?  We were the same age.  Heck, he was four months older even.  Why did I have to be the ringleader?  But I was.

Axl and I stopped our game.  We turned to see what they wanted.  And there, at the far end of the court, stood two women.

I recognized one as a teacher.  Turns out they both were.

Suddenly the real world had gotten awfully close.

Evidently one of the teachers had been driving by the school and saw every light in the gym was on, you know, because it was night time and all!

Drat!  The only flaw in our plan, and it had come back to bite us in the hindquarters.

They had an intriguing question for us: "What are ya'll doing in here?"

Neil, bless his heart, replied with the innocence of a child (which legally, he still was).

"Playing basketball?"

We would laugh about that part later, but I swear I could not have mustered even a whimper in that moment.  I'd have been less terrified if there had been Soviet paratroopers landing outside the gym.  I'd seen "Red Dawn" so I knew how to handle that.

Then Axl began trying to talk his/our way out of it, saying we thought the other teacher, the one we kidded him about, was going to be up there that night.  That old boy, I swear.  Once in 9th grade English class, he made up this whole book report about a book that didn't even exist.  If that wasn't enough, when Archie told the teacher the book didn't exist, she said pensively, "No.  I think I may have heard of that book." 

Axl could always, and still can, talk his way out of almost anything.  But he wasn't talking his way out of this.

The teachers told us to get out and that this better never happen again.  I'm not sure if they were yelling, but it sure felt like they were.  We scampered to our cars.

I bet it took me about twelve hours to fall asleep that night.  I hoped that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.


"Seventeen, only comes once in a lifetime / Don't it just fly by wild and free / Goin' anyway the wind blew, baby..."

Music Monday: This time of year

It comes at first in bits and pieces.  Hinting at itself with a single crisp morning, only to be swallowed up by the heat of a midday Sun.  Then a week later, perhaps two, you get an entire day of it, the oppressive humidity removed and replaced by a feeling so familiar yet not fully describable, so that it can only be called "fall."

September seems to arrive on a gentle breeze.  At first it's just a breeze, stirring the still warm air.  But after some days, it begins to turn and to chill.  Soon here the cotton will be dried and full, ready for picking.  Then the leaves begin their spectacular but all-too-brief magic show, as the sun begins to set on the year.

For me, fall will always be a Friday afternoon in 1989.   It's high school, and a pep rally.  The students have long since mailed it in for the week, and most of the teachers have done the same.  It's intentionally accidentally bumping into the girl I've wanted to ask out since the first day of Physics after school, then not quite getting up the courage to.  But still smiling because I got to talk to her.  And besides, there would always be next week.

It's those few perfect days where no heat and no AC are needed.  It's driving with the windows down and singing at the top of my lungs to my "Unchained Melody" cassette single because Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield knew just how I felt.

Fall is a reminder -- of itself, of other falls gone before, and of so many other things you hadn't even planned on remembering.  But damn that breeze and all it conjures up...

Taking advantage of the change in weather, we ventured down to the Clarkson Covered Bridge Sunday afternoon.  I have included some iPhone photos for your ocular delight.  The scenery is God's (and the Alabama Historical Commission's).  The captions are mine.

As covered bridges go, she seemed like a long one.

Historical markers: The original Wikipedia

"I don't ever wanna feeeeeel, like I did that day.  Take me to the place I looooove..."

I like to call this one "Tree on Side of Hill, Hashtag Nature."

I did everything I could to save this dog, but as it turns out he actually was not dead in the first place.

And it being Monday and all, I know it's a little out-of-character for me to do a Music Monday.  But what the heck.  I haven't blogged in a month.  May as well throw everything I've got out there at once.

I had a couple of songs in mind.  One was "This Time of Year" by Better Than Ezra, but it's really hard to find decent live versions of songs and I couldn't find an official video for that one.  The other song isn't anything all that remarkable.  But it was written by a guy from my home county, and a couple of the people mentioned in the song are real people who do or did exist, and I'm pretty sure the gin is still there.  So in that sense, I guess it is pretty cool.  It's called "Sweet Southern Comfort."  And again for lack of a decent live version, this is the video for the song.  Try and ignore the cheesy phone call bit at the start. 



"Well, there's a feeling in the air / Just like a Friday afternoon / Yeah, you can go there if you want / Though it fades too soon..."

The single shutting and reopening of one's eye

Sometimes it meant camping out.  I know some of the names changed from time to time, but for some reason thinking back on it now, I can only remember the four of us -- Me, Allan, Hollywood, and Mouse.  That was the core group.

Gazing up at the stars, talking about girls you'd dated and ones you almost had, singing any song that came to mind until eventually one of the other guys told you to shut up or threw something at you -- usually the latter, knowing you didn't have to go home until morning.  It felt like freedom.

And there was always a fire -- a big one.  As we gathered every stick and pine needle within a fifty yard radius, it was usually more bonfire than campfire.  I would say I was surprised no one ever called the fire department on us, but for that one time someone did.

Even so, once the fire died down, it seems like we always wound up chilled to the bone or soaking wet.  Sometimes both.  It probably didn't rain as much as I seem to remember it did, but those are the nights that stand out.  I can still vividly see Mouse, who weighed all of 120 pounds soaking wet, sitting there shivering, telling us how he was never doing this again.  But he always did.

I remember one night Hollywood and I rode Allan's tandem bike into town about 1 AM to go to the Walmart, for no reason whatsoever other than it was something to do.  It was about four miles one way, and long before we had a 24-hour Walmart, so we pooled our change and bought a couple of Mountain Dews from the vending machine out front, then rode back.

It feels like there should be more to this story, like we got pulled over by the police or ran into a mailbox or were shot at on our way back or something, but there isn't.  Just me, riding a bicycle-built-for-two, with another guy, at 1 o'clock in the morning.  That is all.

Sometimes it meant tapping on my future (now ex-) roommate's bedroom window late at night -- the universal signal that a game of spades was about to commence.  He'd let us in through the carport door and we'd play for an hour or two.  One night we were a person short, so he went and got his sister to play.  His sister was one of the great crushes of my adolescence.  I spent a good solid four years, I'd say, finding any excuse I could to hang out with her.  So from then on, I always tried to make sure we were a person short.

Sometimes it meant sneaking into the basement door of the Baptist church and playing ping-pong, or cards.  Axl and his parents attended there so he knew where they hid the key.  He said no one would mind, and who were we to argue.  We ended up holding our fantasy baseball draft that year in the classroom for the 5 & 6-year-olds, amidst some Noah's ark memorabilia which I may or may not have played with a little.

Sometimes it meant picking a road we'd never been down and seeing where it led.  Pick A Road, we called it.  The name has a certain understated stupidity to it, don't you think?

Flying through the countryside with the top off my old Jeep sated a bit of wanderlust, I suppose.  As we lamented the lack of anything better to do, all the while pondering life and wishing we had one.

And the radio.  There was always the radio, or some worn out cassette.  Turned up wide.  Letting the songs affect me too much.

I still remember a couple of those roads, and any time I pass by I can feel a smile start to begin.

Such were my late teens and early twenties: One long continuous quest for something to do, some place to be, never wanting the night to end.  There seemed to be time to burn.  So burn it we did.

When I think back on those times now, they're not some faded, distant memory.  Rather, they're clear.  Vivid.  Almost close enough to touch.  Like if I could somehow turn back one single page, there they would be, as real as the day I lived them.  But when I reach out to grasp them I unclench my fists to find my hands still empty.  And it blows my mind to think, and it just does not seem possible, that twenty years have passed.... just... like... that.

I suppose that's how the brain's files work.  Twenty years ago can seem as close as twenty minutes ago.

And just as far away.

"And the sound the king of spades made / In the spokes of my old Schwinn / I was racing Richie Culver / For a Grape Nehi / Yeah, lately I've been thinking / 'Bout Route 5, Box 109..."

I got ninety-nine blog ideas, but Groundhog Day ain't one

(That title made a lot more sense yesterday.  Trust me.)

Some people do a New Year's post on the last day of the year.  Some wait until the first day of the new year.  But I, I have taken the road less traveled by -- and by less traveled by, I mean probably not traveled by at all.  For I have chosen this early February spring day for my obligatory New Year's post.

I rang in the new year at Axl's.  The night was replete with old school Nelly, multiple complaints from the neighbor, and chopping wood.  The latter is not a euphemism.  Oh, how I wish it were.

Axl had recently reconnected with a high school classmate of ours, and she was on hand for the chopping of the wood, er... party.  At some point, Axl disappeared upstairs, returning a few minutes later with several of his high school yearbooks -- En Retrospect, they were always titled.  I believe it's Latin, meaning "to commiserate over wasted years."  And so the three of us spent entirely too much time doing just that.

At first it was interesting, as we discussed what we remembered about each other.  "I remember Bone always used to sit in the back of the class.  And you were always drawing or writing something."  That was news to me, as I didn't realize I was writing, even then.  And after all, surely there is some value to knowing how others view you.

But then it got to be a bit much.  "Even though H won Most Likely To Succeed, I voted for you."  "I still think you're the most likely to succeed, Bone."

See, I don't need to hear that.  What good does that do me?  For me, New Year's isn't about remembering and learning from past mistakes or thinking about the ways you can do better, it's all about forgetting.  Actually, that's not just New Year's, that's kinda how I view every day: I don't want to think too much about the past, and I sure don't want to ponder the future.

Beyond that, it was a bit of a backwards year for me.  The Januarys arrived in November.  And December was just a lot of days.  I had six weeks of the blahs.  For the first time in my life, I found myself dreading Christmas.  And usually, I'm Mister Christmas.  No, really, I actually had someone say to me, "What's wrong with you?  You're usually Mister Christmas."  Although I'm not sure how official any of these titles really are.

Nothing very devastating happened.  I was just going through some things, stuff was weighing on my mind, and that definitely contributed to a lack of blogging.  But then January was nothing like itself.  There was another Bama national championship to celebrate, and re-watch multiple times.  I saw Gordon Lightfoot in concert.  And the weather has felt more like April. 

So a most belated Happy New Year to you.  And there's reason to believe, maybe this year...



"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower, about the things you could not show her..."

When second base was but a distant dream

This is what I like to consider a motivational post.  Not really for you, but rather to hopefully motivate me to post something else soon so that this one doesn't remain at the top of the page.

Travel back with me if you will, to a simpler time: 1989.  Tone-Loc was in his prime.  I may or may not have still been tight-rolling my 550 Levis.  And I didn't know nearly as much about girls as I do now -- which, granted, still isn't... well, anyway.

I was teacher aide for Coach A's 8th grade social studies class.  I mean, come on -- a coach's class, 8th grade girls swooning (in my mind) over me, a junior -- I had it all.  Plus, I loved grading papers.  In fact, if I could go back and do it all over again, I'd have been a teacher.  Or a writer.  Or maybe a professional Scrabble player.

Anyway, for some reason, I had a rep as a good student, so Coach A would let me leave the classroom pretty much whenever I wanted.  It just so happens a girl I kinda liked was an office aide for the assistant principal at the same time.  (In fact, now that I think about it, it's possible the impetus for our entire "relationship" was that we were both aides during the same period.  Sigh.  Love was so simple then.)

So at some point during that year, we started sneaking out into the hall to make out.  To that point, it was the wildest thing I'd ever done.

There is but one caveat to this story:  we never used our tongues.

The first time was awkward, as you might imagine.  Subsequent make out sessions were downright uncomfortable.

Now some of you might be wondering, how is that even possible -- tongue-less making out?  Let me see if I can describe it.... You both have your mouths open.  Your lips are touching.  But nothing's crossing the border.

Now imagine doing that for what felt like... fifteen seconds.  Maybe thirty.  Each time.

It's kinda like non-invasive surgery.  Laparoscopic kissing!  That's what it was.

At this point it strikes me to ask the question, can it even be considered making out if you don't use your tongue?  I should create an urban dictionary term for a tongue-less make out session.  We could just called it a "bone."  Hmph, turns out that term is already in use.  Oh well.

Back to our story of young love, or... something.  As one might expect, with the absence of a papillae-and-taste bud-covered apparatus as part of our steamy 6th-period trysts, our romance fizzled within a few weeks.

I wonder if she ever told anyone about us.  What am I saying?  Of course she did.  Girls tell everything!  She probably told all the girls in our class, which might help explain why I only dated girls from other schools for the remainder of my high school career.  And suddenly I wonder if any of this had anything to do with my dating drought of '93!

It's good to reminisce, isn't it?

Today, anytime someone asks me to describe what it was like to be living in those days, to be, quote, "heading for the nineties, living in the wild, wild West," needless to say, this is not the story I tell.

(Editor's note: When I write the Revisionist History Of Me: Volume 4, I will have been thirteen years old when all this occurred, and she will have been sixteen.  And my babysitter.)

"Dancin' meant everything.  We were young and we were improvin'.  Laughin', laughin', with our friends.  Holdin' hands meant somethin', baby..."

I can't tell you why

(My Les Paul/Google effort. It was either that, Jingle Bells or Three Blind Mice.)

Spring is the new summer here. Although I'm not sure what that makes summer. And because I spend way too much time looking at the weather almanac online, I know that today was our eighteenth day in a row over 90 degrees. I have managed to golf a couple of times during the oppression. Nearly shot the temperature one day, so... I guess that's something.

I missed my 20-year high school reunion Saturday. Is missed the right word, if you skip it intentionally?

You know how these things can be. I just didn't want it to turn into the 20-year Bone love fest, celebrating my wit and all my accomplishments in.... blogging and, uh, other as-yet-to-be-determined areas.

There was a picnic in the park for lunch, then dinner at a tavern in the evening. One of my classmates called in between the two -- the girl who once nominated me for Best Dressed, which I always found ironic as on the day she did I was wearing a shirt Mom had bought at a yard sale, which was where I got probably half my clothes then.

"We missed you at the picnic. A couple of people asked about you."
"Thanks."
"So what have you done today?"
"Not much." (Translation: Woke up about 9:30, ate some Cap'n Crunch, a couple of hours just disappeared, fixed a frozen pizza for lunch.)

Wow. Even for me, that was a complete cringe moment. I didn't have a good reason for not going. I didn't even have a bad reason for not going. I'm not one of these people who had a horrible high school experience. Au contraire, I ruled the school, in my own mind.

The best reason I can come up with is that I despise those two-minute conversations where you "catch up" with people you haven't seen in years and may never see again by asking where do you live, what do you do, and how many kids do you have.

But that's weak. The bottom line is it was just easier not to. Story of my life. Or at least a few chapters.

Maybe I'll go to my 25th. Or 30th. Or whatever comes next. I could do some impromptu stand-up so hilarious people will pee their pants and kick themselves because they didn't vote for me for Wittiest in 12th grade. It's quite easy to say that now and have it seem like a very real possibility. The attending, I mean, not the peeing.

So it's not that I regret not going, to this one, or my five-year, or my ten-year. It's just that I'm really not sure what it is that makes me not do these things.

And all this to say nothing of the light-speed at which the time has moved. Realizing I have been out of school for twenty years, hearing that kids who graduated high school this year were born in 1993 -- it's almost incomprehensible.

Years are funny things. When you stand them up next to hours, minutes, or seconds, they appear to be much longer than they really are. But it's just an illusion. Anyone who has ever stopped to look back on ten, twenty, thirty or more can attest to that.

"And there's the old movie house, they finally closed it down. You could find me there every Friday night, twenty years ago..."

One fish, two one fish

Thursday afternoon, I went fishing at Dad's. As I think back on it, I'm reminded of some grand old country song lyrics from yesteryear. To paraphrase slightly, Bone's daddy was takin' him fishin' when he was (thirty-)eight years old...

It's the first time I'd been fishing in 15 or 20 years. The last, and only, time I fished with any regularity was back in high school. A group of us guys used to fish in a creek just below a dam by an old grist mill. I was pretty good at it. And by "it," I mean, getting my line hung up on the dam, having to cut it and losing the lure. They started calling me "Bait."

And since I don't believe in these fancy-schmancy technological fishing advances such as depth finders, or tackle boxes, I never had my own lures. Therefore, the many lures I lost belonged to someone else. So they started calling me other names, as well.

Anyway, back to Thursday. Allow me to preface this by saying I was never told what we would be fishing for, which I do believe is a pretty important component in determining what kind of bait or lure to use. Am I right? So drawing on all my previously forgotten fishing experience, I opted to go with the green lure. Everyone else was using live worms.

Well, by the time everyone else had caught multiple catfish before I had even caught one, it was clear that worms were the way to go. But I wasn't swayed. Because a great fisherman can catch fish even without the perfect bait. OK, I just made that up, but it sounded good.

Let me also proffer some advice to the ladies here. If a guy takes you fishing, you shouldn't catch a fish before he does. But if that can't be helped, then you really, really shouldn't catch three fish before he has even caught a single one. That could really put him in a sour mood the rest of the day, you know, if he's not as secure in his masculinity and fishing prowess as, say, me or Bill Dance.

Alright, back to my fish tale. Finally my persistence paid off as I hauled in about a half-pounder. Shortly after that, I decided to switch over to the white lure, but they just weren't hitting that at all. (Clearly, my instinct to go with the green over the white in the first place had been spot on.)

For me, fishing has never been just about how many fish you catch anyway. It's more about the atmosphere, the camaraderie, and of course, the snacking. Being outdoors, legs hanging off the pier, drinking a Sun Drop and munching on some barbecue fried pork skins--that's all I really need.

Besides, I've always been more of a caster than a quote, "fisher." I mean, anyone can drop a worm in a pond and catch a fish. But a perfect cast? The whir of the thingy unwinding, the unmistakable plop as the sinker hits the water, then the click of the other thingy. Sigh. There's nothing like it.

So all told for the day, I only lost one lure. Which I kind of equate with only losing one ball during a round of golf. Which I consider to be an excellent day. I only caught one fish, and threw it back. But again, that's perfectly fine with me. I think I speak for most fishermen when I say I don't really like having to touch the fish when I catch them.

It's kinda gross.

"You and me goin' fishin' in the dark. Lyin' on our backs and countin' the stars, where the cool grass grows..."

As autumn stirs

Autumn arrived on a Monday this year, not according to some number on a wall, but just as she always does, with a familiar and unmistakable change in the air. A certain chill which serves notice that while winter may not be imminent, it is also not all that far away.

Autumn is a reminder. First, of autumns gone before. Then, of itself, of all the things that autumn is--windy days, a high school football game, Halloween and Thanksgiving, trees surrendering their leaves in grand displays of oranges, yellows and reds as the Earth slowly falls to sleep.

The autumn wind seems to stir up a rustle of memories. I think of Homecoming dances and driving my Ford Escort to school, rolling yards and backyard football games. I think of camping out, singing every song we could think of, and no one complaining when I broke into my beyond bad falsetto to sing "Sherry, Baby." I think of girls I knew and almost knew. And I think of jumping into big piles of leaves as a kid, and Thanksgivings when everybody I loved was still here.

Every year has one and only one, that first day of chill in the air when summer finally relents, knowing its hottest days have been spent.

There's a comfortableness. And yet something nostalgic. It's nothing you can grasp or hold in your hand. Just something you feel, and know, without being able to explain.

Summer is freedom--sunglasses and a smile. Winter is harsh and lonesome. Spring holds promise of things new and fresh, and the hope of something better.

But autumn?

Autumn remembers.

"The last time I saw her it was turning colder, but that was years ago. Last I heard, she had moved to Boulder. But where she's now I don't know..."

Four cardboard boxes

This weekend I embarked on a project I had been putting off for... let's see, I've lived here nearly four years, so... nearly four years: Cleaning out the office.

Wait, it gets even more exciting.

The office--AKA my spare bedroom--houses my workstation, two bookshelves containing among other things my Cheers trivia game, my old computer desk which has been turned into more shelf space, my old computer, some mostly unpacked luggage, an ironing board which is half covered with articles of clothing which I would estimate number around twenty mostly consisting of long-sleeved shirts still unironed from last winter, and last and most obstructively, four boxes that had been sitting along the north wall of the room since I moved in.

Trust me, it was messier than it sounds.

The centerpiece of this undertaking were the four boxes. Like a cardboard Stonehenge, they served as a constant reminder to all who entered--which was mostly just me--of my procrastination. This was not a task that I fancied (as evidenced by said procrastination).

And so with a modicum of determination, I opened the first box. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a regular-sized sled and five well-kempt New Kids--on the cover of my New Kids On The Block Christmas cassette!


(Counter-clockwise from bottom: Joey, Danny, Donnie, Jordan, and Jon--he's a Sagittarius.)

I had been looking for this for years! And now the search for a working cassette player begins.

Well, things were really looking up. So after opening the case, browsing through some of the lyrics and singing a few bars of "This One's For The Children," I proceeded.

The first box contained the usual things you would expect to find in storage: books, TV Guides, an unopened envelope which when opened revealed a thank you card for a graduation gift I had given... in 1993.

Also included were several of my folders and notebooks from college. Inside those were literally hundreds of lyrics that I had scribbled down, notes that I had passed back and forth with a girl in Music Theory freshman year, and lists. Lots and lots of lists.

There was a list of the 42 most fun days in high school, a list of 29 apartment rules that I'm pretty sure I made well before I ever had an apartment, and a list of a thousand songs that I had made out when Little Joe bet me that I couldn't name a thousand songs. Won myself ten bucks. Not bad for nineteen pages, handwritten, front and back.

There was also a list of 75 qualities to look for in a girl. It began with the line, "The perfect girl to marry would be a girl who..." These ideal qualities included:

#3. likes the Naked Gun movies.
#8. has a good, nice plump but not too big butt.
#14. likes Married...With Children. (Clearly, a few of these are still applicable.)
#16. has heard of Tom T. Hall. (That always knocked a lot of girls out as I recall.)
#19. doesn't eat a lot.
#35. would rather watch an Alabama football game than have sex. (Well, that goes without saying.)
#44. doesn't call your car a grocery carrier. (A definite deal breaker.)
#46. always cuts the grass. (It's possible that I was watching too much Married... With Children at the time.)
#72. knows how to play rock, paper, scissors. (The foundation of any solid relationship.)
And #'s 10, 17, 25, 32, 42, 51, and 57: looks like Brandy. (I may have had a crush.)

You know, compared to this, I actually seem mature now. Me! I know, scary.

And then there was the top secret Top Fifty list, typed out and dated, 3/17/94. This was a list of the fifty hottest girls we knew, compiled by LJ, Ben, me and my ex-roommate late one night at a Motel 6. The rules were that at least two of the four of us had to have seen the girl, and at least one of us had to be able to talk to her. We stayed up until at least 2 or 3 AM finishing the list. I still remember us tossing a Nerf basketball and hitting Ben as he kept trying to fall asleep before the list was done. Afterward we swore each other to secrecy. So, I'm not even really supposed to be telling you any of this.

Wow, I feel like I just betrayed the divine secret of the ya-ya brotherhood, whatever that is.

There weren't too many noteworthy items in the rest of the boxes: three bicycle inner tubes for the bike I no longer have, at least five shirts and two pairs of pants I had received as gifts that still had the tags on them, and a Tupperware container of chocolate candy. Let me reiterate here. Four. Years.

Still, I pressed on, sifting through the pieces of my past, cringing at some items, laughing at others. And then it happened, I found the proverbial crown jewel of my excursion. Behold, the jam shorts I sewed in 8th grade in Home Ec:



I still remember going with Mom to pick out the fabric, which to this day is the only time I've ever been inside a fabric store. I remember realizing too late that I had sewn in the elastic waistband all twisted--which is probably a good thing because as a guy, you don't wanna be too good at Home Ec. And from the looks of the nearly worn-through seat area, I must have worn them a lot. Which could help explain my girlfriend drought which extended into 9th grade.

My office is much cleaner now, the four cardboard boxes having been condensed down to a single plastic tub. I threw a lot of stuff away this weekend, and will be taking some more to Goodwill. But on the bottom shelf of one of the bookshelves is a shoebox with a couple of folders in it.

"Remember when we said, girl, please don't go, and how I'd be loving you forever? Taught you 'bout hangin' tough, as long as you got the right stuff..."

Unfriending is (not that) hard to do

Dear Facebook Friend #70,

This just isn't working. I'm sorry. It's not me, it's you.

To be honest, I've been somewhat hesitant about our relationship from the start. Yes, we went to the same high school, but you were three years younger than me. The only class I ever recall having together was when I was a teacher's aide for your 8th grade civics class. (And honestly, my memories of that class are pretty much limited to sneaking out in the hall to make out with LG, who was an office aide that period, and grading the 6'5" basketball player's tests on which he barely made above his per game scoring average, yet never missed a single game.)

So I wasn't sure why you friend requested me. But due to my non-confrontational nature and my inherent need for everyone to like me, I accepted.

Lately, your incessant posting has just become too much. You fill up my homepage daily so that I have to scroll way down or click "older posts" to see updates from my actual friends. Your 8 posts in a 17-minute-span last night was the final straw.

Look, I understand that you must be very busy, what with running your own zoo, not to mention a very successful farm. All the while you've apparently become caught up with the mob, and also seem to be in the middle of a gang war. And I'm sure you're very proud that your zoo just successfully bred 6 Fiji Banded Iguanas.

But frankly, my dear. I. Don't. Care.

And so the time has come to unfriend you. Unfriend--it's quite possibly the ugliest word in a Facebooker's vernacular. I'm not even sure it was a word until Facebook came along. But that's neither here nor there.

I hope that this will not be too hard on you. Surely, you can busy yourself in your Lil' Green Patch and find consolation amongst your other 379 friends. You probably won't even notice I'm gone. After all, you've never once written on my wall and I've not written on yours. We never hurled farm animals in each other's direction. Never even poked one another, thankfully.

I would say that I hope we can remain friends. But as I am unfriending you, that would seem impossible, not to mention counterproductive. So I'll just say that I hope we can remain people-who-once-met-each-other-but-have-no-business-being-Facebook-friends-as-we-were-never-really-friends-to-begin-with.

Thanks for the memories blog entry.

PS: Also, please accept this as my declination of your invitation to join the mafia.

"So don't invite me, throw a sheep or bite me. I hate applications. There are far too many, and I don't use any..."

Confessions of a rabid namist

Excerpt from a conversation I had Sunday night:

Me: "Have you ever dated a guy who drove a motorcycle?"
D: "Yeah, for about fifteen minutes. Stefan."
Me: "Stefan? Please tell me that was not his real name."
D: (laughing) "You're just a name snob."
Me: "Me? Tell me you've known one normal Stefan. Go ahead, tell me. I'm waiting."

My name is Bone, and I am a namist. In relationships, it has always been vital that I like the name of any girl I date (not to mention her voice). I mean, what's more important than those two things? And in general, I hold certain preconceived notions of what a person will be like as soon as I hear their name.

For example, I've never known a normal Eric. I figure all Jodys, Lynns, and Shannons likely have some complex and try to overcompensate because they have girl names. And is there any doubt whatsoever Todd is going to be in a fraternity and drive a German car paid for by his parents?

Meanwhile, Steve is a laid-back good-time party guy. Not really dumb, he just doesn't care. He coasts thru life. Or maybe that's just me basing my entire opinion of Steves on the 90210 character so spledidly portrayed by the incomparable Ian Ziering.

Oh, but about Stefan. I've only known one. He was a friend of a friend. Honest. (And by the way, it was STEH-fun, not stuh-FAHN.) In high school, our weekend entertainment was to walk around the mall until it closed at 9:00. Stefan would always be there. Every. Single. Time.

You could walk into most any store in the mall and ask, "Has Stefan been in tonight?" And they would know who you were talking about. It was like he lived in the mall. Think the movie Terminal, except in a mall rather than an airport.

Stefan had this permed hair, a little Kirk Cameron-ish except it was more wavy than curly. And I can't believe I just typed an entire sentence describing some guy's hair. He looked about thirty years old, though I always assumed he was close to our age.

He was a loner type. Think The Fonz, except not cool. And in keeping with that analogy, I guess the mall was his toilet. Occasionally, he might be seen with a couple of stray girls he had picked up in the mall--mall groupies, we called them--but he usually walked alone.

Stefan would always be talking about all these potential plans for later. "Well I might be going here" or "So and so is having a party, I might stop by there." But I never once saw him anywhere outside the mall.

Sometimes I wonder if he's still there. If I could walk into KB Toys today, mention his name, and the workers would know who I was talking about. But alas, I think I'd rather not know. I'd like to believe he is still there, if only in my mind.

"Now I don't blame him cos he run and hid. But the meanest thing that he ever did was before he left, he went and named me Sue..."

Archie, blow your horn

What do you do when your friend, one of your best friends, tells you a secret so deep and disturbing that even his parents don't know?

It happened when I was in 10th grade. I had gone to the high school football game one Friday night, with plans to go home and spend the night with my friend Archie afterward.

At halftime, I watched Archie march in the band. In his flamboyant bright red uniform and hat complete with festive plume, he seemed to almost be smiling at me. Maybe that should have been my first clue.

After the game, we were on our way over to the band room so that Archie could change. That's when it happened. Archie pulled me aside in the rahter dimly lit parking lot and said he had to tell me something. And he made me vow that I would never tell anyone, emphasizing it with the fact that even his parents didn't know.

My mind began to race. What could it be? How well did I know this guy? We'd really only been friends for a year or two. Not to mention, this was the same guy who had been involved in the John Stamos autograph incident.

I wasn't sure I felt comfortable with any soul-baring confessions at this stage of my life. But what could I do? He was standing there, his band hat under one arm and his heart on his sleeve.

So I promised not to tell, knowing whatever he was about to reveal could very well change our entire relationship forever.

And it did.

To this day, everytime I think of Archie, my mind immediately goes to what he told me that fateful October night:

He wasn't really playing his trombone.

The band director let him march because he had learned the steps so well, but made him promise he'd only pretend to play. Because as it turns out, after two years in band, Archie couldn't play a lick.

I wish I could say Archie's story had a happy ending. But it doesn't. He quit band the next year. I always wondered if the burden of carrying around his secret eventually became too much. Or perhaps someone outed him and he was ostracized by the brass and woodwind sections.

"That's not the beginning of the end. That's the return to yourself. The return to innocence..."

Opening up the AT40 Vault

(The setting: A football game. During a break in the action, cheerleaders began throwing t-shirts into the stands. None of them are quite reaching our seats on the eighth row...)
Axl: "Aw man. This sucks! What they need is one of those slingshots to get the shirts up here."
Bone: "Yeah. Or a cannon."
Axl: "No, they don't need a cannon, just one of those big slingshots. Two girls hold the ends and one pulls back in the middle-"
Bone (interrupting): "I'm aware of how a slingshot works."
Random guy in front of us who has apparently been eavesdropping laughs heartily.

Driving home Friday night, I was scanning the radio when I came across a station playing "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." Obviously, I stopped scanning. When the song was over, a familiar voice came on, a voice I hadn't heard in many years. It was the voice of Casey Kasem.

It seems I'd found the American Top Forty Countdown. Yes! I thought. No more Ryan Seacrest. Casey's back! But why is he playing Tears For Fears? I hadn't really been listening closely, so I figured it was probably a countdown flashback, like the number one song twenty years ago this week or something. A commercial came on next, but I couldn't turn away from that voice.

Casey Kasem was as much a part of my formative years as Bob Barker, General Hospital, and riding around in the car everytime there was a tornado warning. He's the main reason I keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, my inspiration to keep reaching for the stars.

In ninth grade, I would lie in bed every Sunday night listening to the countdown on my Sony Walkman. OK, so I didn't really have a Sony Walkman. I had an off brand imitation Walkman, but do we really have to get into that here?

The countdown would go off around midnight and I would drift off to sleep shortly thereafter. The next day at school, I would ask my friends if they heard something Casey had said on the countdown, or if they heard what the number one song was that week. Time and again, their answer was no.

Anyway, back to Friday night. When the commercials were over, the countdown came back on at number twenty-three. Casey said, "Here's Englishman Howard Jones with Things Can Only Get Better."

Whoa-oh, oh oh oh, whoa-oh oh oh, I was blown away! In addition to Tears For Fears and Howard Jones, I heard Donna Summer, Depeche Mode, and DeBarge. And not even a real popular DeBarge song, but "Who's Holding Donna Now!" I was in Frequency Modulation Heaven.

Casey came on saying it was the top forty countdown from July 13, 1985! What was going on? Had I hit 88 miles per hour and gone back in time while driving down the interstate? I looked around. Lots of SUV's, no Chevettes. No, this was still 2007.

Finally, a promo came on the station. They were having a Casey Kasem marathon weekend! When one countdown went off, another would come on. When I was a little boy listening with my headphones--of which the foam pads had come off, so the hard plastic hurt my ears--everytime the countdown would go off, I would wish it wasn't over. And now, those dreams were finally coming true, albeit twenty years later and only for one weekend.

I didn't want to go home. I just wanted to ride around in my car and listen to Casey all night long. But then I calculated that at 60 miles per hour and 28 miles per gallon, assuming the average song was four minutes long, and with gas at $2.59 a gallon, each song was costing me about thirty-seven cents. So I said good night to Casey.

When I got home, I wiki'd a few things and discovered some radio stations are airing Casey's countdowns from the 70's and 80's once a week! American Top Forty: Eighties can be heard on great radio stations around the land like Magic 97.9, WMGA, Huntington, West Virginia; Classic hits 94.3 The Fox, in Traverse City, Michigan; and 106.1, KQLL, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Now on with the countdown...

"People are people, so why should it be, that you and I should get along so awfully..."

An ode to Mike D

So am I the only one excited about this Scott Baio Is 45 & Single show?

*crickets chirp*

OK, well so maybe I am. But I think his life and mine share several parallels. We're both single. Neither of us have landed a prominent acting role in the past fifteen years. And while we're at it, whatever happened to Buddy Limbeck?

The first time I remember hearing the Beastie Boys, I was in eighth grade. And while "You Gotta Fight For Your Right" was about as rebellious as I was to get, it was their other songs that got me hooked on the Beastie's catchy rhymes and def beats.

Lyrics like "we went to White Castle and we got thrown out" or "he recognized my girlie from the back of her head" seemed to speak directly to my 13-year-old soul.

I recall sitting in my eighth grade English class rapping back and forth to "Paul Revere" with Axl, as Tabitha Aldridge, a cute cheerleader in our class, listened intently. She was smiling and obviously amazed by the sheer magniture of our Beastie-ness. When I got to the wiffle ball bat line, I knew by the look on her face that girls loved rappers.

Thus began my phase of composing three-part color-coded rap lyrics for Axl, Hollywood, and myself. I used the classic four-color blue-barrelled Bic pen to compose my def jams. Most were written during Home Economics, in between knitting Jam shorts and baking peanut butter cookies. I was hardcore.

The words juice, jammy, and girlie dominated my vocabulary in 1987 and 1988. But as time passed, the Beasties changed, and so did I. Cargo shorts and flip-flops have replaced my Jams and British Knights. And I now prefer the single-colored Bic Cristal Classic ball point pen, or the charcoal-barrelled black felt tip pen with the yellow-ended cap.

The Beasties became involved with various causes and charities. They organized and performed at the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert in October 2001. Their music has continued to evolve as well, yet the one constant remains their fresh, clever rhymes. After all these years, the Beastie Boys have managed to remain chill.

So here's to Mike D, MCA, King Ad-Rock, and doing whatever it takes to impress the girlies. Some things never go out of style.


"Well, now, don't you tell me to smile. You stick around I'll make it worth your while. Got numbers beyond what you can dial. Maybe it's because I'm so versatile..."

How I Roll: All that's gold doesn't glitter

(This is part three in a series.)

After driving a 1984 Ford Escort with louvers, one might think that, vehicle-wise, there was nowhere to go but up.

One would be wrong.

Enter the gold 1985 Chevy Cavalier. Yes, I said gold.

To this day, why anyone would purchase a gold vehicle eludes me. The only possible reason I've ever been given is that gold cars don't show dirt as much.

I've seen a lot of car commercials in my time. They talk about horsepower and miles per gallon, and safety ratings, and towing capacity. I don't ever recall a single commercial including the line "it also comes in gold, which doesn't show dirt."

I mean, do we really want to start basing our buying decisions in this country on this principle? If that's the case, why not have women wear rust-colored wedding dresses? But I digress.

So there I am, age seventeen, cruising around in a gold, four-door 1985 Cavalier. Oh yes, it was a four-door. Convenient when you're starting a family. Not so much when you're a senior in high school and trying to get girls to date you.

There are places in this world--Luxembourg, the highlands of Iceland, and some tribes in Malaysia, to name a few--where if you send your child to school driving a four-door gold-colored car, they will arrest you and take your children away. And that's how it should be everywhere. No amount of therapy can ever erase those scars.

The Cavalier was my second and final hand-me-down. As a general rule, if anyone gives you a car, it's probably not going to be a top of the line high-performance vehicle. That's why in the classifieds, you'll see ads for things like a 1976 Vega that doesn't run for $200. People are still trying to get something for it.

Still, I had high hopes at first. The Cavalier had been my Mom's car, so I figured it had to be better than what I'd been driving.

It was not loaded. As a matter of fact, I would say it was the opposite of loaded, whatever that would be called. Manual locks, manual windows, no cruise control, no cassette player, etc.

It was also a four-cylinder, or at least at some point during its existence had been. By the time I finished driving it, I think it was closer to two-and-a-half or three cylinders.

I got my first taste of the Cavalier's power, or lack thereof, just a couple of weeks after I began driving it. After a party one night, two girls who had left about the same time as me, pulled up beside me as if they wanted to race. So I floored it.

We were even for a few seconds. Then the Cavalier topped out... at 78 miles per hour. There I was, pedal to the metal, watching two girls in my senior class leaving me behind. They slowed down and when we got to the next red light, they were laughing. I was not.

I continued to drive the Cavalier--but did not race it anymore--most of my freshman year in college, where I commuted about 50 minutes one way. One spring day on my way home from school, the car started smoking, and sputtering worse than normal. I stopped and called Dad from a payphone. He came and followed me home, slowly. And I did not drive the Cavalier much longer after that.

"I parked my car beside the highway and I didn't lock the doors. Left a note there with the keys. If it cranks, well friend, she's yours..."

How I Roll: Part Deux

(This is part two of a series.)

Going from Piggly Wiggly to Food Fair may not seem like a big deal to most, but it was the first move of my career. It meant a higher wage, more hours, and at last, my very first car payment.

As I look back, I realize that my parents either found or handed me down my first four cars. I'm not sure if my Dad had some kind of connection with the crap car black market or what. But in the summer of 1989, the car they found to replace the Monte Carlo was a baby blue 1984 Ford Escort.

The Escort was Ford Motor Company's finest economy car offering. Well, at least since the Pinto. It came standard with a 1.6 Liter sixty-eight horsepower engine, which is roughly the equivalent of three Husqvarna lawn tractors. Mine featured sport stripes down the side and louvers on the back window. Yes, louvers. Back when louvers were "in" of course.

Another feature of the 'Scort was an equalizer for the AM/FM radio and cassette player. Now I don't know if a previous owner removed the subwoofers when they sold the car or what. But the speakers I heard were standard factory speakers, at best. Which made the equalizer about as useful as an extended forecast.

Finally, the 'Scort was stricken with SBD, or Squealing Belt Disease. If you've not experienced this personally, you've surely heard it from other cars. The one and only symptom of SBD is a high-pitched squealing noise, especially prevalent when the car first starts. It can be a bit embarrassing, especially for a 16-year-old in the high school parking lot. But after awhile, you learn to just turn up the radio and pretend you have no idea what everyone is staring at.

There were good times to be had as well. I had my first official pick-her-up-and-take-her-home date in the 'Scort, with the Algebra teacher's daughter. She was also the Physics teacher, which might help explain how I fell asleep at least two days a week and still got an A in the class.

We went out twice. Our first date, we stood outside her house until her Dad starting cutting the porch light off and on, and I ended up breaking my curfew, not getting home until around 1 AM. On our second date, we went to the mall. I bought a New Kids On The Block cassette. And we never went out again.

I was also driving the 'Scort when I began dating Rachel, my first real actual girlfriend. Sometime in 1990, I wrecked the 'Scort, rear-ending another car as I fiddled with my radio or gazed at the countryside or something. It was totaled. Not that it was a bad accident, but as the car only cost $1800 when I bought it, hitting a bird would have probably totaled it.

As I write these posts, I'm beginning to realize they are more about memories of myself and people from my past than they are about any one car. Still as I think back now, I can't help but wonder, were louvers ever really in?

"You're my popsicle. From the very first time I met you girl, you captured me..."

How I Roll

There are few absolute truths in an uncertain world. But perhaps this is one: You never forget your first.

How it felt to touch her. The nervousness and the uncertainty. Learning as you went. Realizing you could take her to places neither of you had been before.

I'm speaking, of course, of my first car.

It was February 1989. When I turned sixteen, my parents decided that I would get Mom's car and she would get something newer. So there it was, a black 1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. And it was all mine.

Sure, she had a few miles on her. How many, I'm not really sure, because the odomoter had broken long ago. But I knew it had power. A 3.8L V-6 under the hood. Vinyl seats. Wire wheel covers. (Stop drooling.)

I'll admit there were a couple of quirks, as there are bound to be with any old classic car. There was a slight hesitation problem with the accelerator. It did not exactly have the lightning fast response one would hope for. It took a little sputtering and three or four seconds before those 229 cubic inches of raw Motor City power would kick in.

The Carlo also featured an AM/FM radio with the always-popular-but-never-practical cassette player with fast forward only, no rewind. So if I wanted to listen to a song again, I would have to flip the tape over and try to guess at how long to fast forward it. What einstein came up with this brilliant bit of cost-cutting ingenuity? How much extra does it cost to put a simple rewind button on there?

Then there was the speedometer. Or lack thereof. I drove by RPM's, much like NASCAR drivers do. Somehow I estimated that in high gear, 2000 RPM's equalled to 55 MPH, which was still the speed limit on most roads here in 1989. I have no idea how close I was, but I never got a ticket in that car.

Last but not least, for some reason the car would not stop running for a few seconds after you turned off the ignition. And by a few, I mean anywhere from five to twenty. Many days I remember pulling up to the Piggly Wiggly (my first job), turning off the car, taking out the keys, and getting nearly to the door before it would completely stop. Ironically, when I would crack it back up and start to back out, it would go dead if I didn't jam it from reverse into drive and give it gas all in less than 0.35 seconds.

There were good things about her, though. The cloth interior had come loose from the ceiling and hung fairly low. So, if I rolled the windows down, which I often did since the air didn't work, the wind would give it this super-cool rippling effect. Kinda like horizontal drapes flowing in front of an open window on a windy March afternoon. (Much like those in George Michael's "One More Try" video.) You might be surprised at how much attention this drew around town. Oh yeah! Everyone wanted to get a look at Bone in his sweet ride.

Oddly, I never had a date in that car. Talk about weird! Working at Piggly Wiggly, where my uniform consisted of a brown smock over a button-down shirt and one of those 80's solid colored nylon ties, and driving that marvel of modern machinery, one would think the ladies would have been all over me.

I drove the Carlo for five or six months, until I got a new job at another grocery store and a raise to $3.85 an hour. Then I could afford to get my own car. But I will always remember the black 1980 Monte Carlo. After all, you never forget your first.

(I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts, writing about each of the cars I've had. This was, obviously, part one.)

"I drive fastly, call me Jeff Gordon. In the black SS with the navigation..."

Three Word Wednesday #9

Each week, I will post three (or more) random words. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write something using all of those words. It can be a few lines, a story, a poem, anything. Don't spend too much time on it. It doesn't have to be perfect. The idea is to let your mind wander and write what it will. I'll also write something using the same three words.

Be sure to leave a comment if you participate.

This week's words are:
sky
slit
echoed

Continuing with 80's week here on IYROOBTY...

I was in ninth grade, taking my first year of Spanish. At my school, each year the Spanish Club went on an optional field trip to the Spanish Club Convention in Tuscaloosa.

For some reason, they were never able to procure buses for this annual pilgrimage. Maybe it was because of the small number of kids who went. Maybe it was because we stayed overnight and needed to be able to get around town easily. Whatever it was, we traveled by car. And that meant chaperones.

As the bell echoed from the halls that Friday morning, signaling the start to another school day for everyone else, we were gathered in the parking lot. Preparing to leave, getting last minute instructions from the Spanish teacher, Ms. Quinn. And most importantly, deciding who would ride with whom.

That year, we had one student chaperone, Jenny Goss. She was a junior, or senior, and I don't even think she was taking Spanish. I'm not even sure why she was chaperoning.

But as the other chaperones were teachers or parents, everyone wanted to ride with Jenny. Well, the guys did anyway. So it wound up being four guys, myself included, piling into Jenny's sky blue Cutlass, for the two-hour drive. And I somehow ended up in the front seat.

As she was two or three years ahead of me, I'd never really talked to Jenny. But I knew who she was. It was common knowledge that she dated Ronnie Byars, and had been seemingly forever.

Ronnie could best be described as a biker without a bike. A smoking in the boys room type. Although I never saw him smoke, it just seemed like he probably did. He was tall, with long hair. And I remember him wearing a black leather jacket a lot.

Still, boyfriend or no, you got the idea Jenny might be up for anything. Although I doubted I was her type. The street toughness of my acid-washed, tight-rolled Levis and untied high-top British Knights was betrayed by the cute little alligator on my rather conservative Izod. Still, there was something mysterious about her. Or maybe just naughty.

She looked like she belonged in a Whitesnake video. And I could totally rock some air guitar. I imagined she had camped out for Motley Crue or Cinderella tickets at least three times in her life. And that hair. So permed. So sprayed. So perfectly pouffy.

I sat back and tried to relax as I caught a glance of her legs so sveltely working the gas and brake pedals. I wasn't sure what to expect on this trip. And I definitely wasn't sure a student chaperone was supposed to be wearing a skirt that short or slit that high.

But I'll never forget that weekend. After all, that was the weekend I bought my Milli Vanilli cassette.

"Where's the mini-skirt made of snakeskin? And who's the other guy that's singing in Van Halen..."