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Songs of My Life: Dragon Attack

songsofmylife

Two things happened in the late ’70s: I learned to drive and boomboxes came out. With purchase of a car and a boombox, this meant I could now control my music wherever I went. My brother Lee is a year and a half older than me. So when he got his car I asked what 8-track player he was going to put in. He told me he was going to go with a cassette player.

A cassette player? “It’s kinda like a reel to reel,” he said.

Prior to this, I had decided to focus on collecting vinyl, we called them albums back then. But I had, by then, collected ten or so 8-tracks. I found out that you could record on 8-tracks. My friend Todd Combs had once recorded a Blue Oyster Cult concert from the radio for me. As intriguing as recording my own music was, neither Dave nor I (nor John or Jim) had an 8-track player that could record.

Then I purchased ‘Mr. Radio’. Mr. Radio was a boombox. Purchased from Radioshack, it was not what one would call a ‘state-of-the-art’ electronic device. It was a Realistic model 14-805 and it did play and record cassettes. And it was definitely portable. This worked well with my plan to purchase a cassette player for when I got my car, which turned out to be sooner than I thought – a 1972 Ford Galaxy. Gone would be the days of having to borrow Aunt Joyce’s Dodge Polara.

The purchase of ‘Mr. Radio’ introduced me to the world of cassettes. Cassettes had been around for years – in fact, before 8-tracks. My mom had a cassette recorder we would use to record ourselves and laugh at how funny we sounded. As I mentioned in another article, 8 tracks were developed by the auto industry. Cassette tapes started much earlier.

Quick history lesson: Magnetic tape was invented in 1935 but after World War II, from technology obtained from the Germans, the company Ampex popularized reel-to-reel for dication. By 1958 RCA developed the ‘RCA Tape‘ putting the reels of a reel-to-reel in a plastic case. While they introduced prerecorded music back then, it failed. Phillips took the next step and shrank the cassette case to a ‘compact cassette,’ what we call cassettes now. Transistors allowed the players to get smaller and cheaper. So by the early 70s, many households were getting cassette recorders – as my mom did. The popularity of 8 tracks pushed the quality improvements for cassettes.

Technically, prerecorded cassettes came out in 1966 with just 49 titles, like Nina Simone’s Wild is the Wind, Eartha Kitt’s Love for Sale and Johnny Mathis’s The Shadow of Your Smile. They assumed people could play them on their portable cassette recorders but the quality was terrible – compared to their home Hi-Fi systems. And there were no players for cars then. If you wanted to bring your music with you, the only choice was 8 tracks. Why did it sound so bad? a speed. Professional reel-to-reel’s used a speed of 15 inches/second. For cassettes to compete with the album’s 30-minute sides, Phillips could only hold so much tape so their speed was only 2 inches/second. Here’s a history of magnetic tapes if you would like to know more (probably more than you wanted to know…):

No one wanted crappy music so Phillips literally gave Sony the technology hoping they could sell crappy music. They couldn’t. Luckily Ray Dolby figured out how to improve tape recordings in general with his Dolby Noise Reduction system. Increased magnetic particles also helped to increase the overall quality. So while Ford pushed 8 track players, European and Japanese cars pushed cassettes. As cassette quality increased, their already-known recording capabilities made them a natural choice for people to copy their albums. Also, as hip hop started in the inner city, this recording capability gave the format an inner-city boost as impromptu DJ parties were recorded and passed around.

In 1980 I was happy with Mr. Radio. While I was ‘all in’ on Steve Dahl’s Anti-Disco antics on the Loop a year earlier and still listened to the Loop throughout the day. With Mr. Radio at the side of my bed, I would have Mr. Radio record the album the Loop, and many other radio stations, would play in its entirety, conveniently only interrupting between side one and side two allowing me to flip my cassette tape. I loved my albums and 8 tracks. While the price was right on my pirated albums from the Loop, they weren’t great. Sometimes the end of the album would be cut off because the first side was shorter than the second. I didn’t mind paying for my music, I just need more new music. This led me to a critical problem with Mr. Radio and me – I had no cassettes of the music I really wanted.

Luckily for me, Laurie’s was going to help me solve that with a midnight sale. So Todd Combs and I made plans to take advantage of Laurie’s midnight offer. Luckily the sale was planned during our winter finals. Technically, after our finals, what they called ‘teacher institute days’ at the end of the week. So outside of the pressure of studying for a test that could make up 25% of your grade. Timing was perfect.  I just needed to borrow Aunt Joyce’s Polara to get there. Surely she could understand how much money I would be saving and I had not gotten many albums since my birthday since I had been saving my money for my cassette player. And I was only going to get 2 or 3 tapes, or 4 or 5, (or 6 or 7). I believe the actual words I said were “two or three tapes.”

Once I was able to secure transportation Todd and I could make our plans. Todd was actually Dave and Jim’s age and lived on the corner of Berkley and Carol lanes a few houses away. Besides telling me terrible jokes in junior high he was a great source of music and books. In high school, he recommended Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas introducing me to Hunter S. Thompson after I told him I enjoyed the Doonesbury comic strip. He also recommended Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire to get me off my Stephen King kick. He was a big Rolling Stone advocate – the magazine, not the band.

Todd and I finalized our plans for the Midnight Record Run. Earlier that week we had final exams that lined up with the adjusted bus schedules. So after being dropped off on a cold January afternoon, we talked about what albums we were interested in. This is when he first told me about Pink Floyd. He said they put all these weird sounds on their albums. He went on to explain that at one point you hear them tuning a radio and then the next song would start up. He said it was on the Wish You Were Here album. I needed to get this. Dark Side of the Moon was also on the list, as Todd pointed out, it had been on the charts for almost 500 weeks, ever since it had been released (technically 473 weeks at that time).

We planned on leaving at 11:30. We figured if we got there a little early we could just hang out until they opened. Kids today may not understand we had to preplan things like this. I couldn’t ring the doorbell at 11:30 at night during the week. I couldn’t text Todd to tell him I was leaving or was there. If I wasn’t there or Todd didn’t come out at 11:30 we just waited. We needed contingency plans.

When we pulled into the Common’s parking lot we saw Laurie’s was already full of people. It turned out the police didn’t want a bunch of kids hanging outside the record store just before midnight. It wasn’t a good look for Deerfield. So Laurie’s just started the sale early.

Laurie’s wasn’t a large store, it had 3 sets of record bins, while cassettes lined the outside rim of the store in the back. It was crowded. Todd and I were constantly bumping into people as we looked to see how much we could save. I automatically made my way to the albums out of habit. I looked up the pricing sign to get the specifics on my savings. It looked like I was going to save $2 on everything I bought – sweet!

I needed to make my way to the cassette bins. I was already planning on getting Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here tapes. Getting two albums from the same group at the same time was unheard of for me but I had to hear the tuning of the radio song transition. The cassettes were all kept in plastic cages in an attempt to make them harder to steal. It felt weird ‘clacking’ through the cassettes. There weren’t as many to go through as in the album bins. Luckily they had plenty of Dark Sides of the Moon tapes and they also had a couple of Wish You Were Here tapes.

Todd was looking for his own tapes on the other end of the bins. That was pretty typical went I would go to a record store with a friend. While we may start out looking for music together a fellow music fan would inevitably get lost in their own quest. I was perfectly fine with that. I, on the other hand, could spend way longer than most people just looking at albums so it wasn’t unusual for my friend to beg me to buy what I was going to buy so we could leave.

I was always interested in new music. Actually, it might be better to say ‘fresh music’. To me, an album had more appeal if it was weeks old as opposed to months old. I wandered over to the front of the store to see what they were promoting tonight. They had Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle on display. Some guy in a suit (Gary?) sitting behind a desk staring at a red pyramid on the desk. “Featuring the hit single ‘Cars.'” the sticker on the album said. I loved that song! I grabbed one of the conveniently placed cassette tapes (in its plastic cage) and added it to my growing collection.

There were more people coming into the store so I made my way to the back of the store by the cassettes where Todd was. There were still lots of people here. Someone announced that the sale had ‘officially’ started and they would be closing in one hour. Plenty of time.

When I caught up to Todd he didn’t have any tapes in his hands.

“Not getting anything?” I asked.

“Still looking,” he replied. A perfectly fine answer. I wandered back to the beginning of the cassette bins.

I flipped through my old favorites, The Beach Boys. They had really let me down with their ‘Love You’ album. But I should have known better when Aunt Joyce mentioned that she had heard Wally Phillips on WGN say it was a great album. It wasn’t. So I had passed on their ‘M.I.U.’ and ‘L.A.’ albums. Was I outgrowing my first band? maybe. I flipped back the copies of ‘Endless Summer’ and ‘Spirit Of America’. Nope, no Beach Boys tonight.

I wandered back to the wall display. I really am a sucker for promos. Tom Petty – he did “Here Come My Girl, right? I thought to myself. Again I picked up the conveniently placed cassette. One, two, three, four – maybe one more, ignoring the fact I had told Aunt Joyce ‘two or three’.

For Christmas, I had gotten Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Gold and Platinum’ collection – on 8-track for Christmas. I was disappointed that it was on 8-track. Apparently, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack had not gotten my memo that I was only getting albums and cassettes now. Hmm, maybe that memo was only in my head. Actually, it was a great album – I was just disappointed in the format. It was currently in Dave’s portable 8-track player in the basement on the cardboard table I had set up to paint my Dungeon and Dragon lead figures. It was a great collection.

I remembered the news report of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crash a couple of years ago. I was hanging on the door jam of the enclosed porch while Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack were watching the news. They had called out to me to see if I knew the band. I told them I did but I didn’t have any of their music.

Months later I read an article that the new album ‘Street Survivor‘ was being pulled and re-released. The cover pictured the band members on the cover in flames and the re-release was going to remove the flames in honor of the members that died. Wow, to have one of those original covers – it would be like getting the upside-down airplane stamp or The Beatles ‘butcher cover’ of the ‘Yesterday and Today‘ album.

(As fate played out, my future college roommate, Jay Seiler worked at a record store when the ‘Street Survivors’ album with the flames had been pulled. In fact, it was a prized possession of his when we roomed together. What I didn’t know was he had purchased two copies, the second he presented to me as a wedding present. While Desi did not quite appreciate the old record, I was shocked and honored to receive it.)

I found the Lynyrd Skynyrd section in the cassettes. They had plenty of copies of ‘Gold & Platinum’ and for a second I thought about replacing the 8-track version with a cassette version but I could just hear Uncle Jack yelling at me for such a dumb purchase and waste of money. Funny how your parents worm their way into your head. I put the cassette I was holding back into the bin. Hmm, ‘One More For The Road’, oh – ‘One More From The Road’, they had struck ‘For’ and added ‘From’. There were a few tracks from ‘Gold & Platinum that were taken from this album. I compared the two albums and there were a number of tracks that were not on ‘Gold & Platinum’ and these were live versions of the songs. Done – I slipped the cassette holders around my fingers.

Five cassettes should be good. but just in case it wasn’t, I wandered back to Pink Floyd and wondered about their Animals album. I remembered seeing the album in the Deerfield Record Shop when it was still open. It was an interesting cover but I couldn’t get 3 albums from the same group.

“You should get this,” Todd said handing me a caged tape. Where the hell did he come from? It was actually two cassettes and Lauries had taped two cages together to keep the tape safe (yea, safe from walking away).

“Yessongs? Who’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Yes, they put ‘yes’ in front of all their albums’ names,” Todd explained. “It’s actually a triple album but only a double tape. It’s got all their greatest hits on it.”

Wow, I thought. I could get a triple album for just the cost of a two cassettes. Keep in mind I did not actually look at the price of the album to compare it to the cassette. Besides, look at that artwork. This HAD to be great music.

As I added the sixth (and seventh) cassettes to my quarry of cassettes I noticed Todd didn’t have any cassettes or albums.

“Aren’t you getting anything?” I asked.

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t have any money. I just came along for the ride and to look around.”

It took a few seconds for this to register. Todd had left his house at 11:30 to come to downtown Deerfield to go Midnight Record sale – but came with no money. This made absolutely no sense. So he stayed up late to get out of the house to hang with a friend? Ok, that actually checks out, he’s a kid in high school.

Well, I guess we were done. Wait, I couldn’t leave yet. I had not looked through all the records yet. There must be something I was missing. Queen had a new album coming out. On the way home from snowmobiling a few weeks ago I heard a new Queen song – what was it called?

That’s how I said it – “when I was snowmobiling” – like it was something I did all the time. In the winter I snowmobile on our lake and then I jaunt down to the Caribbean to play on my sailboat. That’s what all of us rich people do.

The reality was Uncle Jack, was a purchasing agent for Allis-Chalmers. It seemed like people would always be giving him things or offering the family something to do. This winter someone had offered to take us boys snowmobiling. And so we dressed in our warmest clothes and Uncle Jack drove us all out to Fox Lake to meet him.

We would occasionally see snowmobilers on Lake Eleanor behind us. I think John or Jim knew some kids that had snowmobiles but I had never been on one before. Uncle Jack’s friend gave us instructions on the throttle and brakes and set us loose on the Fox River with a number of other snowmobilers. He only had two or three machines so we had to take turns going up and down the river. While the speed made me nervous I wasn’t too afraid. After going up and down the river a few times I would turn the snowmobile over to someone else.

As fun, as it was, it wasn’t like I was going to go out to get a snowmobile for myself – like Dave & Jim. By the next winter, both Dave & Jim had their own snowmobiles they could take out on Lake Eleanor. The key difference here was Jim actually saved up the money to buy a snowmobile, Dave needed to borrow $500 from me to purchase his. The family folklore is that Dave never did pay me back, or did he? The answer depended on who you talked to.

What I remember most on that day was the trip home. Somewhere between Fox Lake and Deerfield, the radio station we were listening to played Queen’s new single, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The strumming guitar with the handclaps immediately pulled me in. It had a 50’s sound, like something from ‘Happy Days’.

The first Queen album I purchased was Jazz and I loved it. Unfortunately, it didn’t do well on the charts. Outside of the double single for ‘Bicycle Race’ and ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ nothing else seemed to connect with people. As much as people now like ‘Don’t Stop Me Now,’ they didn’t then – it peaked at 86 on Billboard. When they released ‘Live Killers‘ I bought that too. But as much as I loved the version of ’39’ included, the rest of the album was okay.

Surely the new Queen album would have gotten Front-Store-Billing, right? Right – “and don’t call me Shirley.” I rechecked the ‘Q’s, which were basically Queen’s cassettes. There was nothing I didn’t recognize.

One of the guys that worked there was playing the dual role of cop and clerk. “Excuse me,” I asked, “is there a new Queen album out?”

“Sorry,” he said, “you gotta wait until spring for that one. It gonna be fantastic!”

Well, I guess I was done. Six albums – cassettes – were enough. I made my way to the only register in the store. There were two people in front of me. Todd tapped me on the shoulder and said he would meet me outside. For Todd, he was done with the Midnight Sale experience. That was OK, I was getting six new albums.

After dropping Todd off has his house I finally got home at about one in the morning. I arrived home to a locked door and the light above the sink on. With the rest of the house dark, this was an indication that I was the last one home. As the last one home, I was to lock the door and turn out the light above the sink.

Before I turned out the light I needed to unwrap my cassettes. This was a first for me. Everything was so small! There were no liner notes for the Pink Floyd cassettes which was disappointing. In fact, there was nothing really nothing in any of the cassettes. Apparently, everything was so small it wasn’t worth putting lyrics in. The fact that I could now bring my music with me – via Mr. Radio. It was a small price to pay.

I had already decided to begin with Yes, my complete impulse buy. I had no idea who Yes was. A live triple album! A few minutes later I was fumbling around in the dark plugging my headphones into Mr. Radio. Hitting the play button I heard the tape hiss turn into applause as the album started. It was quiet and somewhat familiar. Was this an orchestra? As the band started I thought, “What did Todd have me buy?” It turned out they started their shows with a recording of ‘Firebird Suite’. After the three-minute intro, the band actually kicked in with ‘Siberian Khatru’ – I have been a fan ever since. Todd did good, again.

As the snow melted giving way to Spring, a new opportunity presented itself. John had purchased his own car, a ’76 Monte Carlo. It was a long stretch of curves so fitting for the seventies before Detroit reacted to the energy crisis. Uncle Jack’s connection who had a Waukegan scrap metal company where he had gotten the Polara for Aunt Joyce from now had a new car available – a ’72 Ford Galaxy.

For the price of the transmission repair bill – $800 – I could have my own car. It was in pretty good shape except for some rust on the rear fender on the driver’s side. Dave and Jim were eager to work on cars now that they were getting their driver’s licenses. While not exactly a car I would have picked, like a ’68 Mustang, it did keep most of my savings intact. It was a huge step towards independence.

I could now come home from school and get to Franks in time for my shift. I could drive myself to Waconda for my guitar lessons. Maybe I could even drive to school. There were a lot more opportunities for this seventeen-year-old.

Almost immediately I was checking out new car stereos at K-Mart and Venture. After purchasing the car I still had over $1,200 dollars so I could get the best that K-Mart or Venture could offer. Eventually, I found cassette player, a graphic equalizer and new 3-way speakers.

With some persistence and research, I found my radio cassette player. It was a Spark-O-Matic CV-139m or maybe it was a Kraco. I found someone selling one on eBay. They only had it listed as a ‘vintage mobile audio system’ but I remember the thin selector buttons; specifically the ‘st/metal’ button. I never really understood what that was for. But I definitely know the equalizer was a Spark-O-Matic because I found a YouTube video of it. It’s amazing what people put on the internet.

I remember the morning putting everything together. I was home alone so I had the driveway to myself. The speakers were simply just replacing what came with the Galaxy so I didn’t have to run speaker wire. The cassette player was also pretty straightforward using the existing speaker wire and antennae hookup. It was understanding how to hook up the equalizer with all its outputs. I also had to figure out how to mount this underneath the dash. I do remember the front had, what I now realize was a cheesy ‘wave’ to display the EQ. While the cassette/radio player was simple the equalizer was causing some frustration.

This is probably why I cut the shit out of my left ring finger when the phone rang. I was hanging upside down trying to figure things out when I heard the phone ring. I was expecting a call from Greg or Jeff and in my rush to get to the phone my finger caught the edge of the equalizer.

It wasn’t Greg or Jeff but I do remember being shocked at the amount of blood running from my finger when I answered the phone because the person on the phone had to repeat who they wanted. Once I attended to my wound and followed the blood trail back outside I looked to see what was so sharp to cause such a wicked cut. It was just the back edge of the equalizer. Luckily kids heal quickly but I remember wondering if this was deep enough to need stitches. Didn’t matter, I had an equalizer I still needed to finish installing and I would have a scar to remind me of when I installed my first car stereo.

Eventually, I figured everything out. The Galaxy was now equipped with a radio with cassette player and equalizer and new speakers – and it sounded great. My call from Greg or Jeff did come and I remember telling whoever it was that I was done and I would be right over so they could check it out.

To the detriment of the neighbors on Chris Court, I could now blast my cassettes from my car. Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack warned me of the potential for hearing loss. So like sneaking albums into, I learned to turn the volume down before getting on Chris Court. And I no longer needed to sneak albums into the house, I was now purchasing cassettes and they would remain in the cars – neatly stacked in a new cassette holder.

Later that month I finally purchased Queen’s ‘The Game‘, scratching that itch that started hearing ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ on the way home from snowmobiling. While I probably could have just gone downtown to Laurie’s that was too close. After all, I had a car and looking to get out of the house before supper.

Informing Aunt Joyce I would be right back I pulled out of the driveway. These spur-of-the-moment buying trips were never good ideas for me. I was on my way to Sound Warehouse on Dundee and Sanders. These were the moments Uncle Jack would say my money “was burning a hole in my pocket”. I had been hearing Queen’s latest single ‘The Game’ and knew the album had finally been released.

I was a ‘regular customer’ at Laurie’s. In fact,  I was actually recognizing some of the employees themselves. Thanks to my new car, my ‘regular record stores’ were expanding. But at Sound Warehouse I wasn’t familiar enough to receive a ‘recognition’ head nod.

‘The Game’ was a featured release at the front of the store so I immediately picked up the cassette displayed with the vinyl. Also displayed was Rolling Stone’s new album ‘Emotional Rescue.’ I had not purchased any Rolling Stones albums yet and their last album ‘Some Girls’ was supposed to be very good. So I put ‘Emotional Rescue’ on my mental shortlist.

After 45 minutes I realized an hour no longer qualified for being ‘right back.’ It was amazing how lost I could get flipping through albums in a record store. I think most music enthusiasts have album covers memorized. While I was buying cassettes I would flip through albums like a catalog and then check to see if they had the album in its cassette form. With my time expired I decided on ‘The Game’, ‘Emotional Rescue’ and The Beach Boys’ ‘Keepin’ The Summer Alive,’ their last album.

In the Galaxie, I unwrapped ‘The Game’ and popped it into the player while I was in the parking lot. Eventually, the tape hiss was drowned out by Freddie telling me how to play the game. ‘The Game’ was the first track on the album. I carefully listened as Freddie told me I had to “know the rules” when I realized I had to actually start driving. I pulled out on Dundee and waited for my green arrow to get onto Sanders Road.

There is a quirk about Sanders Road. It goes both under and over Interstate 294 (over south toward Willow, over toward Lake Cook). But as one crosses into Lake County, the name changes to Saunder Road. It’s not a misprint. Apparently, Northbrook and Deerfield could not agree on the name. According to Deerfield’s History Society, in the 1830’s it was unnamed but later was named after a “Cook County man.” This would imply Northbrook is wrong. The bottom line is no one really knows – and apparently doesn’t care.

But seventeen-year-old me, while waiting for my green arrow, was assaulted by John Deacon’s bass. “What was this?” I thought picking up the cassette case – ‘Dragon Attack.’ A beep from behind told me I had gotten my green arrow. As I headed up Sanders Road Freddie started telling me more stuff but nothing in particular. Brian May had joined in by this time but by the time I turned on to Deerfield Road Roger had drummed out an intro to John’s solo. These guys were jamming. By the time I was crossing over 94 Brian was ripping a fantastic guitar solo. Holy shit!

My new cassette player had a great feature that would allow me to ‘auto rewind’. It was a prelude to the skip feature of cd’s but since these were cassettes it took a while for the player to find the blank spot on the tape to begin playing again. I found out that this feature did not work with live albums or continuous albums like The Wall where there was no silence between the tracks. This feature would get me into trouble in a few months.

I sat in the driveway amongst everyone else cars, and rewound ‘Dragon Attack’ for a fourth time when Dave swung out of the back door, “You coming in for supper?”

After supper, I would get through the rest of the tape on Mr. Radio. As much as I also liked ‘Another One Bites The Dust,’ it couldn’t compare to ‘Dragon Attack.’ In the following days and weeks, I would play ‘Dragon Attack’ for my friends. When I was working in the yards at Franks and playing the tape on Mr. Radio I was constantly pointing out ‘Dragon Attack’ to anyone that would listen. But when the tape played through to ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ that is what really caught their ears.

The album – well, cassette, was great. While ‘Need Your Loving Tonight’ was not as strong as any of the other tracks on side one but it was still a decent song. Side 1 ended with ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ which brought back to that ride home from snowmobiling.

Side 2 was not nearly as strong. Side 2 opened with ‘Rock It (Prime Jive)’ which started slow but kicked in nicely with little keyboard flourishes which were indicative of the coming New Wave. When ‘Don’t Try Suicide’ came on it was a little off-putting. While I thought they were a little trite with the subject but soon became a favorite of mine. ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’ was a softer song than ‘Rock It’ but had a better melody. And ‘Coming Soon’ had a strong beginning but never really gained much traction. The tape closed with ‘Save Me’, a worthy ballad though it may suffer from being ‘typical Queen’ with their trademark choir chorus.

‘Emotional Rescue’ turned out not to be as good as ‘Some Girls.’ And I soon realized I was not impressing my friends by cranking The Beach Boys’ ‘Keepin’ The Summer Alive’ when I pulled up. While I would purchase a few more pre-recorded cassettes they would turn out to be more of a fad for me that was shorter than 8-tracks.

While I embraced their portability I still preferred vinyl over cassettes. It wasn’t just because vinyl provided higher sound quality. Dave and my stereo was not capable of discerning whether albums or 8-tracks had better sound. We could not add a cassette player to our stereo – like John and Jim’s could. Frankly, I enjoyed the merchandising of vinyl. The potential for lyrics was vital. Even if cassettes included lyrics the point of cassettes was mobility. While I was sitting outside listening to music, I wasn’t listening and following the lyrics like I was when I was sitting on my bed.

Eventually, I would view vinyl as my ‘library’ and, like so many others, would spend hours, if not days, creating playlists, or as we called them back then – mixed tapes. When the Walkman hit I would record my records onto cassettes just for the sake of mobility. I would view the cassette as disposal media but for now, they gave me a new way to share my music with my friends. While my mixed tapes were still years away cassettes were an important part of my view of music and the albums I connected with.

Songs of My Life: Can’t Stand Losing You & Starry Eyes

“Can’t Stand Losing You” by The Police

“Starry Eyes” by The Records

songsofmylifeAs a junior in high school, my interest in music was beginning to define who I was. Since moving in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack and receiving a stereo that Christmas I had been collecting 45’s and 8-track tapes. In the last few years, I had focused on purchasing albums. My collection of albums could no longer be contained in Dave and mine’s nightstand. It was a stack leaning against the wall of our bedroom. It was probably 50 – 60 albums by my junior year and beginning to draw suspicion from Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack.

“What are you going to do with all those records?” Uncle Jack would ask. I quickly learned that “Listen to them” was considered a sarcastic answer. When my collection drew their attention, bringing in new ones required a stealth upgrade. My part-time job at Franks and my own car gave me access to cash and transportation so despite their threats of reprimand, the draw for new music only became stronger.

Sneaking my contraband in meant entering from the side door, traversing through the kitchen to the living room, and down the hallway to my bedroom. Now that the porch had been enclosed, it was the TV room furnished with a couple of couches and Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack’s main room in the evening. My contraband was typically transported in one-foot by one-foot wide bags emblazed with ‘Lauries’ or ‘Flipside’ blazed on both sides. Lauries’ bags were soft, quiet plastic while Flipside’s were dangerously noisy plastic. While this may have been great for marketing, it the trek that much more dangerous. I, of course,  became very adept at the quarter-twist-carry-against-the-leg maneuver-while-walking-through-the-kitchen carry to get past the sentries watching TV.

With each successful expedition, I was building my collection. If I heard a song I liked on the Loop, I put the album on a mental list to buy it. As we were beginning to enter the 80’s, there was a sound that was catching my ear. Some of these ‘guys’ being played on the radio were not much older than me, which made my connection to the music all more relatable. They seemed to understand what it meant to be a teenager in high school, from a guy’s point of view. Trying to date and be cool but constantly failing and yet never admitting it.

The indie-rock back then sounded similar to indie-rock now but there was a bit more edge to it. I believe this edge was bubbling in from the punk movement exploding from the UK and New York. It would take the 80’s to dilute it down to its pop elements like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day and Offspring. The indie rock I was listening to was paddling out to meet coming New Wave. It was heard in artists like The Knack, The Police, Hounds, The Shoes, The Kings, Off Broadway, The Records, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello. Next to Journey, ELO, Molly Hatchet and Bad Company, this indie-rock had an edge, a grit. They were still pop, but you felt closer to band members’ instruments, there was a punky edge cutting through its pop accessibility.

Many of these bands bubbled up to the top of the charts. Many only bubbled up amongst my friends. Many times we would discuss the bands before we hear them. “Have you heard The Knack?” I remember Greg Huber saying. “They’re like the new Beatles.” My friends understood my thirst for vinyl, so I’m sure they would bait me with bands hoping I would buy them so they could check them out. If that was true I didn’t care. Every recommendation exposed me to a wider musical spectrum. And some friend recommendations would carry more weight than others.

The friends that carried the most weight in high school were Greg Huber and Jeff Riveria. We met freshman year at the lunch tables. Deerfield High school combined my Wilmot Junior High with Sheppard Junior High. The Deerfield High School cafeteria faced east overlooking the back parking lot where the school buses would drop us off in the morning. It was also where the driver-ed cars were parked and the occasionally lost parent would end up. And just below the outside windows was the smoking lounge.

Yep, if you wanted to smoke you couldn’t smoke in school – as a student. Keep in mind this was for the students. Schools had not yet banned smoking in the buildings yet. Teachers could smoke but only in the teachers’ lounge. Anyone could smoke outside, including the kids. While smoking was looked down on, it was nowhere near the levels abhorred today. It would not be unusual to know a classmate that smoked. Outside of the occasional, “You know that’s bad for you”, there wasn’t much discussion with people who smoked. None of my friends were regular smokers, that I knew of. Well, at least Greg and Jeff didn’t.

The smoking lounge was the natural habit of The Burnout. The Burnout was the stoner student. Think of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemount High dressed in long hair, heavy/long coat in gray-green and/or brown. Typically there wasn’t a hat. Baseball caps were not a thing back then unless you were in sports. We were still ‘letting it all hang out’. While long hair was acceptable, long was a relative term. Few guys had short hair and just as few guys had hair to their shoulders. As of my third year in high school, I was still sporting my ‘bowl cut’. This would not change until my Sophomore year in college when I could have friends that were girls and told me to lose the bowl cut. Yet somehow I didn’t understand why couldn’t get a girlfriend in high school, go figure.

Burnouts were known to smoke dope, the mary jane, the ganja. The smoking lounge was on the ‘other side of the tracks’ for school property. I would always look over there in awe and revulsion until I hung out there with a friend. “Wait, you smoke?” I said. Once in there, I realized I recognized a number of kids there. These tracks were not as far away as I thought.

I asked my kids once if they still used the term ‘burnout’. “Sure,” they said, “We still use that. When you get tired of something”

“No, no.,” I said. “Like a stereotype.”

“A stereotype? of what?”

“Of a type of kid, you know, like a jock or a prep?”

“Burnout? like that? no, never heard of that.”

I was disappointed. That was my stereotype. While I would not smoke pot until my senior year and I never valued clothes enough to qualify to be considered preppy. Prepsters? preppy? whatever you would call them. They had the polo shirts with alligators on them – Izods. Or sweaters hung around their shoulders while the sleeves were tied in the front. We didn’t have much of the ‘hugging sweater’ types but polo shirts were coming on strong.

Girls were all wearing designer jeans – and they had to be Calvin Klein or Gloria Vanderbilt. At the time I wasn’t close enough to any girls to really notice their fashions. I was still struggling to make eye contact but I had no problem reading the labels or stitchings on their jeans.

Of course, we had the jocks. The football players, basketball players soccer, baseball, and wrestling. We even had a swimming team, and I think a diving team. I was not into sports. Outside of a couple of football practices in 6th grade, the only sports I ever play were family volleyball and family softball, and our summer sixteen-inch softball team my senior year. During freshman year my brother John and I joined the Lifeguards. As far as I know, all we did was teach younger kids how to swim for 8 or 12 weeks in the winter. That was about as athletic as I would be in high school.

So as far as stereotypes I was, now, a white-collar family, wanna-be burnout, non-sports nerdy guy. With my weight loss in 8th grade, I had gone from fat to heavy. With my parents, I would not have been white-collar but since my parents died, Uncle Jack’s job being a purchasing agent for Fiat Allis, I could no longer be considered blue-collar. In high school, your collar color did not play as big a role as your stereotype. Like little kids wanting to go to friends’ houses based on the toys they had, we were now hanging out together trying to relate to each other and would happily throw out our family’s values for our friends. The stronger the individual, the stronger the role the family played.

Most parents would say our only job was to go to school and get an education. But we know high school was way more than just getting an education. We were getting to know who we were and many times this was predicated on who we met – and who we wanted to hang out with.

Daily we would step onto our high school stage. The more confident we were of ourselves, the more important our family’s values would show through. This steered us to our various stereotypes and likely friend we would keep. Whether we were at our jobs, the mall, the arcades, or our hangouts we were projecting images of what we wanted to portray, and many times failing. We were young adults trying to figure out our expanding world and who we wanted to be. And we were quickly, and sometimes harshly, judged by our own peers. Our parents’ control was slipping away from our lives – and we were happy and sad – and scared – about it.

I wasn’t scared. For me, that threshold had already been crossed. While my parents no longer could no longer define me, their death left a huge skeleton in my closet. I would have no problem sharing that skeleton with anyone that would ask. Most left me alone with it. But this wasn’t much different than everyone else’s skeletons. We were all trying to balance who we were and trying to find what we wanted to be. In 1977 as a freshman, I still loved cactus, carnivorous plants, Stephan King, Dungeons & Dragons, model rockets and music but I would soon be driving, getting a job, dating and, according to ‘the plan’ going to college.

Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack would walk in when my script called for parents. This was a constant reminder that they were stand-ins. In high school that is how I treated them. Not out of malice, but it was how I balanced the constant reminder with my new friends that my parents were dead. As I said, it was a skeleton I had no problem sharing. And my new friends rarely dwelled on it. Once this fact about me was established, we got on with our roles as high school students. No one questioned this. There was no sympathy, outside of the initial telling of the fact. There were some individual conversations but that was all. In the end, this just made me a more interesting character in our high school play.

On that first fall day of high school in 1977, I was just like everyone else. Despite the summer at Mitchell Pool, I didn’t know anyone who had lunch in 4th period. So during my first high school lunch, I was looking at the swarm of kids around the long rows of tables, looking for a familiar face to figure out who you were going to eat lunch with.

In high school, lunch periods were 4, 5, or 6 which started a little early as far as I was concerned. With the lunch Aunt Joyce had packed for me in hand,  I scanned the hive for any recognized faces. I saw a few but they were already engaged in their own conversations. I found where I could get my milk, for a nickel, then continued my search for somewhere to eat my lunch.

“Hey Waba,” followed by a shove to my back. It was Tony Fatius a friend from Wilmot Jr. High School who I would occasionally see at Mitchell pool.

“Hey Tony,” I replied. We now stood together scanning the hive for more familiar faces. We found an open spot on the north side and made our way to it. On the way, Tony recognized another kid and invited him to join us. We sat by some other kids I didn’t know.

“Do you know Greg?” Tony asked.

“No,” I grunted. “Hey.”

“Hey, you were in my Algebra class this morning, with Mr. Asher?” Greg said.

I didn’t recognize him but most of the time I wasn’t paying attention during roll call. Most classes we had were organized in alphabetical order so I would typically stand toward the back of the classroom as kids negotiated for their seats with their last names. I knew where I would end up. Greg Huber would have been in the second or third column. I would have already won a number of negotiations leading with my ‘Z’ to gain the back of the last column.

“Yea, I have Asher,” I said. Years later when we would describe Greg to a girl we would say he looked like Chuck Norris, especially as we reached our Junior and Senior years. Greg was a good ‘new’ student. He could easily hold a conversation with anyone – literally. This included girls. Most of my conversations were always with guys about our classes, Stars Wars, Elvis and vacations. Greg and Tony were much better with new people than I was. And as we sat down to eat our lunch they soon included the kids next to us, Jeff Raveria and Steve Olson.

When the bell rang us out of lunch Greg and I found ourselves going to the same class together.  It turned out we had 3 classes together that year. For the rest of the year, we shared lunch and became best friends.

Jeff and Steve were also part of our circle of friends. But Jeff Riveria became one of my best friends. Together, Greg, Jeff and I were referred to as The Three Amigos by our parents. We never called ourselves that. But our parents recognized our constant friendship throughout high school. While our circle of friends would grow and change, the bond between The Three Amigos pulled tighter than the rest.

Jeff and I actually had more in common than Greg and I. Jeff and I were both avid readers of fantasy and science fiction. He was part of another circle of friends that played Dungeons & Dragons at Steve Olson’s house on Saturdays. Greg did not. While I believe Greg did show up one Saturday, Dungeons & Dragon pushed Greg way too far into the nerd zone as far as he was concerned.

From freshman year, Greg, Jeff and I shared a lot of interests together, music being one of them, but we also paired off separately. Jeff and I loved our books. We enjoyed games – but not Monopoly, Risk or other classic board games that Greg would play. These were deeper ‘special interest’ games like Cosmic Encounters, 40,000 AD or any war games with little cardboard squares (Micro Games) that would bore Greg to tears. In other words, nerd games.

Greg and Jeff had their own interests that I didn’t share – like bike riding, racketball and the outdoors. Greg & I shared model rockets, well, at least in the beginning. Ok, maybe once we actually flew model rockets. We liked video games. Well, we all liked video games. And girls – we all liked girls too. Maybe Jeff and I hung out with Greg because of girls. Greg liked them more than we did. No – that wasn’t true, he was just better with them than Jeff or me. But whether it was girls or cars, work or school, one on one or all together, what we really did was hang out together.

Greg’s house was a perfect place to hang out. Greg’s parents were ‘cool’, as cool as parents could be back then. We would hang out in Greg’s kitchen or living room when his dad wasn’t home. If his dad was home, he & Mrs. Huber would hang out in the family room and we would end up in Greg’s bedroom – mostly listening to music, or hanging out in his basement while he worked on one of his bikes.

I remember one day after school the three of us rode back to Greg’s house. It was a sunny autumn afternoon and the wind that afternoon was brisk and strong. As Jeff drove to he commented on Mother Nature’s gusts with “Whew, it sure is windy out there.” Something in the way Jeff said it set Greg off. Soon Greg and I were whewing-it-sure-is-windy the rest of the way to Greg’s house. This pissed Jeff off, which meant Greg’s joke had succeeded. With three friends, we were always trying to push each others’ buttons. If you could turn one on your side, it didn’t take long for the burn to stick. Greg was good at it. And he didn’t play favorites between Jeff and me.

We were just stopping at Greg’s house on our way somewhere else. The three of us went into inside while Greg ran up to his bedroom to change or get whatever he needed. Jeff and I stood by the front door waiting. Shortly after Greg disappeared into his bedroom, Mrs. Huber appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Hi, Mrs. Huber,” Jeff and I said.

“Hi, guys,” Mrs. Huber said. “You know, I just came back from the store – and whew, it sure is windy out.”

For a split second, Jeff and I blinked at the coincidence. And then howled in our realization that Greg had tipped her off to our running gag. She started laughing at our reaction. Her timing was perfect and any animosity with Jeff evaporated in the joy. That was a great laugh. one you remember for a lifetime.

Mrs. Huber had good timing that day but didn’t always hold true. And not so much her time but her delivery. But this next story it was not so much her delivery but trusting Greg’s read of ‘the situation’.

When Dave and I first moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack, we bought Schwinn 10-speed bikes. The classic curly handlebars, double-hand brakes, and thin saddle seats. We had never gotten a brand-new bike before. They were each hand-downs from Hope or Lee or used bikes from Dad’s work. Just another example of the new scale of living Dave and I experienced when we moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack.

According to Greg and Jeff, Schwinn bikes were crap. Trek was a real bike. Jeff spent $75 on a Trek frame – just the frame – no tires, no brakes, no pedals – just a metal – sorry, aluminum titanium or whatever fantastic metallic alloy Trek used on their frames. He kept it behind his couch in his apartment. My Schwinn cost almost two hundred dollars. Eventually, Jeff would get the parts he needed to complete his stately Trek cycle. This allowed him and Greg to take long bike rides. On occasion, they would stop at my house. I thought it was to show off their Trek bikes. This was one of those afternoons.

It was later in the afternoon couple of summers after our Freshman year. Strangely no one else was home at the time. The doorbell rang which started our backup ringers – 3 small dogs – Darquari, Luke and Maxine. When I opened the kitchen door, I saw two sweaty friends. Shooing the barking dogs aside, I opened the door and immediately offered them some water, which was exactly what they wanted. They had been over enough so I just handed them glasses and they got their own water. The dogs immediately lost interest and wandered back to their napping locations.

As Greg and Jeff worked on their second glass of water they took turns talking about where they had biked. Greg began foraging, a common practice for high school boys. He lifted the lid of the ceramic dog head that was sitting on the counter looking for a snack. Our house was peppered with examples of Uncle Jack’s ceramic talent.

“Those are dog treats,” I admonished. “There are cookies over here”

Uncle Jack had turned his artistic muse to ceramics a few years ago. While in high school it was just a hobby but his hobby turned into a small business while I was in college. I would come home to tables covered in cardboard boxes filled in with ceramics in various stages of completion. But for now, there were only a few knick-knacks that displayed his artistry.

This first one was a white dog’s head whose lid came off. Aunt Joyce kept the dogs’ treats there. This was kept on the counter by the sink. More striking was the cookie jar. A larger piece in the shape of a cupcake that’s frosting served as a lid to the cookies inside. The cherry on top served as the lid’s handle. This sat on the unused kitchen table in a more prominent setting.

I pointed this out to Greg. And when I lifted the lid there were indeed cookies in the said cookie jar. Greg and Jeff had timed their visit well – at least with respect to raiding the cookie jar. In fact, Aunt Joyce had stocked the cookie jar with an assortment of cookies. I stepped away to give them more room.

As a testament to Jeff’s Idiosyncrasy, he was still choosing his cookies when Greg said, “I’m not holding this all day.” He set the lid down on the table. Jeff continued to peer into the jar looking for just the right cookie.

Greg went back to the dog treats and pulled out one of the dog’s People Crackers. He held up the treat like a magician and single finger to his big grin for silence. Next, he appeared next to Jeff saying, “Try one of these.” Greg placed the treat into Jeff’s open hand.

Jeff was still perusing the assortment of cookies and absently accepted Greg’s ‘cookie’ with the others. Greg had successfully placed a dog treat among Jeff’s cookies. People Cracker were a brand of dog treats in the shape of people – mailman, policeman and milkman. And Jeff never noticed.

With his success, Greg backed away with all the stealth of a ninja clown. I was shocked he pulled it off. The People Cracker was now sitting in Jeff’s open hand with his cookies.

Greg made his way to the living room. There he turned from a ninja clown to a silent cheerleader – jumping around like a cheerleader who knew the team was going to fake a punt. I tried to settle him down so he didn’t ruin what he had so far accomplished.

By the time I had settled Greg down, Jeff had turned around to see what we were doing. We watched in fascination as Jeff bit the head off the mailman. As Jeff’s eyes registered the taste of the mailman’s head to his eyes, Greg blurted: “That was a dog treat!”

Jeff spit what was left of the mailman’s head at Greg. Our laughter covered Jeff’s heavy retreat as he headed outside to his bike. By the time Greg and I recovered from our hysterics, Jeff and his bike were gone.

Wiping tears from our eyes we realized we, well Greg, had just pulled off the perfect spontaneous prank. As the laughter continued its aftershocks, we move outside by Greg’s bike we both agreed Jeff was pissed. After a few laughing aftershocks, Greg hopped onto his bike and headed to his house.

I was still chuckling to myself for hours. That memory has been etched in my mind for 40 years. The next time I would laugh that loud and long would be when, on a dare, I hugged a guy in college.

I replaced the frosting on the cookie jar. And for a moment, my smile dropped. I checked the floor at my feet to see what Jeff’s shoes might feel like. But just a moment, that moment that so many times are wasted on kids.

Greg told me later the epilogue of his prank. Apparently, he and his parents were going out to dinner. On their way to the restaurant but who would be biking down Deerfield Road but Jeff. Mr. Huber paced the car with Jeff’s bike and Mrs. Huber called out, “Have any good dog treats lately?” Greg said Jeff never turned his head but looked straight ahead, ignoring the Honda Prelude a couple of feet from him.

Greg and I were correct, Jeff was pissed. He had nothing to do with either of us for at least a week, if not longer. And I completely understood. We deserved it. It is funny how adolescents will turn on each other. It would take me years to realize the delicate balance played in high school into adulthood. Responses spanned from general ribbing/teasing to bullying. From inclusion to ostracizing. The pain one can cause by just ‘going along’ was a lesson that took too long for me to get.

Time moves faster when you’re young. Eventually, Jeff would forgive us or rather, was no longer pissed at us. Over the next few months, we returned to our old habits of hanging out again. I have so many memories of just hanging out with Greg and Jeff. The hours listening to albums at Jeff’s apartment or Greg’s bedroom, playing Dungeon & Dragons at Steve Olson’s house,  learning new games we bought at Venture Hobby store in Wheeling, playing games at the arcades and scoping out girls with Jeff and I following in Greg’s wake, and hanging out at each other’s jobs.

Having been introduced to Dungeon & Dragons during my Confirmation entreat I shared my anticipation for the release of the Players Handbook, which was coming at the end of the school year. It was the promised next level of Dungeons & Dragons. Back then bookstores were everywhere. Jeff and I both loved our local Waldenbooks in Deerbrook Mall. We both considered working at Waldenbooks our dream job. This was not going to be my destination. My high school occupation started with Steve Olson offering me his job at Deerfield Courts, which led to me working at Franks Nursery & Crafts. And while I would have also loved to work at a book or record store, Franks was my original dream when I first moved to Deerfield.

Jeff, on the other hand, methodically worked his way into Waldenbooks. This wasn’t by accident. He started as a stockboy at The Limited, a woman’s clothing store in Deerbrook Mall. Despite the ribbing we gave him for trying on the clothes (our words, not his), like me he made connections at Waldenbooks and eventually moved his commute 300 feet further south of The Limited. Jeff’s book knowledge soared and so did my book-buying. With each Stephan King release, Jeff would set aside a copy for me and apply his employee discount when I came to pick it up. It was one of my favorite places to hang out in high school. Not just because of Jeff, but because I loved going through the books and magazines. Jeff would always have recommendations for me.

One of the perks book store employees enjoyed was when stock was returned to distribution centers stores would only need to return the cover of the paperback, to save postage. Once all the employees had a chance to take these ‘stripped’ books, they could be offered to friends and family. Which occasionally worked out in my favor. Jeff always had more book recommendations than I could possibly read. Greg wasn’t a big reader.

Depending on our ‘hang-out plans’ and work schedules we would occasionally hang out at Walden Books waiting for Jeff to finish up work. Later in our high school years, Jeff would be by himself during the weeknight so he would have to finish the last customers close up the store.  I was happy to go through the fantasy and science fiction books. Greg would eventually end up buried in some Outdoor magazine at the front of the store.

‘Hangout’ – as a verb – was synonymous with ‘loitering’, according to some store managers. The time spent waiting for your friend to get off of work was a painful thing for all involved – the working friend, the friend(s) and the employees/manager. No one wanted this but it was something we all had to endure until time or chores had expired. Greg and I would do this at Waldenbooks but luckily Jeff’s manager was cool. And Jeff would go on to become a manager there.

Greg was our job hopper. It seems like he was going to a different job every few months. He worked at Dear Franks, a hotdog place in Deerfield, Jewel Food Store in Deerbrook – with a bunch of my other friends and at some point, he ended up with me at Franks Nursery and Crafts with me.

Those were good days. By my junior and senior years, I was a pro at Franks. I started out as a stockboy stocking the craft and nursery shelves. I worked the spring and summer out in the yard with the trees and shrubs; as well as the late spring annuals when we would set up pallets tables overflowing with annual flowers. I also loved working with the Christmas rush, particularly the Christmas trees outside. I was one of the stockboys that were taught how to work the register and the only part-time employee that temporarily took over the house plant department. Franks was a second home but sometimes families get into fights. More about our fights later.

When Greg and I worked both worked at Franks then Jeff would perform the Hangout. Franks would typically have 3-4 managers so depending on the manager Jeff would wait for Greg and me to finish inside. Or he would be sent to his car. In his car, he could at least prep for the evening listening to The Loop or WXRT. At least out in his own car, he didn’t have to listen to Frank’s horrible Muzak.

Yes, it was true, Franks played horrible Muzak. These cheesy nondescript covers of old songs and ‘safe’ pop songs would play in a repeating loop all day. The managers would occasionally record ‘commercials’ on the tape. We, part-timers, would always tease them because we knew they didn’t like to do them. Though I remember a cashier who did a great Roseanne Roseannadanna impersonation. It was impressive enough we even stopped teasing the managers about their commercials for a little bit.

As one would expect, after months of dealing with the audial assault of Muzak despite our best efforts, we could not drown it out in the yard where boomboxes were allowed but with limits.  After suffering through sometimes 10 months of the same loop of Muzak, we were desperate for a change. So we were honestly excited when the Christmas tape would come in October. Maybe it was our child-like association of Christmas and presents. Regardless of the reason, we begged Mr. Turpin to change the tape, even if it was before Halloween. Playing Christmas before Halloween scratched our adolescent itch. And as two adolescents, two weeks later, we were now sick of the Christmas music tape.

In the fall we would remove the lawn equipment from the large open floor plan to set up the artificial Christmas tree displays. A third of the store would be dedicated to the holidays. Down the ornament aisles, we would load wire bins full of glass bulb ornament. Every year random games of glass ball bombardment would play out. Eventually, enough of these games broke out that management, or rather Mr. Taupin could no longer ignore them. During one of our store meetings, this became enough of an issue that we were warned if we continued to ignore management’s verbal warnings (again, Mr. Taupin), we would now be written up. Us stockboys thought this was a huge overreaction.

Though a few evenings later, he may have sensed a cloud over his managerial warning from me and my fellow stockboys. We were just having fun. A quarter would have covered the cost of our bombardment tournaments. Despite any rational understanding, I had dropped my friendliness from my conversations with Mr. Turpin. So when he was giving me instructions on where the stock on the cart was to go on the floor, I was matter-of-fact with my responses. But as I banged the back doors to the floor open with my cart, the familiar sound of the shattering of a glass ornament appeared to my right. As the shards of glass settled to the ground, I heard the surprising giggle from where Mr. Turpin and I were just talking. This warmed things between Mr. Turpin and me.

Mr. Turpin was someone I respected. He was fair, and he treated me and all of us high schoolers as young adults. He knew he would need to keep us occupied, and he didn’t blame us if we weren’t doing anything when our tasks were done. He always made sure we had plenty of tasks during our shifts. One year, having gone through a Christmas season, we had a particularly tight crew and the idea of having a late holiday party in the store was suggested. It would be after the holidays, after the ‘after Christmas sales’ were complete and Frank’s settled in for its long winter’s sleep before we would begin setting up for springtime.

We were not going to have just a Christmas party but a Rollerskating Christmas party. In the week after the artificial Christmas tree displays were taken down the store would have its annual stripping and re-waxing of the floors. So Mr. Taupin agreed – we could have a rollerskating Christmas Party. In fact, I think it was his suggestion. Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack didn’t know what to think when I told them about our Christmas party. So I think they were a little impressed when they found out I was bringing a dish to pass and found some old roller skates in the basement. They had certainly met Mr. Taupin from past trips to Franks. I think they thought he was a nice guy. And now they were thinking he may be a ween bit off in his head.

While there were always 3 or4 managers at Franks, Mr. Taupin was the store manager. He was the first one when I started there. There were other characters at Franks as well. There was a full-time stockboy we called ‘Head’. Head worked during the week and weekends during the spring. I don’t remember who first coined Head’s nickname, but we had dubbed ‘Head’ in part because he went by Ed and also due to the disproportional size of his head. Head was a short wiry guy probably no more the five-six and was probably 19 or 20 years old at the time. But to us part-timers, we hardly respected the managers (except for Mr. Turpin), poor Head never stood a chance.

I remember Head would often boast about his 1970-something Bonneville and its 400 cubic-inch engine. I remember him extolling how great Black Sabbath’s ‘Heaven and Hell’ album was. He would often ask me to play it in my boombox when I had it in the yard. This was well before I knew who Ronnie James Dio was and just before learning who Ozzy Osbourne was.

Typically in the spring Head would get his 40 hours in during the week but there was typically room for overtime or Mr. Taupin shift his schedule to work a Saturday if he needed him. Head’s problem was he was too honest. But honestly is often wasted by high schoolers, or maybe I should say it was interpreted differently by a self-absorbed kid finding his way into the world. But that’s everybody, kids just haven’t decided what honesty means to them – and if that meaning applies to them. Kids are naive about a lot of things. Just like some adults.

For example. Back in the late 70’s Wisconsin’s drinking age was 18. In Illinois, it was 21. This would not change until 1986. So in high school kids from Illinois would drive over the border, drink, and then drive back. We were 30 miles from the Wisconsin border so it would not be a big deal to drive up and get alcohol for the weekend. But this led to an Illinois-enforced border patrol to catch kids drinking or driving into Illinois with liquor. Could you imagine this situation with cell phones? Could you imagine the apps they would come up with now for smartphones?

But this would all be fine – if, at the time, we were actually 18 years old. But even as the oldest in my group of friends I was, at that time, only 17. That’s why when I asked a manager, who I knew was trying to get in good with the high school kids, to buy me some beer he did. As I said, even adults are trying to find out what’s right.

I don’t remember this manager’s name but what started out as a case of beer eventually became me handing him a wad of cash, my keys and a shopping list of alcohol. My car would drift out of the parking lot and in a half-hour, I would have the store mopped, de-trashed, locked and ready for the lights to be turned off. My car would drift just outside of the entrance to the store. The manager would hop out and display my trunk, now full of alcohol. Jack Daniels was the drink of choice – except for Jeff – who would always have to get Southern Comfort. But typically it was mostly beer. Eventually, it was understood any bill smaller than a twenty from the order was a tip. There would be Fridays in high school with kids tracking me down to get their orders in for the weekend. I felt like Mike Damone in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Had I known what the future held I would have defined ‘honestly’ or ‘the right thing’ a little differently. But I was like any other kid, I was living in the moment. I did not connect my actions to other things. We were just random kids bouncing into each other. We were still just trying which general direction to go in. Most of our directions were still coming from our parents. As our worlds expanded we either noticed a gap in our vocabulary or a revision of our definition would be demanded.

There were a number of parties. I drove when I should not have. As Junior year rolled into our Senior year, we took more and more chances but for the most part, through everything my friends – my friends being my expanding core of friends that was forming with Greg, Jeff and I. We were never ‘busted’ by our parents or the police. But one particular evening at Franks that all changed. It was not the drinking and/or the driving but my realization of the consequences of my actions. My definition of honesty, actually more about what it was ‘not’ – would soon be defined for me.

I don’t know if Mr. Taupin particularly liked Greg and me working together. We both worked hard and had good work ethics. This should NOT be confused with moral ethics. My excuse was my moral ethics were skewed by my adolescents. This turned out to be fatal to Greg’s job, and more soul-defining for me.

It started out innocently enough for Greg. I was the more blatant thief. This was because I actually was into plants so it was nothing for me to take a bag of potting soil or peat cups to start some seeds. Greg didn’t care about plants, for him, Franks was just a job.

Springtime could get crazy at Franks. There would be days in April we would have guys assigned to work the back gate til the dinner bell. Customers were ordering 2 to 20 bags of various landscaping supplies. At the height of springtime, Frank’s yard would be filled with annuals on pallet tables we made each year. There were 8 beds of pea gravel that we would keep stocked with landscaping plants. We carried anything from ground cover to trees. If they were potted they sat on top of the gravel, if they were burlap bagged we’d cover their rootball with the pea gravel. They had a sprinkler system for watering the plants and it was fun running to each bed turning on the sprinklers for an hour or so to water the stock.

Saturdays in the spring would be our busiest times, except for maybe weeks before Christmas. During this peak season, on the weekends there would be 2 or 3 of us stockboys that would just work the back gate. Landscaping supplies were things like topsoil, cow manure, peat moss or something else to better your yard. After I had been assigned to the back gate for a few Saturdays, I soon realized I loved the adrenaline of the high-paced buzz of Springtime at Franks.

When a customer wanted to purchase something from the back gate, they would tell the cashier as they were checking out. The cashier would get on the PA and announce what the customer had ordered, “3 bags of topsoil and 2 bags of cow manure.” That was our cue to get the customer’s order ready when they met us at Frank’s back gate where we were to load their purchases into their trunk. Sometimes, on those peak Saturday afternoons, it would be so busy, the announcements would just stop – which was fine, we weren’t keeping track of the announcements anyways. It was one of the buzzy Spring Saturdays when the trouble began.

Inevitably we would have broken bags of these supplies. These would be taped up or put off to the side. These damaged bags would be sold for a buck each. For the customers that would want to renegotiate the posted pricing, we would point them to the damaged bags. On these Springtime Saturdays, we would have all four registers going and each of them would be 4 or 5 customers deep. It started when one guy said he only wanted 5 broken bags of topsoil and he didn’t want to have to go back inside and wait in those lines for a $5 purchase. With some insisting from the customer, I don’t remember who, but one of us obligated our big spender. This didn’t start trouble started. It was when he came back for another load that we started down that slippery slope.

In a couple of weeks, we went from selling one customer broken bags of topsoil to selling additional, regular bags out the back gate – as long as it was just the landscape material. But that soon changed. I don’t remember the first customer but at some point, someone had a plant or a flat of annuals they wanted to include with their bags of topsoil. That officially opened Frank’s Secret Back Gate Checkout. We were now fully open – as long as they had exact change. But even that soon changed.

On one particular Saturday, I don’t remember it being very busy, Greg came up to me in the yard asking if I had change for a twenty. I walked back with Greg to the back gate and our customer had multiple bags of topsoil, cow manure and peat moss – along with a couple of flats of annuals and a few trees. I dutifully pulled out my money to make the change.

While the Back Gate sales supplemented our pay I did feel guilty about what we were doing. We were stealing and that was crossing the line. The irony was I didn’t think anything of taking home some potting soil or peat pods or seeds. In my adolescent brain, I had nimbly traversed the conflicting morals of stealing plants that was going to be thrown out anyways, broken bags of topsoil,  or a pot I needed for a plant. I was just taking what I needed. It didn’t really register to me that picking garbage had changed to stealing. After all, if we needed gloves to work in the yard we just took them off the shelf. Everyone seemed to be ok with that.

Ok, not really. This too, like the glass ornament bombardment, became a topic during one of our store meetings. We were told we could no longer just take gloves off the shelf to use in the yard. This should have been a clue to me – but it wasn’t. I would like to say my arrogance and naivety gave way to enlightenment but my arrogance and naivety knew no bounds.

One evening as we were closing up at Franks the manager on duty asked if I could drop him off to pick up his car. Like any car-owning new driver, I was happy to drop him off. After he locked up the store, he got into my car. I told him, “Hold on, I have to pick something up.” as I proceeded to drive around to the back of the store. Back by the dumpsters I opened the trunk and loaded the plant trays, potting soil and seeds I was taking home.

Even now I don’t quite remember his response but my sense is he basically said, “Please tell me you did not just steal stuff in front of me.” And my reaction back was, “Don’t worry, you’re cool, I’m cool, we’re just taking stuff from the corporate beancounters in Detroit!” I never crossed my adolescent brain that he would actually tell Mr. Turpin. A life lesson in the near future had been scheduled.

When I came for my next shift, Mr. Turpin told me he needed to talk to me in the break room. The break room was a 6 x 10 mortar-lined room across from the bathrooms in the back of the storage area that made up the ‘back room or storage area. It was a room we could eat our lunch in or survive a nuclear attack. Or have private one-on-one meetings. I had no clue what was about to happen, and neither did Mr. Taupin.

When we got there Mr. Turpin told me the manager had told him that I was stealing from the store. I tried to explain it wasn’t really stealing, I was just taking some stuff I needed to grow some plants. Apparently, he insisted, that was in fact stealing. Earlier he had talked to Greg, my accomplice. My next thought was did they know about the Secret Back Gate sales?

Suddenly that feeling in the back of my head crashed out onto the table between me and Mr. Taupin. For the first time, I felt a coldness from Mr. Taupin I had not heard before. I had a very bad feeling about what was coming next. Stealing was crossing the line. And for the first time, I realized the real cost of what I had done – I had betrayed a trust. Mr. Turpin’s trust in me. And it was steely chill he explained an hour ago he had talked to Greg. Greg was fired. And I was fired too.

I tried to wrap my head around what being fired from Franks meant. If I was fired, then I would not be coming to Franks 2 to 4 days a week. This was the best job I ever had, in my short 3 job career. I knew everything about this place. I knew all about plants and most of the craft stuff. I was a stockboy and I could run the registers. I could probably do the books if they would teach me. This was my work home. Hell, I knew how to drive the forklift!

I still wasn’t getting it. And then I realized I would have to explain to Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack that I was fired – for stealing. Everything was imploding. I could picture Uncle Jack’s wrath when I told them. This would be nothing compared to when I broke the lawnmower. I would be a thief. Would be? I am! Would I even still be able to live there anymore? An absurd idea but it still formed in my adolescent brain. It was these absurd thoughts that started me crying and pleading my case to Mr. Turpin.

He did not understand what Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack would do to me. I’m sure at some point I would have told him I lived with my aunt and uncle and knew my parents were dead, but that didn’t me from crying. “My parents are dead!”

When the wailing, crying and pleading was completed – I had won. Mr. Turpin had changed my firing to a 2-week suspension. I walked out of Franks relieved to have saved my job. I now did not have to face Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack with the fact that I had been fired for being a thief. But at what cost? I had now used my parents’ deaths to get something. I had used it to buy sympathy from Mr. Turpin, to guilt him into pity. I had used my tragedy like a chip, a marker, as something of value. I was still years away from understanding any true wisdom from their death.

What was quickly becoming apparent, this value was not in pity. I was only just beginning to recognize anything positive coming from my parent’s deaths. So in the years to come, and even in high school, I could draw strength from what I was going through. But this – this pity – this bought sympathy from Mr. Turpin. There was no strength in what I had done. It was only a crutch. The wailing, crying and pleading was pathetic. This is not what their deaths meant to me, something to hold over other people, to buy their sympathy, their pity. I felt ashamed of my dishonor. What have done? Over the days, and months, and even years, I would never play that pity card again. I could not have their deaths defined this way for me.

In the weeks that followed, I painted the mortar brinks in the lunchroom. I painted a Roger Dean-inspired picture with the phrase “There are some things that none understand.” It was horrible. I did like the calligraphy I came up with – but the picture? It was a couple of blobs of green paint that I would have to explain were space snakes. It really was horrible. I think it was my way of covering up what I had spewed out at Mr. Turpin. Painting my horrible masterpiece gave me time to think about defining what my parents’ deaths meant to me. This would help me define what it wouldn’t be. I would never use my parents’ deaths as a means to an end. I did not want people to feel sorry for me. I was realizing I needed to identify who I was going to be. One thing for sure, I got a very good idea where that line was for stealing.

During freshman year Greg, Jeff and I became friends. As high school continued we met more friends and our circles expanded but at its core was always Greg, Jeff and I – the 3 Amigos as our parents would say. That bond strengthened while we would hang out at each other’s houses. We shared our families, our jobs and explored adolescents together. We would dream together, fantasize together, and break many firsts together. We would get our first jobs together, learn to drive together, and learn about girls together. And most important to me, we learned about music together. (OK, that was not more important than girls but it was damned important.) You’ve been probably wondering when I would get back to the music – I’m finally getting there.

Back then we were turning each other onto new music. It was new/current music as well as old music we didn’t know. We were hungry for music. The payoff was turning our fiends on to new music we liked. In the late seventies, the soundtrack to our adolescents was born out of the rejection of Disco and softer interpretations of the UK’s punk movement. One of the albums that scratched that itch for me was ‘Outlandos d’Amour’ by The Police.

I purchased it based on hearing ‘I Can’t Stand Losing You’ on the Loop. It wasn’t until my friends would ask me if that was the album that had ‘Roxanne’ on it. I had not heard ‘Roaxanne’ until I bought the album. The Police had a pop sound that cut through the basic rock of Boston, Foreigner and Journey. It had the simple trappings of punk but without pushing us away like the Sex Pistols did.

I was beginning to learn the first track on Side 2 was reserved for an album’s ‘big song’ from a producer’s perspective. This is where ‘I Can’t Stand Losing You’ sat. But the track layout on side one was excellent starting with “Next to You” and “So Lonely.”  Sting screamed out my dating frustrations and told me this sucked with “Hole in My Life”. The trio expanded beyond my dating woes with “Truth Hits Everybody” and tried to update The Who’s “My Generation” with “Born in the ’50s” and I completely bought it. The naughty “Be My Girl—Sally” taught me most parents don’t listen to your music. And gave me an alternate plan if dating didn’t work out. This was the sound I wanted blasting out of my car as I pulled into the school parking lot. The fact that I didn’t have my driver’s license didn’t mean I didn’t know what I wanted blasting from my windows when I did get my driver’s license.

This was our ‘edgy’ sound. Not a huge leap or metamorphosis the pop music at the time. As Rocky Horror said, it was just a jump to the left. It was that sharper edge we were looking for.  This is the same sound Joe Jackson’s ‘Look Sharp’ used to paddle out to meet the New Wave. The Babys saw it, The Ramones were already on shore fighting with The Clash for empty casings from the Sex Pistols. Graham Parker, Sparks and Squeeze all saw it. We couldn’t see it – we just knew when we heard it.

The next time I heard the ‘edge’ was on The Records’ self-titled debut album. It would be twenty years before I read that the title “Shades in Bed” had been removed when it was released in the US. The Records also had a huge hit – “Starry Eyes”. OK, it wasn’t a huge hit but I thought it was a smarter song than ‘Can’t Stand Losing You.’ The Loop loved it but it didn’t have the sparkle to pull it up the charts. In my ears, both these bands were cut from the same cloth. Their songs were all about getting girls but The Records had better lyrics. “All Messed Up and Ready to Go”, “Teenarama” and “Girls That Don’t Exist” all led up to “Starry Eyes”. Sometimes I could hear my precious Beach Boys in their reverb.

Side two started with “All Messed Up and Ready to Go”, “Insomnia” and “Affection Rejected,” among the six tracks.  These songs explained why I didn’t have a girlfriend. Greg and Jeff only liked “Starry Eyes” and that may have only been to placating me since I was pushing the song so hard back then. When I got to college no one had heard of The Records. My friends showed some recognition of “Starry Eyes” but they didn’t get anything from the rest of the album. Eventually “Starry Eyes” would be a great one-hit-wonder I would occasionally include on my mixtapes.

When The Records released the follow-up ‘Crashes’ the following year like most of the record-buying public, I didn’t buy it. But I did not get The Police’s follow-up either “Reggatta de Blanc” either, at first. Well, eventually, I did. Probably because it was released later in 1979, There was so much great music coming out then. But I was a little disappointed in the new Police album.

I loved “Message In A Bottle,” and “It’s Alright For You” was pretty good. “Walking On The Moon” eventually grew on me but all the girl songs were gone (except “The Bed’s Too Big Without You”) but most of the songs were slower. And that is why I didn’t get The Record’s ‘Crashes’ release. It would take falling in love with “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” before I would eventually buy ‘Zenyatta Mondatta’, and that album hooked me on The Police for good.

For years I would lament why The Record’s album didn’t do so well. It wasn’t as polished as The Police’s but it wasn’t that far off either. The Records was the classic ‘one and done’ band like The Knack’s “My Sharona,” “Starry Eyes” was a bonafide One Hit Wonder. And yet The Police would become Eighties Legends. Why?

And as I write these stories and surround myself once again with the memories and music for inspiration I think of the three boys that we were. On our way to becoming young men. I think of that friendship, that bond we developed and shared. All those many hopes, wishes and dreams for our future selves. All the stupid things we did. The hours and hours of conversations trying to help each other figure out what was important. Decisions are made, changed and changed again. So many mistakes. But we made them together. And even the mistakes we didn’t make together we still shared.

And as worldly as we would try to pretend, we were just high school kids in a nice Chicago suburb. We were 16 and 17 years old and, as the clique goes, we still had our whole lives in front of us. I was shredding my bonds with my family but that was needed so I could fly with my friends, run with my pack – and develop the dreams that would guide my future.

In another year or so we would be graduating. We still had plenty of things to go through. Girls to meet, cars to crash and parties to attend. And a lot more music to find. After high school, things would change and unfortunately, our friendship also changed. We went off to college and we eventually lost track of each other. But back then we were all the same.

Of course, we would get back together during breaks and hang out all summer but each year we drifted further and further apart. But for the most part, we were the same.   I went to Carthage College after graduation. Greg did a year at the College of Lake County before transferring to Illinois State. While we were in college Greg and I help move Jeff and his mom to another North Shore suburb. We were still the Three Amigos, even after college.

But then they moved away. Greg moved out to Virginia and Jeff moved up to St. Paul. I visited each of them; Jeff, a couple of times when I had business up there. But it was the beginning of the end of the Amigos. We were no longer the same.

When I went up to Minneapolis, I would stay with Jeff at his place. He was dating Teresa then. The last time I was there she complained to me – she was tired of waiting for him to ‘pop the question’. Eventually, Jeff did ‘pop the question.’ They married and bought a house in St. Paul. Desi and I too had bought a house. The last time I saw Jeff Desi & I were two-thirds of the way on finishing our family. Both of our lives were pretty typical, married and working on our careers. I’m happy and I hope and pray Jeff is happy as well.

After Greg and Becky moved out to Virginia Desi and I visited them the summer after we were married. They came back to Chicago to get married the following year. Over the years, Greg did very well for himself. He created a company that does outdoor adventures. A passion he and Jeff shared. Through hard work, good business sense and luck he turned Signature Teambuilding into a thriving business. He has literally traveled the world multiple times.  Who knew when Steve and I were decorating Greg and Becky’s moving van in a wedding motif what their future in Richmond would become? I hope and pray Greg is happy as well.

The Three Amigos eventually deteriorated to exchanging Christmas cards once a year. Greg and I have called each other over the years and we always say we have to do this more often. And then a couple of years go by. I’ve lost track of Jeff completely. We are not even on the Christmas Card program anymore. Of the three of us, from a career, I think Greg has come closest to what we were dreaming of in high school, that success. So how did Greg get that Police-level success? He certainly deserves the credit. I would think he would admit there was some luck involved.

Years later I would hear “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann. It is essentially someone giving graduates advice on life. One of the lines is “Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.” Just like The Police, just like The Records, just like the Three Amigos.

I picked both of these songs because at the time these songs had the same impact on me. A teenager with his friends, trying to find his way. These songs formed the backdrop of time together: driving around town, working after school, and just hanging out at each others’ houses.

The Police’s debut album did much better than The Records’ but neither of them had the success of The Knack. What makes one band soar past the others? Certainly, hard work is part of it. How many choices are half-chance? all of them, how many choices are made in a career? How much is hard work? How much is luck?

After college, I managed a record store to make connections in the music industry. From my limited view from the bottom, I learned the music business was manipulated dog-eat-dog business. Much worse than my view of the corporate Wallstreet life we saw in the movies in the 80’s.

As I think back to the dreamy Three Amigos days, I wonder if Jeff and I have “Starry Eyes” careers while Greg has a “Roxanne” career. I hope and pray Greg and Jeff are happy with their lives and look back to those high school years with the same fondest I do. I think of Greg’s ‘success’ – if success is creating a long-running business, lets you travel the world I believe Greg has been a success. As The Police said, “The truth hits everybody.” We all have our own truths, and I will leave Greg and Jeff to their own and I to mine.

The Police may have more space on Wikipedia than The Records do. Maybe Sting has more ‘success’ than the other members of the Police, or Will Birch of The Records. But happiness or success is subjective and changes with the perspective and the drone of time.

I am grateful to recall those good old days with my Amigos. The memories of hanging out with Greg and Jeff. I miss those bonds of friendship, that commitment to each other. I still remember what they felt like. I am very grateful for the tethers my family didn’t let go of. Giving me more length on my tether to hang with my Amigos. To learn about life, love,  ourselves, and to grow up – together. And to be wiser for all of it.

For all the crap we give the Millennials, I think they will maintain their friendships, those bonds, longer than we did. I would tell my children they are worth holding on to. Whether your life turns out like Sting or Will Birch I am glad to have bonded with my Amigos.

To Greg and Jeff, you’re a couple of dough heads, and I still love you and cherish our time growing up.

Christmas Drive Playlist

So what is a ‘Christmas Drive Playlist’? Simply put – it is a playlist of Christmas music to accompany you on a drive during the holiday season. However, over my thirty-some years of making these ‘playlists’, I’ve developed certain rules. “Jeez – John,” (or Waba if you prefer) “can’t you just make a playlist of Christmas songs?” Well of course I can – but at some point, EVERYBODY gets tired of ‘Step Into Christmas’.

So how did these ‘rules’ start? When I started making playlists professionally; well, maybe not professionally, but it started when my girlfriend, and eventual wife, made a Christmas cassette of Christmas pop music for our friends in ’86.

Working at a record store introduced me to a new level of pop Christmas music. Through various albums and 45’s, I created a master cassette tape complete with an introduction by Desi and me. From there we made 37 copies for our friends and family adding a personal message to each person at the end of each tape. When done they were wrapped and mailed out.

Thirteen years later we repeated this by creating a cd. Enlisting the help of my brothers, Lee as a graphic artist and Dave’s access to a color printer, we created a cd case. Now with 3 kids, Naomi being born that October, we added an intro with all contributing except, of course, Naomi. With the intro and a new list of songs, 30 plus CDs were burned, packaged and mailed out.

The ‘Christmas Drive’ was my attempt to have Christmas music during our drives during the holidays but most importantly for our drive up North to the Daments. With Desi in Healthcare, scheduling Christmas with her family always had some level of logistical gymnastics. Working with Desi’s schedule I always pledged to get us where we needed to be regardless of time or hour. If it meant leaving Neshkoro at 11 that night and getting home at 2 am, I had my Christmas Drive music to accompany me, and my 4 sleeping passengers.

It is through these circumstances I developed my ‘rules’ for creating a Christmas Drive playlist. The last rule comes from a tradition I developed – the yearly purchase of two Christmas albums before the holidays. These ‘rules’ help me plan a playlist I can enjoy and share with others that have thought and design, and hopefully, some level of repeatability and yet still allows discovery for new music – after making playlists for thirty-some years.

The Rules:

  1. Overall theme
  2. No repeats
  3. Build in blocks
  4. One seasonal non-Christmas song
  5. One non-seasonal song
  6. Run 2 and a half to 3 hours 
  7. Song from each purchased album

Explanation of Rules:

Overall theme: This seems obvious but I see many playlists were people just pull in a various artist album that becomes their ‘theme’. That’s not a theme, that’s a marketing plan. I have made playlists with the following themes: Female vocalist, heavy metal, sad songs, old songs. And while I work towards a theme, it is the first rule I break because I think any playlist needs to have variety and thus surprises. And this doesn’t always work. My sister Hope found my playlist last year while entertaining guests for the holidays. It didn’t take too long to discover that last year’s playlist’s theme was heavy metal. After traversing a few of the blocks they switched to something more traditional.

No repeats: You cannot put the same song the playlist – no matter how different it is done. Yes, Dio’s version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ is very different from Ray Conniff’s version. Ray Conniff has plenty of Christmas songs, pick another one. It is these decisions that put the ‘fun’ into creating a playlist. You can always add Ray Conniff’s version next year.

Build in blocks: Years ago radio stations when from ‘Two for Tuesday’ to ‘Block Party Weekend’. The concept here is a theme within a theme. So while your playlist theme may be heavy metal, it doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to work in some traditional songs to add to the variety.

One seasonal non-Christmas song: This is to remind me we are not all Christians but we all love the holidays. When I moved to Deerfield in ’75 it was the first time I hung around Jewish families. Pop Hanukkah songs are no different than pop Christmas songs. It feeds that music discovery I look for and certain push on others to strive for.

One non-seasonal song: This is, initially, ‘hiding something in the picture’. The point isn’t to put ‘Highway to Hell’ after ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ (though you could with Dio’s version). Look for something more subtle, for example, last year’s heavy metal theme led me to include Scorpion’s ‘Lady Starlight’.

Run 2 and a half to 3 hours: No reason except my in-laws are 2 hours and 45 minutes driveway to driveway. I believe there is an ancient document that states a ‘road trip’ must be a minimum of 2 hours.

Song from each purchased album: I’m sure I am one of the few people you know who still purchase music. This is just a blatant attempt to justify my purchases. Every year while we rearrange the furniture and decorate I pull out all my Christmas cd’s and play through all of them in some weird random shuffle – beginning, and ending, with that year’s new purchases. Yes, I know there’s something wrong with me – I just don’t want to change it.

This year I will be trying something new. I will be sharing this year’s Christmas Drive playlist publically and building it online – changing and rearranging it until its final form the week of Christmas. Follow this year’s Christmas Drive playlist or check out past playlists.

Past Christmas Drive Playlists

Songs of My Life: Life During Wartime

songsofmylife

I listened to music whenever I could. The only exception was in the morning when I listened to The Loop with Steve Dahl. The Loop, or Steve Dahl, was that ‘other friend’ we all talked about at school. While I would have to fight to stay up and watch ‘Saturday Night Live’, mornings I could listen to any station I wanted and it was easy to convince Dave. So when I got to school, I would be up to date on Steve Dahl, and his sidekick Gerry Meiers, latest antics to discuss them with my friends.

Listening to The Loop was classic for a teen living in the late seventies; well, a guy, in Chicago or the surrounding suburbs. What I didn’t know was Steve Dahl started in March 1979. This was after he was let go from WDUI (one of the iterations of WLS-FM in the 70’s) who had switched from an AOR format to all disco. Needless to say, Steve Dahl was no fan of dIsco. When he started at The Loop, he started a morning routine of ‘blowing-up’ a disco record on the air. Of course, this was all sound effects but for those of us looking to revolt against the Bee Gees and Donna Summer, it was a call to arms.

My family was very typical. I would say we were a Gallup family but no one ever asked for our opinions. We just ended up liking what most Americans liked. Though we didn’t have many choices as we do now. There were the 3 national tv stations, 6 if you counted WGN, FOX and PBS. We typically watched the most popular show on each. Music – top 40, which in the late ’70s meant disco. When Elvis died the greatest hits 8-track was purchased and we listened to Elvis when there was nothing on the radio. Leisure suits were the new trend so we each had a Leisure suit (anything that did not include a tie).

But as we each got our own cars, jobs and friends, we were breaking out of the Gallup family, at least I was. When Steve Dahl started blowing up Disco records on the air, I was all in. Well, I wasn’t ALL in. I was in enough to buy a Loop shirt and to put Loop stickers on my notebooks – like a lot of other kids. The Loop logo was iconic. Simple black and white letters in a ‘painted’ font.

I didn’t know what a font was back then but I did appreciate them without knowing what they were. The geeky/nerdy side of me collected Monster, Starlog and other magazines. I created cardboard boxes to store the magazines in. For the box lids, I carefully traced out the magazines’ titles in two different sized fonts. I thought it looked cool. The bottom line was I thought the Loop logo was cool also. There was a rumor that someone had covered their car completely in Loop stickers. I don’t remember seeing it but it sounded cool too, though possibly a tad bit redneck.

When I say I wasn’t “all in”, I never actually joined Steve Dahl’s Insane Coho Lips club. Steve’s anti-disco army (a clear takeoff of the Kiss Army fan club). While I was a member in spirit, I didn’t want to actually part with $5 – that could have been converted into an album.

Disco really was running out of control. We had already suffered through Saturday Night Fever who brought the Bee Gees up as their glittering warriors. Next to them was the Village People, Donna Summer, Chic, Chaka Khan and Taste of Honey. Even before Ted Nugent, Foreigner and Queen could get through, they would have to battle Barry Manilow, Gino Vannelli and Toto. An army was definitely needed. While Grease seemed to support the troops you really couldn’t tell whose side they were on. Between Travolta and Newton-John, they were just a distraction. We ran them off with the Blue Brothers but they were repulsed with Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club musical. Who’s side was Aerosmith on? Everyone started looking at Queen. Dammit, Freddie! There were really just too many of them. Steve saw this. He was the right man for the job. And he sure hated Disco.

But it wasn’t just Steve Dahl and Gerry Meiers fighting. His army was growing each day. While we talked about his latest disco destructions at school, Steve had also formed a band: Steve Dahl with Garry Meier and Teenage Radiation. They did parodies of current hits. Their first song was a call to arms on the anti-disco front, “Do You Think I’m Disco” over Rod Stewart’s ” Do You Think I’m Sexy” (there were a number of questionable rock ‘n’ roll members who had been flirting with the enemy).

Now we listened in the morning to see what disco album Steve and Gerry would blow-up and catch “Do You Think I’m Disco.” Steve Dahl with Garry Meier and Teenage Radiation actually released their parody as a single peaking at #58 on the Billboard charts. At one time, Steve was out so Gerry Meier played a bunch of their songs that morning. I was able to catch them on a cassette tape. Over the years I lost the tape but recollected the songs from videos on Youtube. Going through the songs was really like a cross between childhood memories and Chicago history lesson:

“Do You Think I’m Disco” (based on Rod Stewart’s “Do You Think I’m Sexy”, a call to arms for the Insane Coho Lips Army)

“Skylab” (based on the Rolling Stones’ “Shattered”, the Spacelab ‘Skyfall’ was to fall and NASA had no idea where is was going to land)

“Oh Wally” (based on Barry Manilow’s “Mandy”, Steve and Gerry would mock Wally Phillips’ radio show, who Aunt Joyce listed to in the morning, and this parody was born)

“Another Kid in the Crawl” (based on Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”, dangerously mocked the John Wayne Gacy murders and we loved it)

“Ayatollah” (based on The Knack’s “My Sharona”, during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, it was so popular it peaked over #20 on the WLS charts so they were even playing it)

“RTA” (based on AC/DC’s “TNT”, mocked the problems of the Chicago public transportation system under Mayor Jane Byrne)

“Falklands” (based on J. Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame”, about the British invasion of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina)

“Crew Cut Hero” (based on Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero”, about a plumber with a crew cut, yea – it was the end of the classic parodies)

With army recruits joining by the dozens each day, Steve Dahl was ready to strike disco with a fatal blow: Disco Demolition Night. The Loop worked with the Chicago White Sox on a promotion for the doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. The actual promo was to get into the game for 98¢. The Whites Sox were hoping for an extra 5,000 fans to take advantage of hype Steve Dahl and Gerry Meier was creating around the anti-disco movement. And it was a movement. Other anti-disco event had occurred out west. This was going to top them all.

So on July 12, 1979, it was obvious the promotion was a success. Thousands of fans brought their disco records to the demolition. But it wasn’t just a few thousand, attendance was estimated over 50,000. They really didn’t know how many because fans kept sneaking into the game. The issue was it wasn’t the game they came there to see. Between the games, Steve Dahl was going blow up all the collected disco records. When the moment finally arrived, Steve Dahl was driven around Comiskey Park’s field in an army jeep and wearing his army jacket and helmet to 50,000 and more rock-starved, disco-hating fans. Any doubt he had that no one would show was squashed. It was out of control. The Disco-Haters had already been throwing their extra records or anything else they could find onto the field. While the White Sox lost to the Tigers, no one seemed to have cared.

After circling the field, a wet Steve Dahl (he had been blessed a number times by his adoring fans) was brought to the center of the field where the bin of disco records hooked with explosives was set up in the outfield. Steve was surrounded by radio and baseball elites as he addressed his fans. Finally, through his mic, he gave his ‘Leap for Mankind’ pronouncement:

“This is now officially the world’s largest anti-disco rally! Now listen—we took all the disco records you brought tonight, we got ’em in a giant box, and we’re gonna blow ’em up reeal goood.”

OK, it didn’t actually go that smoothly. There was a mixture of Loop and White Sox entourage around Steve at the time. An obviously unchoreographed send-off was given. Eventually, the crowd was treated to some sparks and smoke that headed to a box in front of the Disco Bin. There was a series of smallish explosions until finally, BOOM! Vinyl and smoke were spewed across the outfield.

While security was watching the exits to keep people from getting in, no one was watching the field. And on to the field they came. It was like a dam breaking. First one, then seven, then fifty, a hundred. Estimates on the number of ‘field crashers’ ranged from 2,000 to 7,000. Poor Harry Carey tried to reason with the kids to get off the field – like that would work. The White Sox owner Bill Veeck took the mic after Steve Dahl blew up his records and tried to reason these vagrants but for them, the party was just starting. This is why they had come to Disco Demolition.

Unfortunately the fans on the field was only part of the White Sox’s problem. It turned out there was now a bit of a crater in center field where the box of Disco records had been. The burning records had seemed to have spread to a batting cage that was pulled onto the field. People were stealing second base – literally. An impromptu ump was calling anti-disco fans safe or out as they slid into home plate. They were dancing on the pitching mound, actually more hopping around on it than dancing.

Eventually, someone told security to forget about the gates and keeping people out, they had real problems inside. It took the Chicago Riot Police to finally get the field cleared. But the damage had already been done – both physically and metaphorically. The hole in the outfield would need to be repaired and the umpires had decided that the second game of the doubleheader could not be played so the White Sox had to forfeit. Way to go, guys, you screwed it up for everyone.

I had been called into the porch where the TV was by Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack to see that portion of the news. I was in awe of what had happened. Like Steve Dahl, I didn’t really think much would from the promo. I liked the Disco Demolition theme but wasn’t really into baseball, particularly the White Sox. (I was a Cub fan. If you could claim that by watching ½ or ¾ of a game. I just wasn’t into baseball.) I got the sense that Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack was trying to point out the follies of Rock ‘n’ Roll. If anything they reinforced it.

The next morning Dave and I had The Loop on as we got ready for school. Steve Dahl and Garry Meier were recapping the events from the night before. Apparently, after Steve blew up the Disco records he made his way back to their seats. “I was getting ready for the next game and then all these people started coming out onto the field,” he said.

It was quite the buzz at school as well but I didn’t know anyone that had actually gone to the game. Or anyone that had actually watched the game on TV. Apparently there were not alot of White Sox fans in Deerfield High School back then. More likely, I didn’t hang out with a bunch of White Sox fans. But if anything was going to put Steve Dahl front and center with high school kids, it was a riot. That’s what they started to call it.

The fact that this was a national news story was exciting but over time there was a seriousness about that actually happened. Now its been forty years since that night. The White Sox actually celebrated the 40th anniversary of Disco Demolition. There has been a number of articles written about how the anti-disco movement was against blacks or gays. I know from my own perspective, I didn’t see Disco as ‘gay music’. I was so far removed from the gay community at the time I didn’t really understand that there were actually gay students in Deerfield High School. Sure there were queers and faggots all over the place but a quarter of them were my friends. I’m sure I was one of them. Racial? I wasn’t into  R&B, or Black Music as we called it. I liked Earth, Wind and Fire. I remember buying Michael Jackson’s ‘Off The Wall’ album and hiding it between other albums because I was embarrassed to buy a ‘black album’.

But I never saw Disco as black music. Disco was the Bee Gees and the Village People, and Rod Stewart’s ‘Do You Think I’m Sexy’. To say to be anti-disco to be anti-black wouldn’t have made sense to me. Maybe if you connected the dots I could see that person’s perspective but the anti-disco movement was an anti-popular music movement. My family liked disco, therefore, I was anti-disco. Over time and from what I’ve read, it sounds like people connected the dots for Steve Dahl. At the time, he lost a job due to disco as a music format. It didn’t represent people or a culture. Virtually blowing up disco records was fun and we could all laugh about it and convince ourselves that rock or punk was better music.

As always, some people will ruin it for everyone else. There will be that ‘guy’ who thinks that only gay people like disco or actual racists who front anti-disco to cover their hatred. But that voice can echo and end up in places it shouldn’t be. In minds that don’t understand. So while it starts out all in fun it ended up echoing in darker chambers. I get it. But I didn’t get it when I was in high school.

These stories started from a playlist I made about songs that were important to me. The first song as based on a question: “What is the first ‘pop’ song you remember hearing, and recognized it as a song you hear over and over. So not songs, hymns or your parents’ records but a song you picked out and recognized when it was played on the radio. Where did this music come from?

After Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, only the rich could really afford this luxury item. It would take almost 50 years for records to crossover to the poor. Why would the poor by a record player when they could buy a radio and get music for free? Sounds a lot like streaming, eh? At first records were for the rich – so it was classical music and jazz. If you throw a singer in front of the orchestra, you have ‘Big Band’. Ken Burns’ Country Music series showed ‘Hillbilly music’ as the opposite end of classical music. ‘Hillbilly music’ gain the attention of record companies as they competed for records sales. It turned out people will basically buy any kind of music.

So this is my perspective on how we got to disco. When Elvis stole the rhythm & blues from black culture, he basically splintered Country music and popularized Rock ‘n’ Rock. R & B is regulated to blacks, whites are split on Rock ‘n’ Roll and Country. Once the money machine is rolling in the US, England joins in with the British Invasion and the Beatles knock out Elvis from the top spot. All this is driven by the youth with business pulling the strings and raking in the dough.

It is important to realize in the 50’s that with the baby boomers, for the first time youth are marketed to. Businesses found that teenagers are great at diverting money from their ampul parents – movies, hangouts, Rock ‘n’ Roll. Youth realized with this market pull comes power. More money, more power – and more awareness. When Vietnam breaks out Youth find their voice. This fractures the family system. Parents are challenged but the disenfranchised Youth are poor. As Youth explores their voice they realize they do not need money to be heard. But some do, and Love is free.

The hippie movement is seen through the Beatles. Both Rock ‘n’ Roll and R & B become experimental. The one-time Beatles-Challengers, The Beach Boys lose their muse with Brian Wilson. But despite the ‘Free Love’ and the poor Youth the bands are making an incredible amount of money. After the Beatles breakup, the money comes rolling in: The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, The Who, Crosby, Still & Nash. A few family acts make some significate money: The Osmonds, The Jackson 5.

So now comes my theory: What if the record business made their own groups? or one better yet, their own type of music and sold it to the Youth? This way they would be in front of the artist. It took the excess of Rock ‘n’ Roll and the movement of R&B to put the pieces together. It could have been the beginning of guerilla marketing campaigns when a director took a band showing their new dance moves to back his movie to start a dance movement.  One could say it was a failed experiment or the beginning of next-level marketing.

There is no way to say ‘Saturday Night Fever’ was a failure. The movie launched a few careers, The Bee Gees being one of them. Bob Dylan said ‘There’s no success like failure and failure is no success at all’. The manufactured beats were creative and packaged in glamor. Which bore a completely opposite reaction – punk – gritty, real and offensive. Whatever Disco was, Punk was the opposite. And by contrast, the house lights were turned on and the disco ball’s twinkle dimmed. We could see a way out.

So when I was able to hang out with my friends, I wanted to be cool. We thought it was cool not to like current pop music, Disco. So it was an easy move to Steve Dahl’s Disco Demolition. But high school boys are more talk than action, so when it got out of control in Cominsky, everybody wanted things to settle down. Steve Dahl continued to blow up disco records on the air but I think he was starting to look for an exit. Not to leave The Loop but I think he wanted to get out of the anti-disco business. Steve Dahl was a talented morning DJ – he was funny and he got us kids to look at Chicago a different way. We became more aware of what was going on beyond our families, friends and school. He made our world a little bigger and a little more relevant. But it was mostly about the music.

The AOR radio format throws out the 45 vinyl format. AOR – Album Oriented Rock was born out of the FCC killing the simulcast of their the FM stations on their AM station counterparts. The radio stations needed a cheap way to play different music. So they let the DJ’s play whatever they wanted. So they could play folk to hard rock, jazz to gospel as long as there were people listening. The point was they did not have to just play the singles anymore. As this style developed, instead of giving a DJ a box of 45’s to play, there were given a list of songs from albums that they could choose from.

So stations began programming songs that were not just singles. So when ‘Fear of Music’ was released in August of ’79, The Loop immediately started playing ‘Life During Wartime’ and they weren’t alone. Record companies did not always release singles from new albums. Now they were letting the AOR DJ’s find the singles for them. “Life During Wartime” resonated with music fans across the country. So it was selected as their first single off their ‘Fear of Music’ album and released that September. It fit into my covert view of Anti-Disco perfectly.

But when I first listened to the album I was taken back by how strange it was. Until this point, I had been listening to The Beatles, Blue Oyster Cult and Fleetwood Mac. None of the other songs were like “Life During Wartime” and yet they were. The second single, “I Zimbra” which starts the album was in another language. WTF? The next song “Mind” while in English, did not fall in line with the music I was used to. Prophetically David Byrne was telling me “I need something to change your mind”. I enjoyed the guitar moments but there was all this other ‘stuff’ in the music. “Paper” brought jarring rhythms. “Cities” actually sounded like “Life During Wartimes”, as a remake. After “Life During Wartime” the first side ended with “Memories Can’t Wait” a psychotic trip into the band. It was years before I would try pot but this song gave me the taste of it. I was almost afraid to flip the album over, but I did.

The second side did nothing to persuade me to the Talking Head cause, “Air”, “Animals”, “Electric Guitar” and “Drugs” were all experiments in playing their instruments. The sole exception was “Heaven” which was the most traditional of their songs. Years later “Life During Wartime” would end up consistently on mixed tapes but in one sense they were successful, I was afraid of their music and did not buy their following album “Remain In Light”. It would not be until the college buzz, both figuratively and literally, would have me revisit them with “Speaking In Tongues” and reacquaint myself with “Fear Of Music” and purchase “Remain In Light”. It was hard to change what I was used to listening to then but this challenge would eventually get me to discover that people are like music, if you don’t like someone you may not be listening to them the right way.

Talking Heads’ ‘Fear of Music’ was not an album I would play all the time. It would take years for me to get comfortable with this new music. I was learning how to listen to music. Learning how to take responsibility as a listener. To listen to what was good, even if it didn’t sound like the other songs I knew. It was a lesson I would repeat over and over again. I had spent typically $5 on about an hour worth of music. There were so many people that helped to put these songs together, I owed it to myself to see the best in it. I didn’t have time for dancing, or lovely dovey. There was no party, it was no disco – I was just fooling around.

Songs of My Life: Here Comes My Girl

songsofmylife

At sixteen going on seventeen, I was outside Deerfield Courts waiting for my girlfriend in Aunt Joyce’s Purple Polaris when Tom Petty’s “Here Comes My Girl” came on. It was the perfect song. I had been waiting so long to finally have a girlfriend. 

It was only a few months ago on that magical February night in her uncle’s basement. She had invited me and a few of my friends over after finals had settled down. By the time I had gotten there the only space available was on the couch next to her. Despite my awkwardness, I sat there anyway. I knew something was happening when our legs touched and she didn’t pull away. We all sat around talking and laughing about the kids we had been meeting in high school, our finals and how our high school teachers weren’t as much fun as the middle school teachers, with some exceptions. She was laughing at my jokes and wasn’t moving away when I put hands down or when we had to squish together to make room for someone else. We ended up in our own conversation so deeply that when there was finally a lull we realized everyone had left – I was still sitting right next to her, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. 

For the first time, I really looked at her. I noticed how her smile pushed up the corner of her eyes. Yet her eyes appeared happy even if she wasn’t smiling. How the single bulb in her uncle’s basement reflected back so beautifully off her pupil. And how her iris broke up the brown with flakes of blue, or was it green, in the most memorizing way. I noticed her smile had dropped and at the same time, I noticed I was leaning towards. What was really surprising was she wasn’t pulling away. In fact, I think she was actually turning her head. In a second it didn’t matter because our lips touched and then our tongues introduced themselves to each other. 

“Is there anyone down here” a voice from upstairs yelled. 

We immediately sat up, struggling a bit because we didn’t realize how far we had reclined. As we got up and acknowledge we were there, we joined the others upstairs. It was on the way up when she grabbed my hand that I knew  I had a girlfriend. 

The problem was – none of that was true. Actually, I was sitting in Aunt Joyce’s Purple Polaras outside Deerfield Courts. And when Tom Petty’s “Here Comes My Girl” came on the radio it wasn’t my girlfriend that was coming. It was my stupid brother, Dave. What a loser I was. Had I been listening to the ‘Damn the  Torpedoes’ cassette tape that I would eventually buy, the next song would have been “Even The Losers”. This would have only made things worse because the chorus was “Even the losers get lucky sometimes”. That – was certainly wasn’t true – sixteen and no girlfriends in sight. The fact was it was still my brother coming through doors from Deerfield Courts. 

‘Damn The Torpedoes’ was Tom Petty’s breakthrough album. We didn’t know he was from Florida because he didn’t sound ‘southern’. He and the Heartbreakers had that edgy sound that drew us in but it was his songs that kept us: “Don’t Do Me Like That”, “Here Comes My Girl” and “Refugee” were great songs but so were “Even the Losers”, “Century City” and “What Are You Doin’ in My Life?”  I bought the cassette version of ‘Damn The Torpedoes’ for my car. Why I bought it on cassette is a different story.  But for now, I was listening to The Loop or WMET. It didn’t matter. Tom Petty and The Heart Breakers were everywhere in 1979. 

Now, calling Dave ‘My stupid brother’ was not a reflection so much on him but my frustration that despite the fact I was able to drive and being a junior in high school, I did not have a girlfriend. The reason I was picking up Dave was that we both worked in the same outdoor mall. Dave had taken my old job at Deerfield Courts. I had gotten that job from Steve Olson who had moved up to string tennis rackets. So what position is lower than stringing tennis rackets at a tennis court? A Towel Boy. I started at $1.95 an hour. I was not sixteen yet so minimum wage did not apply. During the week, if I worked, I would need to take a different bus after school and walk to the little outdoor mall behind the bigger Deerbrook Mall. I think it was called Lake Cook Plaza but no one really knew the name anyways. Usually, people just called it ‘the-mall-behind-Deerbrook-Mall’.

The main store we would go to was Frank’s Nursery and Crafts. Many times when we were done with our junior high bowling league at Brunswick, we would wander over there. John and I would look at the house plants. I would get supplies for my sand art or macrame. So, while I worked at Deerfield Courts and waiting to be picked up, I would hang out at Frank’s Nursery. The manager at the time, Kevin Taupin, saw me and one evening informed me they were looking for a stockboy and asked if I wanted to fill out an application. First work lesson – it is always easier to get a job if you have a job. I ‘passed’ my towel boy job on to Dave. So when we worked the same nights, after I had gotten my driver’s license, the family would drop the Polaris off so I could drive us both home. 

One particular night, this plan did not work out so smoothly. Since Dave and Jim were now in Drivers Ed, Dave had driven with Aunt Joyce to drop off the Polaris. Uncle Jack probably followed to bring them both home. When they dropped the car off, Dave had found me in the store to give me the car keys. I was very proud of the fact that I would be able to drive myself home – instead of having to be picked up like a little kid.

After the store closed and we finished cleaning up, Mr. Taupin told us we were free to go. With keys in hand, I approached my Purple Chariot and relished my burst of independence. I started the Polara and she roared freedom and smelled like abandonment (or was that oil?). I shifted the Polara into reverse and backed out of the parking space, but after shifting into drive the Polara would not go forward. My mind blinked, I put Polara back in park and again into drive but she didn’t move. What the hell? I tried reverse again and she went rolled backward – drive, nothing. I was having my first ‘Car Problem’ – shit. I was flustered and a little panicked. The knock on the window startled me. It was Mr. Turpin. 

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“Yea, the car won’t go forward,” I replied. 

Mr. Turpin knew I was a new driver and asked if he could try. I got out and watched as he got in. 

“It will go backward but it won’t go forward,” I explained. 

I felt somewhat vindicated when he had the same results. He could not go forward after putting the Polara into drive. Then he got serious. Warning me to watch out, he closed the car door and changed the gear back to park. Stepping back a few feet he tried and reverse and rolled back a few feet shifted gears and sat there. Changing gears again, moving back a few more feet and stopping again. Finally, the door opened and he said he would open the store up again so I could call home for a ride.

Once inside on the office phone, I called home and explained the situation. I don’t remember who I talked to but after explaining Mr. Tupin had also tried without success they agreed to rescue me. The strange part to everyone was the car was fine before they dropped it off. 

When Aunt Joyce and Dave arrived. Dave jumped out to try since he was the one that had ‘broken’ the Polara. As he got in he asked, “Did you take the parking brake off?”

“Parking brake?” I asked.

The Polara was an automatic. I had not driven anything but an automatic. I had never put the parking brake on. To be clear, the Polara’s parking brake pedal was a 3rd pedal all the way to the left. I didn’t even know how to take the parking brake off. Dave reached down and pulled the release. He put the car into gear and it rolled forward. 

Who the hell puts the parking brake on with a car with an automatic transmission?

My brother does. Everyone was relieved there was nothing wrong with the Purple Beast. I tell this story whenever someone brings up parking brakes. 

Another time, after Dave had gotten his driver’s license, I was now getting a ride home from Dave. We were still using Aunt Joyce’s Purple Polara. I had gone inside Deerfield Courts to catch up with the night manager who I knew from when I worked there. We walked out together as the manager closed up. Dave and I walked to Aunt Joyce’s car. Since Dave had driven there, it was my turn to drive. 

As we pulling out of the parking lot Dave followed behind the manager. He ran through the Stop sign that was posted in front of the ‘mall road’ that led through the mall to Lake Cook Road. 

“He blew through that stop sign!” I remarked.

“It’s OK,” Dave said. “It has a white border.” The manager would occasionally drop Dave off at Franks if I wasn’t done yet. Apparently he never stops at this particular Stop sign. Dave simply gave the same explanation was that Stops signs with white borders were optional. 

I had only been driving a year more than Dave but I had never heard this before. I thought this would have been discussed in Drivers Ed or one of my friends would have said something. Something didn’t seem right.

When we got to the Stop sign before the stoplights on Lake Cook I realized why I had never heard about the optional white-bordered Stop signs.

“You idiot,” I said. “All Stops signs have white borders!” The manager had given Dave his first lesson in ‘plausible deniability’. While confident in my conclusion we still checked the Stop sign on Lake Eleanor Drive to Carol on the way home to be sure that it too had a white border. It did. 

Cars were definitely Dave’s ‘thing’. I didn’t appreciate to what level until a year later when we were coming home in my own car. As Dave and I were heading North on Wilmot Road when Dave said, “I wonder where Aunt Joyce is going?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She just pulled off of Berkeley”

“Way up there?” we were at least a 1/2 mile away and it as dark out. “How do you know it’s Aunt Joyce?”

Well, I don’t know if its Aunt Joyce, but it is the Polara,” he stated.

“How can you tell?”

“By the headlights”

“How can you tell by the headlights?”

“Well, the directions signals on the bottom outside of the headlight…” and my ears glazed over as Dave explained in detail how the Polara lighting and directional lights were arranged. I was only half listening as we met the Southbound car and sure enough, it was the Polara, and from what I could see of the driver in the dark, probably Aunt Joyce. 

After that, I never argued with Dave again about cars. OK, that’s not true, there was one late-night conversation we had about if someone running low on gas should you drive faster or slower to get to the gas station. Dave insisted that you should drive faster while I was trying to make the point of fuel efficiency. So I was more than happy to argue with Dave about car logic but not about car details. He was at a different level when it came to that.

Like many brothers, over the years Dave and I had our share of nighttime conversations and daytime fights. While Dave was always faster than me due to my weight, but Lord help him if I did catch him. There were many tears shed in those fights, mostly by Dave. Dave was typically the family member that Mom and Dad would have to ‘worry’ about; and not just because I would be punching him. 

There was the one time in the Red House he jumped out of a second-story window on to the driveway below to get away from Hope. Or the time he took Hope’s bike, that was too big for him after being warned to leave it alone, only to take it anyways. Of course, he wiped out. He wiped out so badly, he knocked himself out. I still remember a gaggle of neighborhood kids carrying Dave’s unconscious body down the sidewalk to our house only to be scooped up by Dad who carried him inside. Dad laid him out on the bathroom countertop while Dr. Mom checked him out. He eventually came to and outside of a large bump on the head he was fine. No actual doctors were used in the resolution of this story. That’s my brother for you. 

Unfortunately, that was not the case the night Dave and I went to bed in the Gray House and had our pillow fight. The pillow fight itself was actually pretty short. To be fair, I did start it. After a couple of whacks with my pillow, Dave retaliated with his own. With a nice overhead swing, I was jarred out of my playful mood with a sharp pain to the back of my head. I put my hand up to my head and my fingers found a new hole. I ran downstairs screaming. By the time I got to the kitchen where Mom was the blood was dripping down my neck. 

Mom got a cold washcloth and Dad got the car ready to take me to the hospital for my stitches. It turned out Dave had been playing with a flashlight the night before. Since he wasn’t supposed to play with flashlights anymore he had hidden it in his pillow. When I returned from the hospital Dave showed me the dent I put in the flashlight. That got me to laugh. I could tell he felt bad for what had happened. 

Dave and I were the only ones in our family that stayed together after our parents died, both falling under Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack’s care. This makes Dave the only person I have grown up with my entire life. With my parents, Dave and I would fight like brothers, consistently. Lee and I got along despite being a year and a half apart, two school grades. We really didn’t fight regularly. Maybe Dave and I fought because we were too close in age.

But after our parents died, the fight in Dave and I just kind of – went. We were scared little boys, at 11 and 12 years old. In light of our circumstance, we had landed with Comanecian grace but at the time I thought we were crumpled spirits. It would take me years to understand the blessing and good fortune we had actually received.

My rejection of our good fortune was probably best illustrated in one of our first rituals when we moved in with the Beckmans. As we would go to bed Aunt Joyce would tug John and Jim in. We would hear their ‘good nights’ and their laughter through our wall.

Our door would open and Aunt Joyce would ask, “Are you ready for bed?”

Aunt Joyce would go to Dave’s bed first and tickle him followed by a good night kiss. When my turn came I would pull the sheets over my head so she couldn’t kiss me but she would still be able to tickle me which I would still laugh and giggle. It would become a game to us – her attempts to kiss me good night. 

It wouldn’t take more than a high school psychology student to figure out I was resisting her as a replacement for my Mom. Dave on the other hand fully appreciated her intervention. I think this is where  Dave and I diverged our relationship with the Beckmans. While John and I got along, for the most part, the next couple of years were classic junior high adjustments for both of us. We were at new schools with unique situations. And despite being the same age, we did not go to the same junior high school. John was getting some of his learning disabilities addressed. I was facing a new school without Hope and Lee to break new ground for me. 

Dave, on the other hand, paired up with Jim who was an ‘old hand’ at Woodland Elementary. He introduced Dave to his friends, and probably most importantly, he explained why his cousin was now living with him. Jim and Dave did a lot more hanging out together and with their friends. John and I hung out together as well but we didn’t share friends and school. 

There was one story Aunt Joyce shared with me many years later. Woodland School had parents’ night so they gathered at the school one evening to get updates from Dave and Jim’s teacher. As typical on a parents’ night, the teacher had arranged the room to show off what her students had been working on the past few months.

One of the works were short essays or stories by each student on what they had done over the summer. Like all the other parents Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack searched for Dave and Jim’s essay. When they found Dave’s there were taken aback that he had written about his mom dying and moving in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack. Aunt Joyce thought Dave’s essay shared too much and spoke to the teacher on why she would display this. The teacher assured Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack that the entire class agreed that Dave’s essay should be displayed. So on the wall, it remained.

I did not share such public discussions about the death of my parents. The closest I would come would be reading a short story in my high school creative writing class about an orphaned kid moving in with an old man. It was our first assignment. I had written it assuming only the teacher would read it or maybe a couple of other students in my class. I was embarrassed about being called on to read my story aloud to the class. And I am pretty sure it was obvious to all in the room who the little boy in the story was.

As we got into high school, I found it interesting that Dave would not refer to Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack as his aunt and uncle to his friends. He would refer to them as ‘his folks’ thus avoiding the discussion with the person on why he was not living with his parents. I, on the other hand, would just refer to them and ‘my aunt and uncle’. On occasion, the person I was telling this to would ask, “Where are your parents?” I would simply tell them “they died”. Sometimes that was enough. Sometimes they would continue to ask, “How did they die?” My response would typically go something like “Well, my parents were going through a divorce and my Dad didn’t like it so he shot my Mom and then he shot himself.”

This was typically received with dropped jaws, apologies and various other sympathetic gestures. After a while, I got used these reactions. Sometimes I would get emotional despite my efforts to hold it in. Sometimes I was more detached or more ‘as-matter-of-fact’. Depending on the situation, sometimes I would tell them the ‘whole story’. Many times I would include my conclusion that a person in an abusive situation was worse off than what I had gone through. My situation, as bad as it was, would never get worse. But the abused soul was always being pounded down like a hammer on a nail. Or I would go into everyone’s worst moment is their own. For some people, their worse moment is a scratch on their Cadillac. We all have our worse moments but it isn’t a contest. It would be a teachable moment in empathy.

While I would shun people’s sympathy, Dave would embrace it. The first summer we moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack we got to spend a week in Lutherdale. Lutherdale is a Bible Camp in Elkhorn Wisconsin where we would spend a week enjoying the lake and hanging out with each other. They were peaceful weeks just Mom and us kids. So it strange being there without Hope, Lee and Dawn. It was also the first time John and Jim were away from their parents. It didn’t really go too well for them.

Camp counselors were the twenty-somethings, or younger, there to watch the younger kids that showed up for camp. Since we were there during Family Week they were more available that week. I believe Dave and I were their hard-luck case having lost our parents that winter. Dave connected with one particular counselor, I believe his name was John. He was part of a singing group and Dave’s inspiration to get into singing. He still has their album which he signed. I have to admit, I was impressed to know someone who had made an actual record. It is their version of ‘Pass It On’ that I remember so well from Lutherdale.

This friendship, while it may have ended when we left camp that week, stayed with Dave for the rest of his life. In junior high, he joined choir, which continued into high school. John,  Jim or I did not appreciate being dragged back to school to see all his performances but we all had to support Dave in his singing career – according to Aunt Joyce.  She even got him voice lessons as well. His singing career continued at Valparaiso. And while singing in school wasn’t exactly a ‘career’, he did sing solos in our church choir and sang at weddings and funerals and some of those were paid gigs. 

In Deerfield High School all the halls are designated with a letter. The music department was given ‘M’ for their short hallway. Off the ‘M’ hall, there were a couple of rooms they had for their band and choir classes, a few practice rooms, and the music teacher’s office. So the slang term that developed for people in choir or band was ‘M-hallers’. Its implied meaning ranged anywhere from ‘being gay’ to ‘being a dork’. It was a way to put someone down that didn’t conform to your high school values. So Dave was an ‘M-haller’. The problem is when the group embraces a derogatory term, that term loses its power – like ‘Cheese Head’. (Full disclosure: in high school I did take a music class, Beginning Guitar. So I too, was an ‘M-haller’ at one time.)

Dave never really embrace being an ‘M-haller’. I had always hoped he would find some friends to sing in a band with. We sang together often enough with our own music in our bedroom so I knew he could sing. But when he sang solo’s I always thought he sounded deeper and nasally. Normally when we sang in our bedroom we sang at least an octave or two higher. I always preferred the higher parts and loved the high pitched singers like Steve Perry, Geddy Lee and Jon Anderson. But Dave never joined a band so I would have to keep my friends from teasing him too much. While I never preferred his ‘professional’ singing voice but he does have a gift and continues to sing today.

Dave’s first job was inherited from me, but after a couple of other jobs, he ended up working at his friend Steve Petersen’s dad’s company – R-Columbia in Highland Park. Dave, Steve, Ted Horist and a couple of other friends would assemble headphones that Steve’s dad would sell across the country. Dave would proudly point out that their headphones were used by the NFL coaches on the sidelines back then.

One day while Dave and his friends worked at R-Columbia they notice a lot of extra activity across the street at the Porsche dealer. Turns out it was a film crew who was working on the ‘Risky Business’ movie. You can see R-Columbia at the end of this clip after the scene when they open the Porsche’s door. It is the building on the left through the window as Tom Cruise and his friends are sitting in the chairs against the window. One of Dave’s ‘Brushes with Greatness’.

All four of us boys had our own group of friends and by high school, we all had pretty different circles of friends. On rare occasions, we would cross each other’s path. For example, one evening Greg, Jeff and I decided we were going to paint the fence by Deerfield High School. This wasn’t a school project, we weren’t painting to cover up the existing graffiti, we were going to add our names to it. Today you would call it ‘tagging’. The gray privacy fence was famously scrawled with graffiti. Thinking back its amazing that the Village of Deerfield let the graffiti stay as long as they did. 

Greg, Jeff and I had the brilliant idea that spray paint would take too long so we were going to use a pump canister we had ‘acquired’ from Franks to apply our paint faster. So under the shadow of darkness one evening, we parked our car at the corner of Chestnut and Telegraph. It’s actually more of a bend than a corner. From there we only had to cut through a shrubbish lot, cross over the railroad tracks and go a block north to where to graffiti was closer to the high school to be noticed. 

With our paint-filled pump spray ready, we made our way as far north as we could before crossing railroad track and Waukegan road to the fence. Greg insisted on painting the fence while Jeff and I played lookout. He pumped the canister and started painting his masterpiece. 

“It’s not working!” he hissed. 

I tried to grab the canister of paint but Greg insisted he could get it to work. Cars were passing us on Waukegan Road as the three of us tried to figure out why the paint was not coming from the nozzle. After a few more feudal pumps to try to build up enough pressure we had to concede failure. Luckily Jeff was still playing lookout and then he yelled.

“Cops!”

Sure enough, brakes lights from Deerfield’s Finest as they were passing us and our fence canvas. Lucky for us there was a break in the evening traffic and we were able to sprint across the road to the railroad tracks. We did not see anyone get out of the cop car when we dared a glance having made to the other side of Waukegan Road. By the time we got to the top hill onto the railroad tracks, the cop car had to continued North. Apparently satisfied with scaring us off instead of chasing us down. 

We went down the other side of the hill so we couldn’t be seen from the road. Our nervous laughter betraying our actual fear. Soon we fell back into our high school bravado and fantasies of what we could have done. We took turns blaming Greg, the paint and the canister. Greg was having none of that. The reality was we were stupid high school kids thinking we could pour paint into sprayer made to spray water and expecting it to work. Eventually, we found our way on the trail through the bushes to get back back to our car. As we got closer we heard voices. The bravado was again lost. 

We could barely make out the shadowy forms that were first betrayed by their muffled dialogue. A light, or rather a flame appeared amongst the figures. Suddenly I realized who it was – Dave and his friends. He had been talking about his friends burning their term papers. And his friend Ted lived just a couple blocks from there. 

“It’s Dave!” I whispered to Greg and Jeff. 

All fear gone, Greg yelled out in his father’s voice, “What are you kids doing!?”

The shadows stood up and took off running south on Telegraph towards Ted’s house. Jeff growled, I yelled as we came out from our own shadows to chase them but they were already gone. As we made our way back to our car I realized scaring my brother and his friends made up a little for our failures as graffiti artists. 

While Dave and I got along, outside of music, we had pretty different interests. While John and I paired up on plants and fishing, Dave and Jim paired on mechanical things. With the lake behind us, a few people would snowmobile there in the winter when it got cold enough. Jim got a snowmobile first and eventually so did Dave, by borrowing $500 from me (family lore still questions whether that loan was never actually paid back). Dave and Jim would also tinker with their car engines and do bodywork on their cars. Dave and Jim would rather get their hands oily than dirty from the garden or potting soil like John and I. 

Without our parents, the task of teaching us to drive fell to Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack. From when we first moved in Uncle Jack would let John or Jim, and eventually, Dave and I seat next to him and steer the car around ‘The Circle’. The block that made up our street – Chris Court, Carol Lane, Hickory Knoll Road and Montgomery Drive was referred to as ‘The Circle’. Normally we would have called ‘going around the block’ but that would imply there were multiple blocks and there wasn’t in this case. So ‘The Circle’ is where we would steer the car while Uncle Jack worked the pedals. We would walk Mimi, the Beckman’s miniature poodle and eventually Daquari, Maxine and Luke. When we were trying to be healthy Aunt Joyce would have us jog around The Circle. Steering the car around The Circle would be a privilege and would most likely occur on Sunday after church or Saturday if we were all together running errands.

I was always more comfortable with Aunt Joyce when I was learning to drive. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I had driven with Uncle Jack. He could be a harsh critic. And I was not a confident driver. The worse case was driving with my driving instructor and ‘losing it’ on a left turn onto Deerfield Road from Sanders Road forcing the instructor to use his ‘second brake’. Outside of that and ever since, I’ve loved driving – especially when I could bring my music with.

I had taken my driver’s ed course earlier than most of my peers since I was one of the oldest in my class – second semester my sophomore year. It was a weird time in Illinois Driver’s Ed historically. We were taught to brake with our left foot. I know! crazy right? The logic at the time was then drivers would be used to using their left foot when driving. For those of you who don’t drive stick, you use your left foot to work the clutch. Currently, only 2% of cars sold have a manual transmission in the US. Only 18% of drivers know how to drive stick. ‘Left Foot Braking‘, as its called, is still around as a ‘safety concept’ but it only survived few years in Illinois Driver’s Ed. 

When I finally got my ‘blue slip’ (for you kids reading this, a blue slip is your certificate of completion so you get your driver’s license) none of my friends could drive. Without any pressure to drive, I put off getting my license. First, it was because the lines were too long. I remember being in Deerbrook Mall where the DMV was when the ‘blue slips’ had been sent out, there was a line from the DMZ office to the General Cinema on the opposite side. But eventually, I would go passing on my first attempt. I was definitely more comfortable driving by myself. 

Now that I had a license, the next step was to get a car. One of the many lessons Uncle Jack taught us was saving. “Deposit your whole check into your account and only keep out what you need,” he would say. The many trips to Deerfield Savings Saturday morning I remember Uncle Jack hovering over me as I filled out my deposit slip and critical of much my ‘Less Cash’ was. “Do you need that much?” he would ask. I’ll admit I didn’t save as much without his accompaniment. But his tutelage had paid off. By the time I got my driver’s license. I had saved two thousand dollars. 

My favorite car has always been a Ford Mustang. Keep in mind I’m not into cars. But a ’64 Mustang was always my ideal car. A guy on Wilmot Road very close to us was selling a black and white Mustang Cobra II. It had a black stripe down the middle, black quarter window louvers, stick, hatchback. It was beautiful. And it was two thousand dollars. 

“Absolutely not,” Uncle Jack said.

I was crushed. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t buy the car with MY money? But Uncle Jack had spoken and I was afraid of him enough that I would not defy him. Later that summer we had a rare Zilligen get together and my cousin Mike was selling an orange ’72 Mustang Mach 1. When I asked him how much it was he said:

“I would never sell it to you. You’d kill yourself.”

It seemed like I would never get a car. I guess I was going to have to borrow Aunt Joyce’s Polara until I moved out. Luckily this was not to be the case. So this is how we went from being a one-car family to six cars by the beginning of the ’80’s we filled the Beckman driveway.

So shortly after Dave and I moved in, Uncle Jack, through his work connections with a scrapyard in Waukegan, purchased a car for Aunt Joyce – a Dodge Polara. For some reason, we always called in a  ‘Polaris’. Up until a few years ago, Dave pointed out we’ve been mispronouncing the car’s name – for 30 years. The Dodge Polara was purple – some would argue plum. Prince would say it was not purple. It was the car John and I started driving in the evening and on the weekends when we first got our licenses.

I was the first of us to work a ‘regular’ part-time job – at the Deerfield Courts. Not to be outdone, John got a job at County Diary in Wheeling. He was making $2.50 to my $1.95. Unfortunately, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack would have to take John to and from his job while I would take the bus after school and get picked up or ride my bike. When I started working at Franks I could drive and Aunt Joyce or Uncle Jack would sometimes drop off the purple beast. I assumed they did the same for John. 

John was the first to get his own car, a ’76 Monte Carlo – a classic long hood coupe. It was a beautiful car. My first car was once again acquired through Uncle Jack’s connections from the scrap yard. They had received a ’72 Ford Galaxy – a four-door ‘boat’ that needed transmission work. By paying for the transmission bill, the car was mine. Gone were my days of taking the bus to school or my bike to work. As Dave and Jim got their licenses, Jim purchased a Vega from the Parsons down the street. Dave basically took over the purple beast and Aunt Joyce purchased a Buick LeSabre from our cousin Alan. 

Each family member now had a car. This meant we would have to coordinate our schedules to arrange the cars in the correct order. There would be quite a few evenings Uncle Jack would assign who was to go where in the driveway so our mornings – and his – went smoothly. Uncle Jack would typically be at the end of the drive since he left first. One of us boys would follow with one lucky driver to be in the garage with Aunt Joyce since she typically left after us. 

Once we had our assignments, those who were not in order, which was most of us, would pirouette out of the driveway on to the road or across the street into the Todd’s driveway returning to the driveway in our assigned positions. This way things worked smoothly in the morning – for Uncle Jack.  

We all enjoyed the new freedom our cars brought us. During my freshman year, I took an intro to guitar class. And through this, I eventually got an electric guitar. Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack encouraged my purchase of a solid body ash Ibanez electric guitar. It was from a music store in Wauconda that had taken over an old bank. Their gimmick was keeping all their expensive guitars in the old safe in the basement. With the purchase of the guitar and amp entitled me to 10 free guitar lessons. 

Over the next two years, I would continue to take guitar lessons there. And when I got my own car I drove myself to Wauconda. In my mind, I was becoming a rock star in our basement but the reality was my guitar lessons had devolved from learning to playing guitar to learning out to play specific songs. 

One trip to my guitar lesson my friend Steve Olson accompanied me to check out the music store while I took my lesson. On the way, I had found my normal route was under construction so it forced a detour on a road I wasn’t familiar with. After the lesson, I took what I thought was the detour on the way back. Unfortunately, it was a gravel road and the first right turn I took too fast and started fishtailing and ended up hitting a tree in a ditch. 

Steve and I were ok. I was better than Steve whose head had hit frame between the windshield and car door window. We had to walk to a nearby house to call home. Uncle Jack came out to pick Steve and I up. I watched as my Ford Galaxy was towed off, eventually, to the junkyard from which it came. My freedom had been neutered to being a passenger dependant on friends and family to get where I wanted to go or to borrow someone else’s car. I would be without a car for the next 4 years.

Dave’s accident was of his own making. Actually, it was not an accident like my poor Galaxy, Dave’s accident was one of age and youth. One day leaving DHS, while he was driving his Purple Polara, he punched the accelerator on Waukegan road and found the limits of the Polara’s crankshaft. Like Sean Penn in Fast Times in Rosemount High, Dave thought he could rebuild the Polara’s engine. After a month of the Polera’s engine parts occupying the garage, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack brought in an expert – our cousin Danny Brumm. He with Jim and Dave was finally able to get the Polarea back together again. While it did run I don’t think it was ever the same but Dave was able to sell it and picked up John’s old Monte Carlo. 

Thinking back to those high school days, Dave, Jim, John and I had found much of ourselves through our cars. Well, not through our cars, but from the freedom our cars provided. While our birthdays were all within 15 months of each other, we all had our own paths. Jim worked various jobs – Ace Hardware, True Value, McDonald’s and eventually ended up at Jewel, the coveted employer in Deerfield due to its higher pay. John eventually left Country Dairy when his emergency dog group and volunteer time at Deerfield Animal Hospital turned into his dream job at the Deerfield Animal Hospital. I had gotten my ‘dream job’ at Frank’s Nursery and Craft. As I mentioned earlier, Dave ended up working with his friends at R-Columbia electronics. 

In the middle of high school, our lives consisted of school, work and hanging out. Hanging out consisted of one of your friends or more and a place. Hanging out at the lowest level involved someone’s home. You could start there but you would have to, eventually, ‘go somewhere’ because your home wasn’t ‘anyway’. So I could ‘hang out’ at Greg’s house. Or we could hang out at Jeff’s work. Or hang out at the mall. But our favorite hangout was the arcade.

I remember seeing Space Invaders for the first time. It was at Strike ‘n’ Spare bowling alley where Aunt Joyce and Grandma bowled. In junior high these ‘video games’ sat next to the two or three pinball machines – which was next to the jukebox. By the time we got to high school, video games were showing up in restaurants and movie theaters. On a visit to Lakehurst Mall, we found Aladdin’s Castle had open up on the second floor near a magic shop we used to frequent. Aladdin’s Castle seemed almost like a place where parents could drop their kids off while they shop – which they did. But it was too clean, bright, convenient to hang out with your friends. And Lakehurst Mall was 25 minutes away. We needed something closer, something cooler. Then Peacock showed up. 

Peacock ice cream opened up in 1979 on Skokie Boulevard down the road from the Eden theaters. They had 2 coolers of ice cream but the owner’s real genius was lining the outside wall with arcade games. It seemed each time we went there were more games. Soon one of the ice cream coolers was gone, then the other. The games were put back to back and there was a maze through all the machines. One night a new room appeared. Parking was tough. There would be people hanging around outside. The inside was dark and lite with the screen glow and neon. There were a couple of change machines. It could be the middle of January and it would still be warm in there.

Being in high school at the time I was, as the commercial would say, nose-blind to the odors. All the prepubescent sweat must have made that place reek but I never noticed. Peacocks became our ‘hangout’ until another arcade opened in Wheeling (who’s name was lost to the ages).  Eventually, the games were brought to our homes by Atari, or in our case Mattel’s Intellivision. But the games at the arcades were only half the reason we hung out there. It was our clubhouse, or at least where we would start or end our evenings. 

But in all honesty, I kinda lost track of my family when I was in high school. My friends were becoming more important to me. I avoided Dave, Jim and John in high school, I tolerated Dave a little more than John and Jim but I was trying to find my own way. They knew my vulnerabilities. I would be ’embarrassed’ when my friends would come by and they would have to interact with Dave, Jim or John – or, heaven forbid, Aunt Joyce or Uncle Jack. Part of it was your typical teenager stuff – your parents are embarrassing. 

Once my friends starting feeling comfortable with my family, it would not take much for them to unleash their biting sarcasm on Dave, Jim or John. There is a classic lyric by Joe Jackson – “Don’t call me a faggot unless you are a friend.” I’ve always loved the sentiment behind Joe’s lyric. Back in those days, it was nothing to call each gay or fags. But once you went outside of our circles the words became unacceptable. Like the word ‘nigger’ in the black culture – “Don’t call me a faggot unless you are a friend.”

My friends would occasionally go ‘outside of our circle’ with Dave, Jim and John. I would have to call them out and rein them in but that was not always possible. The bottom line was sometimes my friends could be jerks, and I was not always the best at calling them out for being jerks. But I was always more protective of Dave. 

Not that John and Jim didn’t deserve protection, but Dave was special. He was my true brother. And while time would melt that definition between all four of us it would both erode and yet enhance that definition between Lee and me. But there has always been a special bond between me and Dave.

We are the only two who remained together after our parents died. Growing up, Dave didn’t always make the best choices, like jumping out of the second-story windows or riding a bike that was way too big for him. After we moved in with the Beckmans, Dave didn’t do as many ‘dumb’ things. But everything moved slower. I think it was the pain we carried unspoken between ourselves that slowed us down. But as we got used to the weight we realized we were growing up. Life was returning to both of us. Our late-night conversations were happening less. Partially because we were out with our friends or working, partially because we were growing apart. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, we were growing up. We weren’t as scared as we had been before and we were confiding in our friends more. 

As the years when by, Tom Petty was right I would eventually have my first girlfriend and I would watch her walk across the room or hall to me. And there would be college, and more friends and more girlfriends. Eventually, there would be a wife and children. But as the years would roll by there would always be Dave. And there was only Dave. The only person I could say I grew up my entire life with. That may not seem like much to some people but over time I’ve realized how special our relationship is – because of what we went through. Maybe two siblings who have moved around a few times would understand this. The loss of our relationships with Hope, Lee and Dawn haunted both of us. As bad as things had been for all of us, somehow Dave and I were given each other. Having each other gave a hidden strength we didn’t acknowledge or understand ourselves. And as joyful as our sibling reunions would be, the goodbyes would again renew our loss. And for Dave and I, the goodbyes would be painted with a weird coat of guilt. Why were we so lucky?

I’m sure it was because Dave and I are only a year and 25 days apart in age. Uncle Jack once told me he and Aunt Joyce were trying to get all three of us boys but the Brumm family thought that would be too much of a burden for them. As grateful as I to be placed with Dave, I believe the real blessing was being placed with the Beckmans. And while I wasn’t aware of my good fortune growing up, I look back and see many times I squandered this. This unappreciative child may be the oldest clique. I am but one of the millions who under-appreciate what life has given them: a loving family, committed siblings and loving parents. Too many people take these blessings for granted. Mine are just more obvious due to my circumstances.

Early into marriage Desi and I had an apartment in Wheeling. When Cindy and Dave got married, they moved into a townhouse in Palatine. But we didn’t hang out together. I was hanging out with my friends, and the bars, and working. When they bought a house somewhere else Palatine, we bought a house in Lindenhurst way up north. A year or so after that Cindy and Dave also bought a house in Lindenhurst, about a mile away. 

Now we would drop by each other’s houses on the weekend. There were many days we would ride together to work. In the early ’90s our offices were about a half-mile apart. I changed jobs and that ended that. But 6 months later so did Dave. Once again, our work and homes were a mile apart from each other. Our occasional morning commuters could continue. We would regularly call each other with ‘traffic alerts’ and then our conversations would continue onto various issues we were dealing with our new families. We would occasionally walk through our business problems too. 

I remember one particular commuter home that started with me alerting Dave to a traffic problem on 83 and he should avoid it. Having caught him on 53 he changed his route home as duly warned. Our conversation turned to issues he was dealing with at work. And almost to prove his point, he said he had to take an incoming call – it was work. 

I remember hanging up and wondering how much better taking our ‘Midlothian’ route would be since I was stuck in the parking lot that used to be Route 83. Thinking about Dave’s problem I realized he was no longer the stupid kid that would ride bikes that were too big for him, or jumped out of second-story windows. I was proud of the fact that he was a husband, a father and a respected employee. I know he’s a better son to Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack than I am. 

I was brought back from my mind wandering by a Tom Petty song on the radio. I was reminded of that evening waiting for Dave outside of Deerfield Courts when Tom was singing ‘Here Comes My Girl’ but I was lamenting at what a loser I was because it wasn’t my girl coming through the doors but my stupid brother. But now when I play that memory of Dave coming through the doors of Deerfields Courts he’s not my stupid brother, he is the only soul that knows me and my entire story. I feel so lucky to have him as a brother and a friend. We have gone through a lot together – more than most people, but I believe we turned out OK.

Girls are overrated anyway   😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

Songs of My Life: Renegade & Miracles

Renegade by Styx


Miracles by Jefferson Starship
songsofmylifeIt was another Sunday after church running errands at Deerbrook Mall. It was just after Christmas, in fact – it was after my birthday. While Aunt Joyce and Uncle walked around Venture, Dave, Jim, John and I would go into the mall. My favorite places in the mall were Musicland and Waldenbooks. But this particular afternoon I was camped out at Musicland.

John and I were now in high school and I was beginning to get serious about music. While we were only a freshman, between my brother Dave and my cousins, we had collected a fair amount of 45’s. Last year we had started getting Albums and 8-tracks. For our birthdays, my brother Lee had given me the ‘blue’ Beatles Greatest Hits and Dave the ‘red’ Beatles Greatest Hits. By now between Dave and I, had 10 or 11 albums and almost a hundred 45’s.

My cousin Keith would eventually give me Wild Cherry’s album, the one with “Play That Funky Music.” He gave John Ted Nugent’s ‘Free For All’. I always thought he had given us the wrong albums. John was much more into Disco than I was. I would eventually go on to join Steve Dahl’s Insane Coho Lips Anti-Disco group. But Keith probably remembered John had Kiss albums – the ‘Originals, “Destroyer” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Over” – which I had borrowed from him for a couple of weeks. Until we got into a fight and he demanded I returned his albums. I didn’t want them anyways. There were a bunch of losers, in their make-up and cool larger-than-life stage outfits. Yea, who needed Kiss. I had just gone back to my Beach Boys – though I was beginning to think maybe the Beach Boys weren’t as cool as I thought they were.

My musical tastes were beginning to open up. Last Christmas Lee had gotten me Blue Oyster Cult’s Specter album. They created the interest to get into Kiss in the first place. John had actually gone on a date – with a girl – to a Kiss concert. I was drawing their faces in junior high. The fight between John and I killed my interest in Kiss, they were stupid anyways. When Blue Oyster Cult released ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ that summer, Kiss was just a kid’s band. Ignore the fact that they were topping the charts and doing TV specials. The fact remained, my musical tastes were expanding. 

While that particular day we were still doing our after-church trips to Deerbrook Mall, we were not doing them as frequently. Our family routines were beginning to change. For example, one big change was that Turnstyle had gone out of business and a new department store named Venture had moved in. We were also allowed to roam the mall for the next hour has long as we met Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack back at checkouts at the prescribed time. 

As we entered the mall from Venture, Musicland was our first stop. While all of us entered pass the red-bricked walls of the store, I was always a sucker for the featured albums on the endcaps of the record bins. Dave, Jim and John quickly looked at those then moved further into the store to look at the musical instruments and stereo equipment. After reviewing the end caps for sale items I would begin at the beginning of the alphabet begin looking at the various albums in the record bin. I would typically start by flipping through all The Beach Boys albums – they sure had a lot of albums.

However, that day was a little different. It was mid-January and I had gotten clearance from The Tower – Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack – to spend money on an album. The money had come by way of birthday cards – most likely Grandma, Grandma Zilligen and Aunt Ida. So I wasn’t just looking – I was purchasing. I could almost smell the smoke from the twenty dollars in my wallet. There were so many bands I knew nothing about. There were so many albums I knew nothing about. I was just beginning to learn how much music there was to discover. The scent of ash, soot and burnt polyester was strong. 

In the late ’70s, the Disco Rage was beginning to shows signs of dissent (or the Disco Inferno was beginning to cool). There was also the release of Grease – spurred on by America’s infatuation with ‘Happy Days’, the old days, the 50’s. So there was this weird conflict of new, modern dance music with oldies from when rock n roll started. The death of Elvis Presley in ’77 also didn’t hurt. So when Elvis died, my family embraced his music. So the whole family was into the Elvis Greatest Hit 8 track that Uncle Jack had bought for the station wagon. I found his music old and boring. On the other side, I was not into new dance disco sound. But to be perfectly honest, I merely feigned my opposition to Elvis’ music. This fulfilled my need to be a rebellious teenager. 

This feeling would best be captured in Bruce Springsteen’s lyric from ‘Growin’ Up’: “when they said, Sit down, I stood up”. So I stood up. I would not be listening to Elvis just because the King had died. I would not join others under the Disco ball. I was not going along with what everyone else was doing. When Lee gave me Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Spectre’ album I found a much edgier sound. I also enjoyed Uncle Jack’s grimace or Aunt Joyce’s crossed eyebrows when I played the album. I always thought their tolerance for my volume was lower when I was playing ‘Spectres’ than the others’ most acceptable Elvis or pop songs. It was the same reaction John got for his Kiss albums. Of course, I could play my Beach Boys without the Volume Police being on patrol. 

At this point, I had decided not to get any more 8 track tapes. Lee had talked about a new format – the cassette tape – that was better than 8 tracks. It was like a mini reel-to-reel. It’s not that cassette tapes were new – I remember Mom had one we could record on. In fact, I would set up a cassette recorder in our bedroom New Year’s Eve to record the WLS Top 100 Songs of the year. I would warn everyone not to enter the room because I did not want them to disturb the sensitive recording studio I had set up. My ‘studio’ consisted of flipping my AM radio on top of the cassette recorder. Ah, those cherished recordings that despite spending hours to record them, I never actually listened to them. 

Cassettes had moved into prerecord music and entered the automobile market. This spelled the end of the 8 track tape. But adding a cassette player/recorder to our home system was not an option for Dave and I. The stereo Grandma had gotten us had a builtin 8 track player. John and Jim’s stereo had a separate 8 track player so they could get a cassette player to attach to their stereo. David and I were stuck on 8 tracks until we got a new stereo. So I was switching to vinyl. 

That Sunday morning, as I wandered around Musicland, I struggled with trying to figure out what I wanted. I had already collected a number of Beach Boys tapes so I wasn’t really interested in another one of their albums. I wanted something new like Blue Oyster Cult. I was still learning about music and who sang what songs. Dave had gotten Fleetwood Mac ‘Rumor’ album on 8 track. It was a great album. I remember first hearing parts of the album in high school when we had gym class and the pom-pom squad was practicing a routine to ‘Don’t Stop’. And when they were done practicing they let the album continue through to ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Songbird’. 

But while I liked Fleetwood Mac, Dave had ‘Rumors’, it wouldn’t make sense for me to buy a Fleetwood Mac album – Dave had already ‘claimed’ that band. I liked Steve Miller but I wasn’t sure about the other songs. I continued flipping through the albums but I was beginning to feel I was running out of time. Dave, Jim and John had long continued on to other stores. I was reviewing the albums Musicland had chosen to market to casual mall patrons for the 3rd or 4th time.

“Hey Trike,” Dave called from the mall. “We’ve got to meet Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack in Venture.”

The final moments were now at hand. A decision was needed. I picked up Styx’s Pieces of Eight, which was on my ‘For Sure’ list. Once again I was drawn to the shiny gold cover of the Jefferson Starship ‘Gold’ album. You could actually feel the raised letter of the album. With “Pieces of Eight” already in my hands, it was easy for the kid working at the store to talk me into the shiny new album with the raised lettering.

“That’s their greatest hits, ” he said.

Sold! I just needed an excuse. Time was short and my window was closing. I’m pretty sure a blister forming on my rear right cheek through my wallet. I grabbed the album from the holder and brought both up to the store counter. While I knew the total was going to be a little over $12 dollars, I still continued to misjudge how much the tax would be.

Shoving the change in my pocket, I grabbed my bagged albums and raced from the store into the mall which was just outside of Venture. Passing the checkout counters set up for the Venture partons that were going into the mall, ignoring any potential glances that may have been given on my potential risk of shoplifting with an open Musicland bag.

By the time I made it to the regular checkout counters, John, Jim and Dave were neatly stacked behind Aunt Joyce while Uncle Jack did not look happy.

“Did you forget your watch?” he sarcastically asked as he countered out his bills to the cashier for Aunt Joyce’s purchases.

“No…,” I started.

But Aunt Joyce asked if we were ready with the bagged purchases into the shopping cart thus saving me from further questions. We all escorted Aunt Joyce to the station wagon. We piled into the station wagon, John and I opting for the back seat.

That is the rear-facing back seat of the station wagon. This was well before any seat belt laws. While the station wagon had seat belts they were all neatly tucked away and unreachable. We never feared for our lives. John was complaining that he (and I) were too big to be sitting in the back seat. The current process was ‘taking turns’. Those who sat in the ‘way back’, as the rear-facing seat was referred to, on the way there (where ever we were going) would get to sit in the regular back seats on the way back. But this wasn’t fair for those two stop trips – such as our mall trips after church. John was voicing his displeasure in this system.

When we got home, we would get out of our Sunday clothes and get into our ‘play clothes’ which consisted of jeans and a t-shirt. Sunday dinner was typically our bigger meal, like supper. Ever since Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack had the porch enclosed and insulated we had a kitchen table added so we could all sit around the table together. The fact was John was right, we were getting too big. As ‘us boys’ were continued to grow and we could no longer fit two boys to a bench around the old kitchen table.

This particular meal was longer then I wanted. As soon as appropriate I asked to be excused. This was the rule at our meals. We would say grace, have our meal and  we would need to ask if we could ‘be excused’ from the table. This would give Aunt Joyce or Uncle Jack a chance to check our plates for food that could be sent to the African Children. All through the entire meal, I couldn’t wait to get to my bedroom so I could listen to my new purchases. With permission granted from Uncle Jack, I brought my dishes to the sink and stole away to my bedroom.

Both albums were gatefold which meant after the plastic was removed the album would open to reveal additional album artwork. One side would contain the album, the other side would typically be glued shut. The Styx album revealed the band members bust as Easter Island heads. I pulled the album out and saw the band included the lyrics on the liner sleeve. Including the lyrics would become an important feature to me. I removed our stereo’s dust cover and set up my first listen to side one of Styx’s ‘Pieces of Eight’. Dropping the tonearm on the groove of side one I stretched out on my bed with the inner sleeve in hand.

Looking over the sleeve, an announcer began to ask for my attention. It was Dennis DeYoung beginning “Great White Hope”. I followed all the lyrics to “I’m Ok”. I knew “Sing for the Day”, which I only thought was only OK. Waiting for “The Message” to finish I was eagerly anticipating “Lords of the Ring” having read “The Hobbit” and halfway through “The Fellowship of the Ring”. During “The Message” I skimmed the lyrics and saw no mention of Frodo, Gollum or any characters from Lord of the Rings. “Lords of the Ring” concluded and I swing my legs off the bed to flip the album.

I was looking forward to “Blue Collar Man,” John already had the 45 and was another reason I wanted this album. I tipped the volume knob ever so slightly up to give our single speaker boxes as much help as possible but not draw the attention of the Volume Police. Keyboards rattled the speakers on their shelves. During the second chorus, Aunt Joyce’s head popped through the door.

“Trike!” she yelled above Dennis DeYoung’s keyboard, “Turn it down!”

I immediately grabbed the volume and turned it noticeably lower. I swore that I would always be told to lower my music before John had to. But as while I was wallowing about my unjustice, I was missing Dennis explain what it was to be a blue-collar man.

I spent “Queen of Spades” going back and forth on how unfair I was being treated by Aunt Joyce and how lucky I was to be living with them. At sixteen years old – the sour grapes were winning. I eventually returned to the liner sleeve and the lyrics of “Queen of Spades.” When “Renegade” started with its acapella beginning, I was entranced. When the entire band kicked in behind Tommy Shaw’s yell I got chills. The jig was up and I that emotional high I wanted to repeat over and over. That discovery of a new song that I could connect to. But it wasn’t just the shivers down my spine. That was just part of it.

The other part was when John began knocking on my door. “Who is that?” he asked. He had heard the song on the radio. I proudly turned over the Pieces of Eight album and we stood listening to Tommy Shaw, Dennis DeYoung and the rest of the band finish the song.

“Can I borrow this?” John asked.

“When I’m finished,” I replied. Jeez, I thought, let me finish the album.

“Yea, Yea, Yea,” John replied waving off the album cover. “Yea, when you’re done.”

The album finished the finale “Pieces of Eight” and then the forgettable “Aku-Aku”. I brought the album over to John’s room. The emotional connection to ‘Renegade’ was key but having the song that connected with other people also became important. I returned to my room for my next album.

Jefferson Starship’s “Gold” did not have the same impact as “Pieces of Eight”. While the gatefold cover revealed their past albums the songs were not as exciting. Through “Miracles” I thought I remembered hearing it on the radio in the car with my parents. Or it may have been wishful thinking. The songs were polished and they were all good; not as uneven as “Pieces of Eight”. But you would expect that from a greatest hits album.

I was curious about what was on the other albums: “Dragon Fly”, “Red Octopus”, “Spitfire” (l loved the cover with the dragon) and “Earth”. I was intrigued with raised ‘punch printed’ album cover of “Gold”. I kept running my fingers over the raised letters and ridges of the front cover. The inner sleeve did not provide any lyrics, just a bland generic paper sleeve. The next 47 minutes and 38 seconds I got to know Jefferson Starship. As I listened I grew more curious about their past albums, a curiosity I would never explore. But I did become a fan which would be reinforced with their next album release “Freedom at Point Zero”.

This binge of album purchases set me up for a lifetime hobby. One that would take me to dozens of record stores in the Chicagoland area. It set me up on how I would purchase records in the future. My album collection would grow based on my quest for a song or artist that other people would eventually come to be impressed with. And like the general public, when that song or artist became too popular sometimes my interest would wane. I would also continue to be a sucker for gimmickry album covers and marketing strategies, always curious about what the music on the vinyl inside sounded like.

I would so begin to purchase multiple albums at the same time. Spending $20 on records would turn into $40 and $50 at a time bring home 4, 5 or 7 albums at a time. Eventually, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack would tell me I couldn’t spend all my money on records. So I would have to sneak my new purchases into the house. Occasionally they would notice my growing record collection and I would have to go months without my new hobby.

Collecting albums became a lifetime and a defining trait of myself. I don’t think it would be going too far to say it a defining part of who I am as a person. Music became a connecting point for me to others. My best friends, who would later be defined at Greg and Jeff, would also have strong music interests. I knew people who when they talked about me would know music was a big part of my life. Obsessive? probably but I still understood music was only one part of many that make me who I was and who I would become.

Collecting albums was a critical part of my music interest. While I would like to say that actual music was more important, both aspects actually went hand in hand. Having knowledge was key but I had a long way to go in that department. My sources would be my friends, the radio, the record stores I would visit, the occasional magazine and the library. One of my favorite sources were the music charts. While many radio stations had their own charts, the king of the charts was the Billboard. While this didn’t actually provide any musical knowledge this was how I would determine where to begin my exploration. This gave my music tastes a very pop-orientation though I was very willing to experiment. I also never had a ‘rebel’ attitude – liking something because other people didn’t like it – despite my initial aversion to Elvis and Disco. I was looking for an understanding of my life in the music l was listening to as I laid on my bed. Lyrics were very important. To me, “lyrics could save a song.” While I loved melodies and especially the hooks, simple lyrics or cool concepts with a simple melody would win me over every time.

The real problem with my new album collecting hobby was money. Us boys made money by delivering newspapers. I don’t remember the name of the newspaper, but it was a weekly newspaper that we delivered on Thursday. Initially, we could only take this job as long as we didn’t need to collect any money from the customers. However, within a few months, we were required to collect money for subscriptions. This actually turned out to be fortunatus.  As we went from house to house we found out a lot of people who didn’t want the paper we were delivering in the first place. In fact, they were very clear that we were NOT to leave any more papers on their doorsteps. We ended up dropping about 80% of our deliveries. This made our routes much easier. The newspaper, however, still dropped off the same amount of papers each week. These extra papers would build up in the garage. So every few weeks, Uncle Jack and a couple of us boys would sell the papers to a scrap yard.

These Saturday morning trips to the scrap yard began a fond routine with Uncle Jack. I had already realized Uncle Jack didn’t take the shortest routes to where he was going. He could have taken to the tollway and the whole trip would have taken 15 minutes. But that would have cost 25 cents each way. Years later I would realize he could have taken Waukegan road, the main road that took one North, to save the 25 cents but he didn’t take that route either.

Prior to those morning drives, ‘the boys’ would daisy-chain handing bundles of papers to each other filling up the back of the station wagon. There were typically so many we would have to put the back seats down to fit them all. Many times we would do this the night before and the station wagon would be backed in ready for its early departure. We would typically leave between 7 to 8 am. Being an early riser so I would almost always accompany Uncle Jack on these morning runs.

The route to the scrapyard was comfortable – peaceful, quiet. It was as close to a country drive as you could do in the Northern suburbs of Chicago. From Wilmot Road, Uncle Jack would turn left on to Duffy Lane, a quiet road with regular houses on bigger lots. We would typically not see another car that early in the morning. When Duffy would dead end, he would take a right onto Riverwoods Road.

As the ride with Uncle Jack continued the houses got more expensive and moved up in their lots. These houses looked more like our houses around the lake where we lived. When we crossed Route 22 (this is the road that took us to my brother Lee’s house in Lake Zurich) we were starting to get out of our ‘normal’ routes though we could still be going to Hawthorn, the mall in Vernon Hills. But these mornings Uncle Jack continued straight on Riverwoods Road instead of taking a left on Everett Road. From here we were on less-traveled roads. I would rarely ever take this route even when I could drive. Uncle Jack only took this route when we were dropping off the papers at the scrap yard. 

The houses now all but disappeared into their lots leaving the people that lived in them an idle curiosity. The avoided tollway appeared on our right and the early morning truck drivers would break our morning calm. The drive was calm. There wasn’t a lot of talking, just the radio. I would typically have my nose into one of my books. When Riverwoods Road steered us more eastward, we lost sight and sound of the tollway and back to our radio. Soon we would have to stop at Route 60 at stop signs that would eventually be changed to stoplights and continue our journey north.

Once on the other side of Route 60, the lots now just changed to plain fields with no houses at all. But the fields eventually gave way to big mowed lawns of expensive homes of fancy subdivisions. Out of nowhere, we were suddenly flying over the tollway on a bridge. A field and a church gave way to more fields. After a few company buildings and a railroad, the homes were gone for good which meant we were coming into ‘town’ and we were almost at the scrap yard. At the stop sign, we now took a right and there were only business buildings on Route 176.

It was a quarter-mile drive, just before the railroad tracks, when we arrived at Rondout Iron & Metal. It was an oily dirty junkyard. It didn’t smell like a dump, it smelled mechanical. The station wagon would waddle through the uneven gravel to the scale by the office. We would be weighed and then motioned onward to the loading dock. I and whoever was with would run to the back and open the station wagon’s back door. There would be one or two young men on the loading dock who we would toss the newspaper bundles to. I say toss but sometimes we would struggle through it seemed each trip it would get easier. Once the station wagon was unloaded we would be weighed again. Uncle Jack would then pull off the scale go inside to collect our money. The early morning sun would try but it never dried the oil and mud of the junkyard. The station wagon would waddle out of the yard as Uncle Jack navigated the potholes to take us home, the sun a little higher, the shadows a little shorter.

Uncle Jack loved to take these routes. GPS’s call them alternate routes. Google Maps call them scenic routes. In a few years, I would learn that Supertramp called them ‘The Long Way Home’. He would take them through Riverwoods when we would go to Wheeling. Or through Lake Forest when he would come back from his Saturday Morning banking trips. If we went with on his banking trip, we would marvel at all the big expensive houses he would pass as he drove through Lake Forest. Sometimes he would comment about Mr. So-So who works at Blah Blah Important Company lives on this street and I would imagine butlers and maids scurrying around large rooms and big backyard patios. Over the years I would wonder why they would need such big houses. And those displays of wealth would leave a bad taste in my mouth, or rather a canker sore. I believe it was Krokus who said ‘Eat the Rich.’

Years later through a few series of friends of friends, I would DJ a small private party in one of those houses. They did not have butlers or maids but they did have people serving their catered food. I set up in a corner of their living room – pass their life-sized cabbage patch dolls that would be seated in the hallway to the kitchen area. Above their large fireplace, they proudly displayed the largest spin-art I’d ever seen. I did not hold the same of affection or respect for the signs wealth that my friends did, particularly Ralf. While Uncle Jack would sometimes fall into the racial profile of Jews and money, he had a strong respect for money and the people who accumulated it.

When we finally arrived home from our trip to the scrapyard, or sometime it would happen after Uncle Jack did his Saturday morning banking, we would gather around the kitchen table. Ceremoniously Uncle Jack would display the total take from the scrapyard paper money, show his division by four, include our allowance and neatly lay out the bills and coins into four equal piles. We would greedily swipe the bills and coins into our hands and scurry back to our bedrooms like bridge trolls. But we would dutifully drop our pennies in our pennies jugs. I drop any nickels I had in the jar I used to collect my nickels in. I miss those young huddled morning ceremonies and I think Uncle Jack enjoyed the attention from his four little bridge trolls. But more than anything I miss those long scenic drives the Northern Chicago suburbs with Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack would continue his drives without us and would spontaneously show up at our homes to drop off food items or little things for the grandkids. I know he loved stopping by but I also suspected he loved taking the long way home. Its a trait he’s passed to me when I can afford the time.

So from delivering the wanted papers and selling the unwanted papers each of us would make about $10 a week. They say to get a job you have to have a job. This would be true in high school because soon I would be getting a new job – a regular job at Deerfield Tennis Courts where I could make that is 2 nights! So my first real job I was making $1.95 an hour.

But like any kid – my ‘wants’ were always more than my budget. And now my ‘wants’ were in the form of flat black vinyl discs. I would buy what I could get into the house, and if I got caught, I would be banned from future purchases. This meant I would just have to be very careful when I brought albums into the house the next time. While getting the albums to my bedroom could be tough, what albums I should actually purchase was getting tougher. There were so many choices. These two albums, Styx’s ‘Pieces of Eight’ and Jefferson Starship’s ‘Gold’ represented two key ways I would make my purchase decisions.

First, album covers would always be part of my decision-making process (and eventually cd’s). The embossed, raised printing of the Jefferson Starship album was a big factor in that purchase. I was subject to gimmicks and cool artwork when it came to my album purchases. So over the next months, I would purchase Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’, Molly Hatchet and Gamma’s debut albums simply because of their covers. I had no idea how the music sounded. And while I knew AC/DC did that “Highway to Hell” song, it was subtle inclusion the devil tail drawn in on the cover that sealed that purchase.

And while the cover was important, many times just the fact that it was a new release was just as important. This led to the purchase of Queen’s ‘Jazz’, Eric Clapton’s ‘Backless’, Bad Company’s ‘Desolation Angels’, Cheap Trick’s ‘At Budokan’, Jethro Tull’s ‘Stormwatch’ and The Eagle’s ‘The Long Run’.

But I was collecting – so when one of ‘my bands’ released new album, that was a required purchase. When Blue Oyster Cult (BOC) released ‘Mirrors’, that was an easy decision. Lee had given me BOC’s ‘Specters’ a few years ago, then I picked up their ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ album on an 8 track. I was collecting Blue Oyster Cult. I had decided to purchase everything on vinyl, no more 8 tracks. So when Styx’s released ‘Cornerstone’, I bought it. When Jefferson Starship released ‘Freedom Point Zero’, I bought it.

I also viewed each of ‘us boys’ as ‘collecting’ bands or artists. So I couldn’t buy someone else’s band. So Dave was buying Fleetwood Mac’s albums so I couldn’t buy ‘Rumours’ or ‘Tusk’. John was collecting ELO so I couldn’t buy ‘Discovery’, even though Dave had ‘Out of the Blue’. Jim never really collected albums, he never really got past 45’s. There was literally a whole world of music waiting to be explored – as long as I didn’t start collecting someone else’s band.

To find my music I relied on my friends, mainly Greg and Jeff, along with a neighbor friend Todd Combs. In high school, I had switched radio stations from WLS to The Loop led by morning DJ Steve Dahl. And of course my local record stores. I would soon outgrow the Deerfield Record Shop (sorry, Lenny!) and switch to Laurie’s which had opened up in the Deerfield Commons. These recommendations included Rush’s ‘Permanent Waves’, J. Geils Band’s ‘Love Stinks’, UFO’s “No Place To Run”, Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind”, Journey’s “Departure” and Genesis’ “Duke”.

Over the next several years, I would average 30 to 40 albums purchases a year. While I would continue to succumb to the allure of great artwork and would crave the latest releases, I was also learning about key albums and artists I had missed. Not too unlike the charts I was following of albums I would mentally rank the classic bands and artists. Led Zepplin, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, that list would forever be growing.

Lee had given Dave and I the two Beatles Greatest Hits albums, The Red and The Blue albums as they were known as. For my Beatles collection, this would suffice for the time being. But as I would reach out to a particular artist, I would need to decide to purchase the greatest hits or a ‘classic album’ of their catalog. For example, I had been integrated by the fact that “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin had never been released as a single. So one of my first ventures into the past was the purchase of Led Zeppelin’s “IV” (or ZoSo, Runes, Fourth as it would be called). Originally released in 1971, it seemed strange to listen to such old music like the Beach Boys but Led Zeppelin was still cool.

I knew by this age that what I told my friends I was listening to mattered. I was too socially unstable to get away with telling them I still liked the Beach Boys. Journey, AC/DC, Genesis and Rush ruled the schools now. While I still purchased Beach Boys’ albums I would not share this fact with my friends. It would be years before we all matured enough to allow each of us to go outside the imaginary peer boundaries we had set up for ourselves and each other.

I began to search and explore all the music I was exposed to. And with the demands of school, family, friends and work I had to decide how to spend my listening time. I would soon be driving so control over the radio would offer more time – when friends were not in the car. A boombox would allow me to bring my music with me but would present other problems. Until I got my own car and installed a cassette player I would have The Loop 98.7 to guide me at the end of the seventies and into the next decade.

And while my friends and family would guide my musical tastes, I would eventually outpace them in my musical knowledge and thirst for more. But for now, we were turning each other on to the music. We were discovering the music of the late seventies, though from our skewed youthful perspectives.

Disco was beginning to die, punk was being discovered, the keyboards for New Wave were only then being set up, Heavy Metal was retooling and Southern Rock had seen its high noon. We would not have the anthems of war or protests, so our view of past music was more romantic and naive. Our view of older music was based on what our radio stations and older siblings played for us. Resources were finite, time was finite and I had to choose between discovery and depth. I would make choices based on album covers and many times what the latest releases were. I devoted a lot of money to music – always to toward the media and less on the equipment or concerts. A hobby was born that would shape my next forty years.

Songs of My Life: Godzilla


songsofmylifeAh – Zilligen Christmas! After 40 years it is still a peak of the holiday season for me. The fact that we had Zilligen Christmas wasn’t so great. After our parents died I no longer lived with my brother Lee and my sisters. Dave and I were the exceptions. However, the Brumm families we were now living with made a point of getting us together as often as possible.

For four or five years in high school the Beckmans, who Dave and I lived with, would spend a week with the Steins, who Dawn lived with. This week was spent at Twin Pines Resort just outside of Ludington Michigan. The Beckmans and Steins each rented a cottage for the week which allowed Dave and me to spend a week with our sister. There were also a number of Columbus Day weekends when the Beckman and Steins would gather together again at Twin Pines to snag salmon that would run in the State Park a few miles away.

Different Brumm families would also host Fourth of July parties, or Memorial Day or Labor Day weekend parties. And we would also see each at the annual Brumm Picnic. And for each of us, there would soon be graduation and confirmation parties. Despite their best efforts, there were still some holidays we would still miss sharing together: with Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving we would take up our new families’ traditions.

Christmas was another story.  Like many families, getting together for Christmas can be difficult, particularly the families with members who are hours away. Many times this would result in a second or third Christmas when arrangements could be made to gather with the ones you love. My mom’s family had also been split up when my grandmother passed away when they were children. Their effort to gather together during Christmas became the Brumm Christmas Party. The Brumm siblings and their spouses would gather at one of their homes to celebrate Christmas. When I was younger, this would result in a gift from my godparents the next morning. My godparents just happened to be Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack, who Dave and I now lived with.

With this history in my mom’s past, it is not surprising that the same arrangements were made for us. So that first year after our parent had died, during our Christmas Break, we all gathered at Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ray’s house. It was just us Zilligens – and Aunt Bernice. I don’t remember Uncle Ray being there. While he was a custodian at Hersey High School in Wheeling, he was likely working while the kids were on break.

Each of us were dropped off by the aunt or uncle of the families we were now living with. This was so different than the year earlier. My family’s Christmas tradition was to go our Grandma and Grandpa Brumm’s house on Christmas Eve. Our Dad would feign some illness and have to stay behind. When we returned, Dad would remark how Santa had come by evidence of all the Christmas presents under the tree.

Me and my Thanksgiving cactus

In the last Christmas with my parents, they were going through a divorce. Mom had a restraining order on Dad so there was no one to put out the Christmas presents that year. So that Christmas Eve, when it was time to put the presents under the tree, Mom decided Dawn was old enough to know that there was no Santa Claus. The fact was Dawn had known for a couple of years already. She was part of the Lookout Team while Dave and I jumped into window wells of our neighbor’s house to spy their basement to see if we could see our presents we thought our parents were hiding there. Yea, Dawn knows all about Santa Claus.

So last year on Christmas Eve Mom decided that we would put our own presents under the tree. Mom wasn’t hiding the presents as she had in the past. They were simply stacked on the top shelf of the closet in her bedroom. They were all wrapped in newspaper. It was a clear sign that there wasn’t a lot of money to be spent, particularly on Christmas wrapping paper. One by one we each walked from Mom’s closet and put the presents under the tree. Then we all pretended not to care about opening them. It was hard without Dad being around but never estimate the power of shiny new things to distract a child.

Some time that late afternoon or early evening Mom gave us permission to open our presents. I honestly don’t remember much of that last Christmas with my Mom. Outside of putting the presents out and them being wrapped in newspaper. It was a quiet evening of gift-giving and sharing time with our mom and each other, now overshadowed as our last Christmas together.

So a year later we now gathered at Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ray’s house to begin a new tradition. We put the gifts we had gotten for each other around Aunt Bernice’s Christmas tree in their family room. Aunt Bernice had made us lunch and we sat her table talked about our new schools, new bedrooms and scooped about the cousins we were now living with.

Dave’s Collie Picture

Once we finished lunch, it was time for the ‘Main Event’ – the present opening. While I was very excited to get new gifts I was also excited to see how my brother and sisters would like what I had gotten them. It was an unmistakable sign of maturity I did not appreciate at the time. Lee’s gifts to us were all identical. Four wrapped squares two-foot or so by a foot and a half. We all knew they were paintings. Lee had painted each of us a picture on a cardboard canvas with a reddish wooden frame. I receive a blue Triceratops (which is currently hanging in Nate and Noah’s bedroom). Dave received a collie. Each of our paintings hung over our beds while we lived at Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack’s house. Lee painted Dawn a panda and Hope a poodle, probably after our family dog Jamie she took with when she moved in with Aunt Bev and Uncle Dick.

John’s Triceratops Picture

I remembered Hope had gotten me the Stephen King paperback ‘box set’ so I could continue reading my ghost stories. It contained his first three novels – ‘Carrie’, ‘Salem’s Lot’ and ‘The Shining’. I remember this because when her daughters were in junior high I threatened Hope that I would get my nieces Stephen King novels for Christmas. But Hope said they were too young for Stephan King. The view from adult-to-child is so different than child-to-child.

I don’t remember what Dawn had gotten me (sorry Dawn!). Dave and I did not exchange gifts since we were living together. This did not stop us from trying to convince Aunt Joyce we should still get each other presents. She was not persuaded. After all, we were not the ones paying for the gifts.

As the excitement of new gifts faded, Aunt Bernice introduced us to a new game which has become an essential part of the Zilligen Christmas tradition – ‘Take Away Bunko’. First, she had us organize our presents that we had just received from each other. She then instructed us to sit in a circle in the middle of her living room. She left then returned carrying a large plastic bag. She overturned the bag and out tumbled neatly wrapped Christmas presents. She left again this time returning with a pie tin with a pair of dice in them.

“Now,” she explained, “Dawn will start because she is the youngest. She will roll the dice. If she gets doubles, she gets to pick a present from the pile.”

Unfortunately, when Dawn rolled the dice she didn’t get doubles.

“Now pass the pan to Lee and he gets to roll. You keep rolling the dice until all the presents are gone.”

So we excitedly rolled the dice each hoping for a double. The pressure mounted as the pile of presents got smaller. Each double rolled was getting more and more important. Aunt Bernice laughed and yell with us as until the last present was taken. Dave was clearly disappointed because he didn’t any presents. I, on the other hand, had done quite well. We all looked to Aunt Bernice like dogs who were balancing treats on their noses – except for Dave who looked close to tears.

“Now,” Aunt Bernice instructions continued, “you keep rolling the dice and when you get doubles, you get to steal a present from someone else!”

Dave’s eyes lit with vindication.

Setting her bread timer on the end table next to us she said, “I’m going to set the timer for 5 minutes. So you can keep rolling until the timer goes off.”

Dave still had a chance to get some presents. What I didn’t realize was I was likely to lose my newly won presents. Now as we rolled the dice the excited yells turned to shrills of delight and groans of agony.  Dave would eventually get a present and would go onto a string of doubles accumulating a nice pile of presents. My pile, on the other hand, had grown dangerously low.

The five of us continued to roll the dice with each double drawing more and more excitement. Aunt Bernice would come back and forth from the kitchen checking on our progress. We grew desperate as the timer entered the last minute. Aunt Bernice stayed in the living room as the final minute slipped away.

“Hurry!” yelled those of us who were close to the roller. “Times almost up! Hurry!!”

“Ding!” the timer announced.

“That’s it!” Aunt Bernice announced. She inspected to make sure each of us had at least one present. “OK, you can open your presents.”

Hope and the dogs

Eagerly we ripped the wrapping paper from our Bunko spoils. Each was filled with Christmas chocolate, candy cane, lifesaver or other treats. Then Aunt Bernice pulled out a garbage bag to clean up the spent gift wrappings. While I don’t know this is how our first Take Away Bunko game actually played out, you can get a sense of how we play our traditional Christmas game.

Thus began ‘Bunko’ at Zilligen Christmas. Like taking over the hosting Zilligen Christmas, we took over contributing to Take Away Bunko. Now each family brings 20-40 gifts. With the 25-28 participates we typically have 4 to 6 pie pans of dice going around. As our families had children they would begin next to their parents until they were old enough to play on their own. To this day we remind Danielle about crying when I stole a present from her during the stealing phase when she was 4 years old.

A few new traditions have developed from Take Away Bunko. Such as the bombardment of others with wads of Christmas paper during clean up. Or the ‘Prized Present’ that is constantly stolen during the stealing stage. Typically larger presents garner this favor but sometimes it’s just a feel or a sound. Such presents can be stolen from the ‘winner’ as they make their way back to their seats. Also at the end are the grand trading sessions. It is amazing the trinkets a guy can get for a scented candle from one of the girls. Or what a kid will trade an adult for a few chocolate kisses. Guests are welcomed to participate in Take Away Bunko. There are always plenty of gifts to be won.

In the beginning, we bought gifts for each other, with the except of Dave and I. However, the reality was Dave and I were not the ones buying the presents for Hope, Lee and Dawn. While we were picking them out, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack were picking up the tab in the beginning. Eventually, we would draw names for Christmas gifts – as we do today. I would love to know who had who in those original gift drawings.

Zilligen Christmas evolved as we stepped into adulthood. In the beginning, we would gather at Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ray’s house but eventually, we would have Zilligen Christmas at different homes. I imagine it was a bit awkward for our cousins, particularly the ones we were each growing up with.

One year, when Hope was in college, she brought her boyfriend with her. We had heard she was dating this guy – ‘Dave’ who she met in college. In fact, I first met Dave Reis when my cousin Keith Stein, who Dawn grew up with, and I went down to Northern Illinois University for an Outlaw and UFO concert back in 1981. A couple of years later when Dave and Hope married in 1983, they bought a house in Palatine on Slade Avenue close to Uncle Dick’s hardware store in downtown Palatine. Zilligen Christmas had found a new location that following December, along with the latest addition to Zilligen Christmas with the birth of Stephanie that September.

While Zilligen Christmas was for us Zilligens, at some point, as Hope showed us, we would begin to bring our boyfriends or girlfriends. Soon after Dave Reis started coming. Dave and Hope got engaged in 1983 so Dave was added to the drawing. From there each boyfriend or girlfriend was added to the drawing after the couples were engaged. Desi Dament in 1986, Cindy Gookin in 1987 and Mike Rogers in 1990.

As Dave and Hope filled in their family, the rest of us learned what it meant to be aunts and uncles around birthdays and Christmas. Sharing in the excitement of Christmas through the eyes of children, for us without kids, was magical. We did not have the responsibility of being full-time parents. We were not the first aunts and uncles to ‘wind them up and leave’ but we were perfecting it.

Hope, Lee and Dawn

As the Zilligen clan continued to grow we were finding it harder each year to find a time during the holidays we could get together. The addition of boyfriends and girlfriends/husbands and wives was juggling the schedules with newfound obligations to our in-laws. While the desire to get together won out every year it was decidedly getting harder each year to coordinate the schedules. We decided to solve our scheduling issue by designating New Years Day for Zilligen Christmas. This worked great the first year but not so well the following year. In 1990 we had to reschedule Zilligen Christmas because Dave had to take Hope to the hospital to have their 3rd daughter, Danielle. While Danielle disrupted the 15th Zilligen Christmas, we now had a permanent solution to our dessert dilemma – Birthday cake.

Now that we had a date, we began the rotation of houses. As each couple bought a house, we shifted Zilligen Christmas that house. This began with Cindy and Dave’s townhouse in 1990, followed by our house in 1991. Lee’s and Dawn & Mike’s houses were also added to the rotation. The Host House would provide the main meal, while everyone else provide the side dishes. During Lee’s second rotation he decided on Chinese for the dinner menu. It was his dream come true.

By this time Zilligen Christmas had swelled to 18 or 19 people, adults and children. A few things happened around during this time. Dave Zilligen became the Master of the Names. One Christmas he produced ping pong balls each with the name of a Zilligen on them. This was much easier than the annual scramble for scraps of paper by the hostess each Christmas. Since Dave became the Master of Names, Cindy became the Scribe of Names. Of course, the names were drawn from a Santa’s hat.

It was also decided, now that Dave and Hope’s family was getting older, the Zilligen cousins would join the adult drawing and no longer receive gifts from all the aunts and uncles. This began when you turned 13. Another rule remerged as well, the Reis’ names were removed from the Santa hat and added after all the Reis’ had drawn their names. This prevented them from drawing themselves. Cindy and Desi also decided not to get gifts for each other’s kids and save those gifts for Christmas with the Beckman Christmas where we were raised.

As Stephanie and the other Reis girls got older, they began to bring their boyfriends to Zilligen Christmas. Like the original Zilligens, it was decided that while boyfriends did not participate in the Name Drawing, this changed with fiancees. The uncles would love to remind the Reis girls’ boyfriends about this rule by announcing, “There’s still time to get into the drawing!” With an open palm, they would laugh and politely decline the uncles’ offers. When it was official, Dave would announce the addition of their ping pong ball to the Santa hat before the drawing and another round of congratulations would be given to the new couple.

We also realized the Zilligen clan had outgrown Lee’s humble dwellings, so in 2000, Dave and Hope took Lee’s rotation as the host house for Zilligen Christmas. This established the rotation of Host Houses we have today. The other addition in 2000 was establishing the Zilligen Christmas Christmas list online. A few years earlier I had obtained the zilligen.com domain. Owning the domain turned web development into a hobby. Nothing I would make a living at but something to keep me current in internet technologies. You can view the rotation of names and host houses from 2000 to date. It has become my responsibility to update this list every year. It is interesting to look at the list to see who had who in the past.

When other families discuss drawing names for Christmas is discussed, I have Zilligen Christmas to drawn upon regarding rules and potential issues families could run into. It would be great to say we had no other tragedies after our parents however this is not the case. We lost Dawn’s husband Mike to lung cancer in 2007. I remember a conversation with Dawn a few months prior to Christmas that she was to take Bob’s name, and since I had Mike, I would take Steve, who was Dawn’s pick that year. That fixed the drawing for 2007. Zilligens, if nothing else, are practical.

With the divorce of Danielle and Alex, we lost another name. That was tough since they lived within walking distance to the Rogers and Dawn’s family had grown close to Alex. There are few scenarios our family has not gone through that we have not worked out.

Hope made a comment on Facebook a few years ago on the 40th Zilligen Christmas – forty years. Forty years ago our parents died splitting our family into four parts. From the original five to twenty-seven of us. I think Mom would be very proud of us.

Mom, Hope and Lee

So if you haven’t already figured it out already, the ‘Godzilla’ song came from a Christmas gift. After our first Zilligen Christmas, Lee went back to more traditional gifts rather than paint us a picture each year. By our third Christmas, Lee got me Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Specter’ album. I recognized the group as the band that had done ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’. Besides the AOR hit of ‘Godzilla’ it also had the minor hit ‘Goin’ Through The Motions’. Blue Oyster Cult was markedly different than my current band – The Beach Boys. It was the beginning of me collecting albums.

This led to the purchase of their follow-up album ‘Some Enchanted Night’. It was a single live album that ended up being Blue Oyster Cult’s biggest selling album. Of course, I had purchased my copy on 8-track. I was excited by the heavier more aggressive sounds. While Blue Oyster Cult was a far cry from the Beach Boys, my musical tastes would continue to evolve and they would only represent a part of the type of music I would be what I would be buying in 3 years.

That evening when Dave and I got home from Zilligen Christmas I put the ‘Specter’ album with the stack of 6 or 7 8-tracks that Dave and I had collected so far. It was great seeing our Hope, Lee and Dawn again. Lee had opened me up to a new type of music. It was one of the first albums we had, everything else was an 8-track tape. I was awakened to the idea of collecting albums, like collecting my pop cans. But the music – there was so much out there. I didn’t know this at the time but I was going to learn. Music would become my way of understanding my human experience, and understanding what I was going through.

A bit of an epilogue on my story about Zilligen Christmas. Many years later while Dave and Hope were raising their family on Slade, we all met one spring day at their home. Hope had received a couple of boxes that were from our gray house. She thought we should open them together.

In the unpacking, we ‘oo’ed and ‘ah’ed over the various items we recognized from our childhoods. The clear and red glass ‘candy holder’, as we called it. Various dishes and glasses that sparked poignant childhood memories for all of us. As we continued to uncover forgotten household items of our past, we began reading the old 1975 newspaper that everything was wrapped in. It was fascinating. Now that we were all on our own we couldn’t believe the price of rent, TV’s, cars, etc.  back then.

As our discoveries were ending, the biggest treasure was found at the bottom of one of the boxes. A small cartridge of undeveloped film. Hope had the film developed not knowing if anything would still be saved from the old cartridge.

It turned out to be from Mom’s camera. There were pictures of Dawn’s birthday party, Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dale’s dogs we had watched and our last Christmas together.

Songs of My Life: Blinded By The Light

songsofmylife
In the first summer we moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack, not only did we need to get signed up for school, we also joined their church – Zion Lutheran Church. With my parents, we went to church and Sunday School every week. In fact, my parents were the custodians so it would not be unusual to be at Messiah Lutheran 2 or 3 times a week. Our church life was woven into our family life.

Like my parents, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack’s family went to church and Sunday School. But besides being signed up for Sunday School, John and I were also enrolled for confirmation class. For Lutherans, confirmation was a right of passage. It was to ‘confirm’ your beliefs in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is you, as an individual, now confirming your faith that previously your parents and your godparents did on your behalf when you were baptized. Confirmation classes were additional classes during the week for 7th and 8th graders. At the end of your 8th-grade year, you would be confirmed and considered to be a full member of The Church. For most kids, this was just another thing your parents signed you up for that you did not have a choice in.

At twelve years old, the kids in confirmation class were just doing what they were told. At this age, many of us were trying to see what we could get away with. We viewed this as an additional 2 hours a week of school. How was I supposed to understand religion? How were we going to understand the complexities of faith? On top of that, I was learning how to live without my parents – and with a new family. At this point in my life, when it came to religion, I wasn’t even sure if there was a god. And if God was there, I wasn’t going to ask him how to pass a class, I was going to ask him why he took my parents away.

At twelve years old, I was a good kid. For the most part, I was obedient to what adults asked of me. School? of course. Confirmation class? ok – whatever. Mow the grass? shovel snow? yep. Paper route? if you say so. I didn’t want to make any trouble. I felt incredibly grateful to be taken care of at this point. As awkward as junior high can be for kids, I was just trying to figure out how to live because I didn’t know anymore.

I don’t remember who said it or where I heard it, but there was a family rumor that grandma Zilligen had wanted us Zilligen kids to be put in an orphanage. Thankfully due to the love the Beckman family showed Dave and me, we never felt like orphans. So there was a shock value when the word ‘orphan’ was associated with us.

So after a year of losing my parents, I was going to try to understand what it meant to be a Lutheran? Well, I would at least learn enough to pass this class – so I could be confirmed. Like I said, I was basically a good kid. Later I would tackle the bigger questions – like what being a Lutheran, or a Christian, really meant.

One aspect about kids in Sunday School that non-church goers may not realize is that because churches draw people from outside their school districts, ‘church kids’ don’t necessarily know the other kids in their church, even if they are in the same grade. So the 7th Grade Confirmation class – would not be just kids from your school. Deerfield had two junior high schools – Wilmot and Sheppard. But our church also had kids from Highland Park or Northbrook. I don’t remember where the kids in my Confirmation class were from but outside of Jim Reuter and Jeff Parker and a couple of girls who went to Wilmot Junior High. We would only see each other once a week, actually twice a week – once for Sunday School and again for Confirmation Class.

Like most youth organizations, churches understand this new cross-section of kids and the need for activities so they can get to know each other. Lock-Ins are classic church Youth Events. Again, for the non-church goers, Lock-ins are events that adult church leaders would plan. They consist of an evening of games and lessons for the kids and end with everyone staying overnight in the basement of the church. No one could leave – thus we were ‘locked-in’. Our church Zion Lutheran only had one Lock-In that I can remember. But we did a number of other activities outside of the church so we could get to know each other.

It was during one of these ‘other activities’ that I first heard “Blinded By The Light”. The 8th-grade confirmation class going to a roller skating rink. During the mid-seventies, Roller Skating rinks were experiencing a resurgence with the help of Disco and renewed interest in the 50’s. This was thanks to the tv show ‘Happy Days‘. Transportation was typically provided by volunteer parents. The class was split over 2 or 3 cars. I piled in the way-back of a station wagon with, thinking I was with the ‘cool Confirmation kids’. One could argue there were no ‘cool kids’ in Confirmation class – but everything is just a matter of degrees, right?

As we piled into the way-back of a station wagon (seatbelts be damned!) the vehicle filled with the buzz of adolescent dialogue and hyperactivity. Whoever’s parent was driving had the radio tuned to a pop music station, most likely WLS. Conversations droned on from homework to teachers, to tv shows, movies and music.

It was during this adolescent buzz that that radio played “Blinded By The Light.” Us kids in the ‘way back’ discussing the off-color lyrics of the song – “wrapped up like a douche when you’re roller’ in the night.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A douche,” one of the kids said.

“Oh, yea,” I said.

I didn’t know what a douche was. I had heard of a ‘douche bag’ and ‘being a douche’ but I didn’t know exactly what a douche was – just that they were bad. The conversations were punctuated with giggles and laughter. But one of the kids caught on to my ignorance.

“You know what a douche is, right?” he asked.

“Sure,” I lied.

“What is it?”

“It’s like a douchebag.” I said, “Like being a dick.”

“So you’re saying a douche is a penis?”

“Kinda,” I said.

Kinda – this is a word that starts the beginning of losing an argument. It is a foretelling of failure; a predictor of implosion; a first-person adjective for wishy-washy. ‘Kinda’ meant you were straddling two sides – the correct side and the wrong side. You were thinking you were on the wrong side but trying not to give that fact away. With experience and grace, the Receiver of a ‘Kinda’ would give try more leeway to the Initiator of a ‘Kinda’. To allow the Initiator a gracious departure of their failing argument; a retreat. This is not true for junior high kids. This was a signal to attack.

“Dude!” the ‘Kinda Receiver’ said. Then he leans over to me and says “A douche is how girls clean their private parts.”

Apparently, this was not covered in any of the three sex ed classes I had so far. I was beginning to learn I still had a lot more to learn about sex, even after 3 days of sex ed classes over the last three years. Apparently my shocked looked betrayed my ignorance because the ‘Kinda Receiver’ announced to the whole way-back of the station wagon, “He doesn’t know what a douche is!” Even the kids in the back seat heard this announcement.

For the rest of the ride to the rolling skating rink, I was quiet. Besides the embarrassment being called out for not knowing what a douche was, I was trying to figure out why this would be in a song in the first place. Surely the singer knew what a douche was. Maybe it was put in by accident. Last year we all heard the scream on “Love Rollercoaster” when that girl was killed in the studio next store when they were recording, so who knows what happens in those recording studios.

Besides moving in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack and changing schools, I was also starting Junior High – that magical time in any child’s life where a child find themselves and their spiritual well being.

OK, none of that is true. Most kids are trying to find friends and where they fit in. I was no different. So this confirmation class was just another set of kids that I had to figure things out where I fit in. Jim Rueter and Jeff Parker went to my school, but no one else did. The girls didn’t count because I was too afraid to talk to them. And there also was my cousin John.

At this point, the natural pairing of John and I was getting old. When Dave and I first moved in and John & I were paired off it was great. We were both into plants and fishing. Prior to us moving in, John and Jim had hatched chicks – which resulted in their pet rooster Fluffy. Because of this, I remember John and I designed an egg enterprise we were going to call BZ Eggs (get it – Beckman & Zilligen?). We would wander greenhouses together looking at different plants. We would spend hours together fishing Lake Eleanor behind the house.

But after a while, I didn’t want to always be connected with John. I’m guessing this is how twins feel sometimes. In hindsight, this was us becoming more siblings than just cousins or friends. Each time we were forced together, I was getting the feeling I didn’t always want to be ‘stuck’ with him. It was bad enough I was stuck with Dave but age provided a natural borderline. John and I were only two months apart in age.

This led to some unsavory social behavior on my part. Well, not really THAT unsavory – more like stupid kid stuff. Nothing to do with John, just part of my efforts to try to fit in with the cool kids, the cool kids in confirmation class, and typically centered around our extracurricular activities.

My Confirmation class was a cross-section of church kids. Which meant – there were no burnouts or surfer dudes in this class, or studly jocks or blonde bombshell, just your normal nerdy middle-of-the-road kids here. There were 12 kids in our class and we met once a week. And we did our obligatory ‘extracurricular’ church activities. This filled our Wednesday evenings with lessons about our Lutheran belief: Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Lord’s Supper/Communion, Baptism, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, etc. Our lessons were based on Luther’s Small Catechism.

On the surface, this was basic religious stuff. But digging into some of these topics were pretty tough for adolescents to really understand. Some were ‘no-brainers’, for example, there wasn’t much discussion about the commandment ‘You shall not Kill’ – well, duh! Really hard to argue against this. On the other side, we were also going into some already confusing concepts like The Trinity. So there’s only one God but he’s three different people: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is a person too? but its all around us? I thought that was God? Yes, the Trinity – wait, what?

One tradition of Confirmation class was the 8th-graders would go on a weekend retreat to focus on our studies. I was actually looking forward to this trip. The retreats were held at Lutherdale in Elkhorn, WI. This was the same bible camp my family used to spend a week at once a year under beautiful summer Wisconsin skies.

Lutherdale held some of my favorite memories growing up. We could swim in a lake, canoe, do crafts, read, hike, sing and have campfires. With my family, the boys stayed in the cabins to the north and the girls stay in ‘cabins’ by the main building with my mom. They weren’t really cabins like the boys’ cabins. They were more modern and seemed more like apartments. But we were boys and we were ‘roughing it’. Dad never came on these week vacations.

To this day, when I smell breakfast food outside it takes me back to those summer weeks at Lutherdale. All meals were served family-style. And it was not unusual for me to be up before 7:00 am and wandering around outside. And a few of us lucky early risers would be able to ring the big red bell that stood in a 10-foot wooden tower. The bell was used to announce to the camp that breakfast, or whatever meal was being served, was now ready.

Everyone would gather in the dining hall and the camp pastor would lead us in prayer and give instructions on who was getting the food for the table, who was getting the drinks, who was cleaning up the table and when we were dismissed. I remember the camp pastor, particularly because his left arm was shriveled – I think was his left arm. It was very distracting as a kid and we were instructed not to stare at it.

During family camp, we spend time in the Craft Hut where camp counselors passed along their creativity. I remember making sand candles (wax poured into sand), masked tape bottles and my first forages into macrame and sand art. The Craft Hut counselors taught me about the wonders of Mod Podge. Meanwhile, at the camp’s chapel, Mr. Owl would play piano starting 1/2 hour before the morning’s lesson. She was willing to play any requested hymn. Inevitably someone would call out a Christmas Carol. Mrs. Owl would happily play the requested hymn even though it was July. We were amazed at how she knew the page numbers of the called out hymns in the Lutheran hymnal. Our voices would fill the chapel as others would file in for the morning or evening lessons.

I especially remember the long sunny summer afternoons swimming in the lake in a section designated as the swimming area on Lauderdale Lake. The camp used the ‘Buddy System’ so if you wanted to swim, you would need to find someone to swim with. To track this, each swimmer would put their numbered tags on a single hook on a board together. Occasionally the lifeguards on duty would yell, “Buddy Up!” and you would have to find your ‘buddy’ and grab their hand so the lifeguards could see you were not swimming alone. Of course, this wouldn’t prevent a double drowning but it would certainly cut down the odds. My brother Dave was typically my buddy.

Dave and I also learned to canoe on Lauderdale Lake. The Buddy System was also used for canoers. This allowed us to check out the needed paddles and life preservers as well. Dave and I would explore the coastline on either side of the camp. One of my greatest discoveries was finding out some of the seaweed in the lake was actually bladderworts. I would pull out this ‘seaweed’ and examine the ‘bladders’ and imagine how their little traps would work in the water. Bladderworts are an aquatic carnivorous plant I learned about after receiving a Venus Fly-Trap bulb from Dad. This likely fueled my recurring dreams of finding Venus Fly-Traps, Pitcher Plants and Sundews while wandering around in a field.

I also remember long lazy summer afternoons hanging out with Mom as she would spread out a blanket on the hill that led to the lake. I would bring my books to read next to her. Back then these were typically books about ants, carnivorous plants or cactus. With a cooling breeze coming off the lake, Mom would work on her needlepoint of the Last Supper or read. It seemed like she had been working on this needlepoint forever. She would eventually give her masterpiece to Pastor Keyes, our pastor at Messiah Lutheran in Park Ridge, IL. It really was a masterpiece, I was very impressed when it was finished. Other campers would occasionally stop by us and were equally impressed.

Mom was a meeting place for my siblings while we were at camp. I must admit, another reason I would hang out with Mom on those afternoons was to be around when the canteen would open. The ‘canteen’ was a little room with a window that opened to outside so counselors sell candy and ice creams to the campers. Ice cream on a hot afternoon as a rare treat at home would be an almost daily treat at Family Camp.

After supper, there would be an evening service followed by a bible study for adults and younger lessons for kids. Typically the kids gathered with the camp counselors down by a fire next to the lake.

I do remember occasionally accompanying Mom to the Adult Bible study. I’d like to think I was curious about one particular adult bible study on Esther. More likely I had done something to Dave. So my punishment was not being allowed to go to the campfire and forced to accompany Mom as she attended the Bible study. It turned out I found this Bible study to be very interesting and I returned the following evening to learn more about Esther and Mordecai. I don’t know if it was the reaction of the adults surprised I was not with the younger kids or if I actually outgrowing the ‘kid stuff’. I actually read Esther from Mom’s Living Bible, which I still have to this day. I think I was taking advantage of showing off my maturity and getting a chance to use Mom’s leather-bound bible. Nothing like sucking up to the locals at bible camp by reading a fancy bible on a sunny afternoon. That was the first ‘free reading’ of the bible I ever did until I attempted to read the Bible in its entirety after my parents died.

More typical was me going with my brother and sisters, and the Hippie youth leaders, sitting around a campfire and singing Kumbaya. This is when I learned this song. This was years before ‘Kumbaya’ became a sarcastic insincere moment of bonding. Once we were taught Kumbaya, we would sing it at church, at home or while we were riding our bikes. The counselors taught us many songs but Kumbaya was the song that would universally represent Bible Hippies singing around campfires at Bible Camps across the US.

The other song I remember learning at Lutherdale was “Pass It On”. This was years later during a different Family Camp but this time without my family. It was the summer after Dave and I had moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack, and John and Jim. It was a great, awkward and very different week.

That week we were joined by our cousins John and Jim. Later Dave and I would learn this was the first time they had spent time away from their parents. While it was great to be back at Lutherdale it was also weird sharing our family camp with our ‘new brothers’. Dave connected with one particular counselor who was in a singing group called Brethren. I believe his name was John and his group Brethren actually recorded a real album! At the end of the week, the counselor gave Dave an autographed copy of his album. I’ll admit I was a little jealous of the attention Dave was receiving. I also believe he inspired Dave to sing which led Dave to join Chorus in Wilmot Junior High, Deerfield High School, Valparaiso University and professionally (singing at weddings, etc.).

That week at Lutherdale, Dave’s new friend John and the rest of Brethren would sing ‘Pass It On’ after an evening meal. It would be a favorite request around the campfire that week as well. And it remains a favorite hymn for me to this day. It always brings me back to the warm glow of a Lutherdale campfire against the dark water background.

Another very strong memory from that week was when John and Jim called home because they were homesick. They were allowed to use the phone in the dining hall. Dave and I hung out on the screened porch just off the dining hall. There were many tears and alot of yelling about wanting to come home. They didn’t like Lutherdale. I couldn’t help choking up myself. At first, I didn’t understand how they could not enjoy being at camp, the lake, the Craft Hut, the campfires, the Canteen, etc. But then I realized my own homesickness – and mine was permanent. It was not lost on me, even while it was happening. Hearing Jim yell at his mom, literally screaming at times, to come to pick him and John up was heartwrenching. It also caused Dave and I to realize we had no one we could call. Despite our week of paradise, that phone call shook us back to our reality of life without our parents.

Besides being accompanied by John and Jim that week, there were a couple of additional guests at Lutherdale that week., Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were friends of my parents from our old church Messiah Lutheran. I’m sure this was no coincidence. I don’t remember my sister Hope being there. I mention this because their daughter Becky and Hope were very good friends and that seems strange she would not be with them.

One sunny afternoon I remember being in the cabin by myself. I was crying over the loss of my parents as I would occasionally do. Mr. Johnson came in and despite my best efforts, I could not hide the fact that I had been crying. Mr. Johnson sat down on the bunk across from me. After a few quiet moments, he told me how he was a soldier in World War II.

He told me, “One day my commander gathered us together. He told us we were going to take this hill from the enemy the next day. ‘There were going to be a high casualty rate, many of you will not make it,’ he said. All night I thought about that next day. I was so angry at God. The next day, the day we were going to take that hill, was my mom’s birthday. All I could think about was my mom hearing that I had died on her birthday. I couldn’t understand why God would do this to my mom.

“The next morning we took the hill. I cursed God as I charged up that hill with my buddies. Some of my friends were shot and some of them were killed but I kept fighting up that hill. After hours of fighting, I finally got to the top. I had made it, I was still alive. And I realized I had been cursing God the whole way up thinking about my mom and dying. But though I said some of the worse things I’ve ever said, God still protected me.

“John, I know losing your parents doesn’t make any sense but trust in God. As I stood on that hill I was so ashamed about what I said and I didn’t put my trust in God. No matter how bad things get, trust that God is always watching over you.”

It was the first time I had heard an actual war story from someone that was there. I knew he was sharing a very personal story because he took off his glasses to wipe his own tears. We sat on that bottom bunk not talking – just looking out the cabin’s dirty window.  Eventually, Mr. Johnson patted my leg, said he was going to find Mrs. Johnson and left.

I didn’t know how to respond. I was still very angry with God over the loss of my parents. It wasn’t fair. Contrary to Mr. Johnson, I thought, I had always trusted God so I didn’t understand why he took them away from us. The difference between Mr. Johnson and my story was he survived that day, my parents did not. If he hadn’t perhaps his mother and I could have cursed God together. But that obviously was not His plan. While I wasn’t sure how to take Mr. Johnson’s story, I understood it was a very personal moment he did not share with many people.

In the coming years, I would remember Mr. Johnson’s story. While my faith would eventually break, I learned that sharing your tragedy with others was very powerful. Like Love, when you open yourself up to your ’emotional core’ and allow that reopened wound to heal, it heals stronger then it was before. That afternoon I realized I was just beginning to charge up my own hill. And like Mr. Johnson, I would survive. And, again like Mr. Johnson, I would share my story with others. And while my telling would sometimes be painful, I knew I would be stronger for it. I would use my story to lend perspective to others. That week would be the last time I remember seeing Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.

Over the years, I have shared my story about how my parents died, in fact, many many times. People who know me, particularly those who know Dave and my other brothers and sisters, would often remark on how ‘normal’ we appeared. I always found this comforting. Because ‘normal’ was all I ever wanted to be. While our past threatened to overwhelm us, while it deformed, skewed, misshapen and warped us – we were all made stronger and weaker.  Normal? yea – for me, that would perfect.

So if we appeared ‘normal’ it meant our upheaval in the last two years did not perspectively seep into our everyday lives. This is given to the fact that today we live in an age where kids get special attention for anything that isn’t viewed as ‘normal’, Dave and I, nor Hope, Lee or Dawn as far as I know, ever saw a psychiatrist or social worker or spent extra time with clergy. We found our own answers and kept any deformity at bay.

I take particular pride in navigating the moral and philosophical issues of my parents’ deaths presented to me while I was growing up. That isn’t to say I didn’t make alot of wrong turns and mistakes. One of my first wrong turns was blaming God. This particular mistake would not be corrected for twenty years. But by blaming God I began to move on with my life. That isn’t to say I stopped questioning ‘Why?’ but I stopped waiting for an answer to my situation. This led to the following conclusions, what I would later refer to as  my mantra:

  1. I became Agnostic. I liked to think there was a higher power but God did not play a part in my daily life. I found it ironic wanting a higher power but something had to have kicked off the Big Bang, right?
  2. Religion was a crutch. A strong person didn’t need religion but there are times and points in your life when you are hurt and need to heal – at those moments religion can be a refuge. The problem is some people would lean on their religion too much and never truly take responsibility for their own lives.
  3. People are basically good. In high school, I would argue that people were 51% good and 49% bad and individuals would run between those ratios as well. It was this basic belief that would keep me from wanting to condemn the entire human race and keep some hope.
  4. Life was a series of random acts, most are without intent. We should appreciate the statistical anomalies that affect us in both good and bad ways.

With this ‘mantra’ I started my life. I knew I had a unique perspective. I would test these core beliefs with discussions with my friends and a lot of thinking. I felt empowered by these conclusions but I also knew some were contrary to my family’s beliefs. So this led me to hide my true feelings and thoughts on religion. It also was the beginning of my multiple personality disorder.

OK, so I don’t really have a multiple personality disorder, but by the time I had figured out my way around high school, it felt like it. While my birth name is John, in Junior High I was given a nickname of ‘Waba’. At the same time, to avoid confusion at home with my cousin John and my Uncle Jack, whose real name is John, I received another nickname – Trike. On my path to figuring out my past and my life I wrote this poem:

People say I’m so different,
they say sometimes I’m someone else
Only my best friends know me all,
we all have our characteristics

First, there’s John, he’s rather depressed,
he’s always live in the past
His mind is just a one-way road,
it always seems to be death, death, death

Then there’s Trike, he’s rather quiet,
he always does what he is told
If you want to find him there’s two places to go,
he’s either at church or he’s sitting at home

Then there’s Waba, he’s rather strange
he goes out to drink and smoke
He’s rather crazy and he’s never alone,
I’m afraid someday, he will go too far

Well, that’s me, that all of us,
we get along most of the time
When I grow up I don’t know who I’ll be,
somedays I wish I could just be me

The poem spoke to the various roles I thought I played. In hindsight, it was easier to ‘go with the flow’ when playing these roles. In high school, I was not very active in the church. While John and I volunteered to take care of the plants in the atrium, this was really about our interests in plants rather than to serve the church in the form of stewardship. But by the time we got to high school, we all had part times jobs on the weekends and occasionally this included working Sunday morning. And while we still went to church services but we didn’t always stay for Sunday School. Trike was the more demure character that would take care of the plants at church. Or play guitar for the summer services. And he was always polite and respectful of his elders.

John represented my past which I was trying to put behind me. As I would learn, this was not always possible. He still loved ants, cactus and carnivorous plants. He would fly model rockets, look for mushrooms in the Olson’s woods and look for, and some times transplant, wildflowers (Soloman Seals, Prairie Trillium, Jack-In-Pulpits, Mayapples and White Trillium) into our backyard. And it was John that would learn to play Dungeons and Dragons. He would always have a book he was reading, which included Stephen King novels and later fantasy and science fiction. He also collected pop cans and monster magazines.

Waba became my extroverted self – my carefree, talkative, confident character. It was Waba that first smoked pot at a party senior year. And Waba that would have an assistant manager at Franks Nursery where he worked fill the trunk of his car with bottles of Jack Daniels and beer (and Southern Comfort for Jeff). But Waba was still shy around girls but he would be the only one of the three to make any progress. And Waba loved his music.

It was easier to act a certain way in certain situations. It was these roles and these characters that I began to use in school and confirmation classes. Trike would really try to understand what Luther was trying to tell us about the foundations of our Lutheran beliefs. John would play ‘doubting Thomas’ asking unanswerable questions and blaming God for the pain in his heart. Waba would sit in class and look at the girls. And try to find ways to connect with the guys that could talk to the girls.

So eighteen months after Mr. Johnson share his story with me, John and I, and our confirmation class, found ourselves at Lutherdale. But on a cold dark January weekend, Lutherdale was a strange place. It was not the warm family playground I had spent 3 or 4 summer weeks with my family. But my family had now changed drastically as well. That January night as my confirmation class got out of the cars that night, I stood in that cold parking lot next to the silent dark buildings as the adults figured out where we should go. I surveyed the snowy landscape that was both familiar and strange. The dormant slope that played host to so many fond memories which I knew laid below the light of the parking lot.

Like all confirmation retreats, the boys went to one cabin and the girls to another. Once we were inside the boys’ cabins, the sense of familiarity became stronger despite how cold it was. The boys claimed their bunks and were told to stay together on one side of the cabin. Each side of the cabin was capable of sleeping 12 people so almost everyone could have a top bunk. We were to unpack and then meet the girls in a room in the main building for our first lesson.

The weekend was a chance to focus on our lessons. We had 4 months before our confirmation. Besides diving deep into our studies on what it meant to be a Lutheran, the class had one more chance to bond together. But also keeping in mind we were all 13 and 14 years old. Even if we viewed Confirmation class as one more thing we had to get through, this retreat brought us closer to being done. I was doing what my aunt and uncle wanted me to do. But beneath that veneer, I was looking for an answer – why did God take my parents away.

My religious beliefs prior to their deaths were childlike. God was just part of who I was. In the years that followed I would try to understand what my brothers and my sisters and I did to deserve this.  Why had God turned against us? Confirmation class was not prepared to deal with my situation. And I did not use these classes to test Pastor Trendel. Like the social circles in junior high, I was learning what role I should play. I would not be the center of attention. I would act normal, or like the other kids, ignoring my questions and doing what was expected of me. If I was called on, I would give the right answers – or what I thought was the right answer. I would search for my own answers by reading the Bible or the Small Catechism.  But I did not find my answers there. And like the other kids in class, some of this stuff just didn’t make sense to me.

For the most part, our class was pretty well behaved – for the most part. Pastor Trendel would occasionally need to deal with the boys trying to show off in front of the girls. Maybe it was boredom, maybe it was reacting to some of the topics we discuss. There were some heavier questions. For example, while I knew I wasn’t perfect, it didn’t make sense to me that babies that were not baptized were still sinners. Logically, they couldn’t do anything yet so why would they not go to heaven? Also, I found the ‘Three-in-One’ confusing. Yes, One God, but there were three of them. I found a better explanation later as the states of elements – like ice, water and steam. The lessons were more about giving the right answers described by Martin Luther in his Small Catechism. This was not a philosophy class after all. Many of my questions were much deeper, more complex, more on an adult level. But trying to find my answers in the Bible was like a schizophrenic trying to find out what is wrong with themselves by reading an intro to psychology book. It was not going to happen in Confirmation class

So depending on the setting and other things going in class, I would slip in and out of my various characters. This led me to do some stupid things. For example, on our retreat at Lutherdale after dinner but before resuming our studies, two of the girls, two of the guys, and I went to explore the frozen lake. We were really just trying to get away from the chaperones. Being winter, the only places we could go to were the boys’ cabin, the girls’ cabin and the main building. So walking around on a frozen lake seemed like a perfectly logical place to hang out. And besides getting out from being ‘supervised, the cold dark lake hike seemed like the ‘cool’ thing to do. And who knows, maybe I could actually talk to the girls Jim and Jeff were hitting on.

While we were on the lake, someone realized the time. We were supposed to be meet back with the group at 7:00 to continue our lessons. So someone came up with the brilliant idea that if we all set our watches back by 10 minutes, we could just play dumb and we wouldn’t get in any trouble.

Not a brilliant idea but I was pleased just to be in on the scheme. All I had to do is figure out how to change the time on my digital watch. When we all strolled into the room at 10 minutes after 7:00, the assistant minister Giesela’s frustration with our tardiness was apparent. We all gave the best looks of astonishment we could mustard. We quickly conversed with each other – “What does your watch say?” “I’ve got seven.” “Yea, me too!” “So do I,” I announced, probably too loudly. I was happy to be on the bad boys & girls team.

Pastor Trendal or his assistant Giesela didn’t buy our story. We were told to sit down and to open our books to the continued the lesson they had already started. Jim, Jeff and the girls exchanged silent giggles. And while I was on the lake as well and turned my watch to the agreed synchronized time, I was really not part of that team. But I would keep trying.

Part of my problem was I still interested in geeky stuff. That’s why 2 hours later when one of the kids convinced the Pastor we could play a new game he was playing called Dungeons and Dragons, I stood with Jim and Jeff and quietly scoffed at the kid and Pastor as they tried to get 15 of us to roll up characters to play this new game – that frankly, no one understood. After an hour, Pastor finally decided that Dungeons and Dragons was not the group game he was told it could be. He reorganized the chaos that had evolved and we settled down for the night. But when we left the next morning, I make sure I was in the Dungeon and Dragon kid’s car. You see, his car was stopping at the Dungeon Shop in Lake Geneva on the way back.

It turned out The Dungeon Shop was the hobby store that Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, first distributed the game. I don’t know why I wanted to go to the Dungeon Shop, I didn’t have any money. What I really wanted was to learn more about this Dungeon and Dragons game. It turned out, according to the man behind the counter, that next year they were releasing their new version of the rules in the Players Handbook. So I gawked at the original box of 3 books. A year later I purchased the Player’s Handbook at Waldenbooks. This led to forming a group of 4-5 friends that would play Dungeons & Dragons on weekends and school days off. These sessions were typically held in Steve Olson’s basement. The group would consist of me, Steve Olson, his brother Mark, Jeff Riviera and Todd Combs with Steve or I playing the Dungeon Master. Those were good times.

While the trip back home allowed me to learn more about this Dungeon and Dragons game, actually playing the game was still over a year or two away. John and I were picked up in the church parking lot that Sunday. We still had to pass our confirmation class and get confirmed. Honestly, I never thought what would have happened if someone didn’t pass. Waba would not be the right character to use to finish up the few classes we had left. I suppose a kid that couldn’t pass confirmation would likely have other issues beyond passing a class for church.

By ’77 what I was really doing was finding my way in life. This included defining who I was and what I was expecting out of life. My various nicknames were convenient ways to split up the different backdrops I was playing against and dependant on who I was interacting with. It was the beginning of me looking at myself objectively. ‘John’ was decidedly part of the past and had the burden of understanding death. ‘Trike’ was the demure side of me that didn’t have the weight of death around him. ‘Waba’ was the reckless, carefree side of me that struggled to fit in with others. He was furthest from my past and would carry, sometimes crying, into the future.

Part of my solution was to tell the adults what they wanted to hear. They wanted me to be ok – so I was always ok. I would struggle with the senselessness of life when weighed with the death of my parents. This brought my first thoughts of suicide but with it, the tension of further pain to my brothers and sisters. It was a line I would not cross but dance back and forth over for relief to my pain.

It would be years before I would understand religion in any substantial way. In Eighth Grade, it was another class I needed to get through. Another backdrop for one of my characters to play in front of. Trike did a fine job giving the adults the answers they wanted to hear. He would keep John quiet with all his questions about hypocrisy and double standards. Because of this, it would be years before he would understand forgiveness and grace. Trike could be very practical and patience to a fault.

It would be Waba that would learn what a douche was from a bunch of kids in the back of station wagon on the way to a roller skating rink. And when I would hear ‘Blinded By The Light’ again on my new boombox I would learn it was a song by Manfred Mann. Occasional the radio station would play the album version which was about 2 minutes longer if you were lucky enough to catch it. And the kid that told me he was singing about a douche? He was the ‘douchebag’ – Manfred was singing about a deuce. The lyric went “wrapped up like a deuce when you’re roller’ in the night.”

I never felt like I was blinded by ‘the light’. Even when my faith grew stronger, there was never an epiphany or an awaking. In fact, I was just beginning to feel I was understanding ‘The Light’ – The Light of understanding this life. It was a feeling that I was understanding. In my ego, I thought I understood Life better than most of the people around me. It was this faith in my own understanding, not my religious faith, is what would anchor me in the coming years. And while this Light would guide me in the years and decades to come I would constantly lose my way and make mistakes – just like any other kid. I would continue to learn about Life and Death. How these two things would balancing me and my beliefs. And how The Light shined and brightened my living and my loving of the people in my life.

Songs of My Life: New Kid In Town


songsofmylifeIn the first summer Dave and I moved in with The Beckmans, Aunt Joyce signed me up to go to Wilmot Junior High School. Although my cousin John and I were the same age, he was not going to Wilmot. John struggled with reading so he was going to Deerpath Junior High School in Lake Forest. This meant I would be starting a new school this Fall by myself. Dave and Jim were going to Woodland Elementary. Dave would not have to endure a bunch of new kids by himself – he would have Jim to break the ice. On the other side, all the 7th-graders were new to Wilmot Junior High so I would not have to explain why I was living with The Beckmans. 

This was the second time in two years I would be starting a new school. When my family moved from the ‘Red House’ to the ‘Gray House’ we all had new schools – Hope went to Maine West High School, Lee went to Algonquin Junior High and Dave, Dawn and I went to West Elementary. We stayed until the end of the school year because there had been a discussion that if we moved mid-year Lee would have to go back to grade school because his junior high at the time went from 6th to 8th grade and Algonquin Junior High was only 7th to 8th grade. So Mom and Dad waited until the end of the school year.

The move to West Elementary would be the first time the teachers didn’t know who I was. Before we this, all my teachers knew ‘the Zilligens’ having had Hope and/or Lee before. At West Elementary none of the teachers would know who Dave, Dawn or I were, but they would learn in the next couple of years – until we moved away after my parents died.

One Summer morning Aunt Joyce and I went to Wilmot to get my class assignments and to pick up my gym uniform. Apparently, now that I was in Junior High, kids would be required to change our clothes for gym. That was worrisome. Being almost 200 pounds in 7th grade I was a little concerned about undressing in front of a bunch of kids I didn’t know. It was actually much worse than that.

The woman getting my gym uniform showed us the shirt with Wilmot Blue Jay on it. It was alright, maybe even cool. The shorts were fine – again with the Blue Jay logo but much smaller, even if the size was an adult large. And then there was this other thing that was in a plastic container she kind of mumbled through. It was something about supporting, what I assumed was the Wilmot sports teams. Everything was swept into a plastic bag and the woman said she would see me in a few weeks. Aunt Joyce grabbed the bag, said goodbye and out of the school we went.

When I got home and started inspecting my gym clothes. I wanted a closer look at that weird thing with the shirt and shorts. That turned out to be a ‘jockstrap’ – or as I figured out later – an Athletic Supporter. I opened up the package and dangled the elastic between my hands. “No, no, no, no, no” – How in the hell was I going to wear that? I had a few weeks to figure it out so I buried it in my dresser drawer. Or so I had thought.

Later that afternoon, I had come back from fishing and stepped into the porch to find Dave and Jim there. Dave was wearing my gym shirt which was probably four sizes too big for him. Jim was laughing so hard he could barely get out – “nice underwear!”

At this point, Dave lifted my shirt to reveal he was wearing my jockstrap. I was mortified. They knew! Dave knew what was going to happen so he took off through the kitchen to the front door. I was too shocked to realize what I was supposed to do. As he started running through the kitchen the shock wore off and that familiar wave came over me – I needed to punch him. As I had done so many times before. But this time he had too much of a head start for me to catch him. He was outside the front door by the time I had rounded the counter in the kitchen. From the front lawn, Dave taunted me dancing in my new Wilmot Junior High shirt. I continued to chase him around the house. Jim was barely able to stumble out of the front door to watch, he was laughing uncontrollably.

I was so ashamed that about the jock strap – they knew. As much as I tried to shame him back that they would have to wear them next year, clearly Dave wasn’t as embarrassed as I was about this new underwear. Wilmot Junior High was not starting off well.

Wilmot was a little over a mile away so I could ride my bike when the weather was good and walked if it wasn’t. When Lake Eleanor was frozen, I could shave a little time off my walk by cutting across the frozen lake.

But before I had to figure out my winter commute, I had to get through my first day at my new school. It did not start as inconspicuously as I wanted it to. That morning the plan was that Aunt Joyce would drop me off and I would walk home. I had to wait for the bell to ring to enter the school. So with all the other kids, I waited outside for the morning bell. This would be our routine for the next two years.

Wilmot combined three elementary schools: Dave and Jim’s school – Woodland Elementary, Wilmot Elementary and South Park (yes, just like the cartoon). That September morning, most of the kids were in groups of friends from these schools. Since I did not know anyone, I stood off to the side by myself waiting for the bell to ring to let us in.

It turned out I made the unfortunate choice of wearing one of my favorite t-shirts. It said ‘I’m with Stupid’ with a hand pointed to the position that was permanently reserved for Dave. But as one kid pointed out that morning, I was only with myself – so I must have been ‘stupid’. And so began my junior high career.

Not knowing anyone, I really just wanted to melt away, to pass through the hallways unnoticed. But at 200 pounds it was hard to not to be noticed. So I tried my best to fit in – so to speak. I remember the ‘first friend’ I made – Peter Vassiliades. He was the first kid to invite me over to his house. He lived on the other side of Deerfield Road, in a subdivision called Castlewood. That was the first kid’s house I went to since moving to Deerfield. Next was Mark Reisman’s house. Mark had just had his bar mitzvah and had gotten a pinball machine – a pinball machine in his house? So I went overthinking it would be a crappy tabletop version of pinball machine but it was a full size, plug-in, steel legged pinball machine called ‘Fireball!’ Holy crap!

Wait a minute – what’s a bar mitzvah? Apparently, it was like Confirmation for Jewish kids. Jewish kids? I thought Jews were the people in the bible. I didn’t know they were still around. I didn’t know very much about religion or the world. My world was very focused on dinosaurs, plants, animals, stamps and ghost stories. I knew I was Lutheran because that the way they talked about ‘our religion’ at church. I knew there were Catholics, they were the non-Lutherans (which, it turned out, was really the other way around). At this point in my life, I thought Christians and Lutherans were interchangeable. Mark was not the first Jewish kid I met when I moved to Deerfield. On the other side, junior high kids didn’t get into a lot of religious conversations – except when it came to the gifts.

Wilmot Junior High School was split into two grades, 7th and 8th. Each grade was split into two Teams – 1 and 2. The layout of the school was pretty basic: two east/west halls, the south hallway had two sets of four rooms to the south for each of the 7th-grade teams. The north hallway had two sets of four rooms to the north for 8th-grade teams. Both hallways were lined with lockers. On the west end was the open area for the gym with the boys’ locker room to the south and the girls’ locker room to the north. The gym also doubled as the lunch room. The library was in between the two main hallways with music, art and science lab near the gym. The faculty and main offices were in the main entrance on the east side. Wilmot had outgrown the original building so in the summer of ’76 there was construction to build a new gym and auditorium off the main entrance hallway to the north. Our graduating class of ’77 would be the first class to use this new addition,

My 7th-grade homeroom was in Mrs. Boruszak room who taught English. I tried to keep my head down but its hard for a fat kid not to be noticed. Junior high kids are very suspicious animals. They tend to sniff around at things that were bigger then they are. A few would come in for a closer look. Some will come closet for a nudge or a push. I had learned at my old school West, how you reacted to these initial pokes and prods would set the tone for how all other animals would react in the future.

A few months into the school year, Wilmot the junior high pack thought I needed a nickname. Some were forms of Zilligen but they apparently didn’t get much of a reaction from me – I had already heard most of them before. Some were cruel, some were just dumb. Then one morning during homeroom, Dean Smith came in and “I”ve got it! We’ll call him ‘Waba’ – Water Buffalo Association.” It was pointed out that actually, that was WBA which really wasn’t pronounceable.  Dean decided to put another ‘a’ in it so you could. It definitely wasn’t anything I had heard before. Dean’s nickname seemed to satisfy the rest of the pack. So over the next couple of weeks, then months – and then years. Waba became my nickname.

How many of you know anyone who has a nickname, that is not some form of their name, that is still used into their 50’s? I am still surprised by how long ‘Waba’ has actually stuck around. So here’s how a 50-year-old man got to be called ‘Waba’:

The teams in junior high were pretty isolated but apparently, ‘Waba’ had crossed over to Team 2. Over the summer I lost 50 pounds so that Fall I was under 150 pounds. Showing up at school that Fall some said I wasn’t Waba anymore but the name continued to stick. The Wilmot kids brought it to Deerfield High School. By the time I graduated that’s all anyone called me. In fact, many people didn’t know my real name. I think in high school kids would test me to see if I would answer to Waba – kids I didn’t know would say ‘Hi, Waba’. I always said ‘Hi’ back.

But Waba wasn’t my only nickname. When I had moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack I learned that Uncle Jack’s first name was actually John also. So my cousin John was a junior. Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack were also my Godparents. In the Brumm family, it was traditional that Godparents would get their Godchildren a gift for Christmas. Aunt Joyce would always sign my gift “To – Johnny Mike”. I believe it was my cousin Fred Turner that coined the phrase ‘Johnny Mike ride his trike’ which led to my other nickname – Trike. This name was pretty much just used in the family. But my aunts and uncles on my mom’s side would call me Trike. To this day, Aunt Joyce will refer to me as John Mike or Trike.

At my Aunt Betty’s wake in 2016, I saw my cousin Jeff and as I reached out to shake his hand he said, “How’s it going there Trike? Does anyone call you that anymore?”

“Just the aunts” I replied. And apparently a few cousins.

Waba actually transitioned over to Carthage College thanks to a couple of softball shirts that had ‘Waba’ displayed on the back. When asked about the ‘Waba’, I said it was a nickname. And so it spread at Carthage as well. At the time, Carthage was smaller than my high school it so the nickname actually spread even faster there. Just like in high school, by my senior year, no one knew my real name.

In the mid-80’s, before cell phones, Carthage dorms had one payphone per floor. Everyone took turns answering the payphone if it was ringing. One evening my senior year, Uncle Jack called me on the Don’s floor (South Hall, 4th Floor, South wing) where I lived. Back then Carthage had ‘fun names’ for their dorm floors.

Uncle Jack asked, “Is John Zilligen there?”

“We don’t have anyone by that name on this floor”

“Well, he’d better goddamned be there, he’s expecting my call!” Uncle Jack huffed.

The phone answerer asked another kid walking down the hall, “Do you know a John Zilligen?”

“Yea, that’s Waba”

Waba worked for me as a DJ name and was soon adopted by my brothers and sisters and at home for a while. My nieces and nephews called Uncle Waba – until they got older and thought they were too old to call me ‘Uncle Waba’ anymore. My wife Desi, continues to call me Waba to this day.

When you leave college, that typically is where your nickname ends. There’s a time to put childhood names aside but ‘Waba’ kept popping up. For example,  in the late 80’s we were invited to a watch a Bears-Packers game at my co-worker Mike Mecenas’ house with his wife and some other couples. During halftime, the nerdy guys got up to check out Mike’s latest computers games leaving the wives to talk. We finished the game together, made small talk and then our goodbyes. As we were getting our coats on and thanking our hosts, Desi, without thinking about it, referred to me as Waba.

Mike’s wife exclaimed, “Your Waba!? While we were talking during halftime you kept referring to ‘Waba’ and I didn’t know who that was! I was wondering if you were having an affair!”

We all laughed but I told Desi it was important that you have to be aware of how you refer to me. Now that I was out of college, and no longer DJing, Waba was starting to lose its recognition. I was an adult after all.

Fast forward ten years. I’m coaching Nate’s floor hockey. We had just ended a line during an exciting game. I was bringing the kids to huddle and discuss the next line’s strategy. Suddenly over the crowd noise, I heard…

“Waba!”

I looked up to Desi in the stands pointing to the floor. One of our kids had been hurt during the last play. It turns out Desi was yelling ‘John’ 3 or 4 times but not getting my attention. It was when she reverted to “Waba” that I finally looked up. Apparently, I was no longer responding to my own name.

So in 7th grade at Wilmot Junior High, Waba was born. But Waba was just a fat kid who lost weight and learned to fit in like everyone else. I was in Team I so Mr. Keasling was the science teacher. He was one of my favorite teachers that year. Probably because I loved science. I remember him talking about his thesis paper on paddlefish. I had never heard of paddlefish before. They were weird and decidedly cool.

Mrs. Novey was my math teacher, who happened to be pregnant that year. I remember that first day of class she was taking roll call. When she got to Tejinder Singh’s name she had some trouble pronouncing it. After a couple of false starts, Dean Smith blurted out, “Gesundheit!” Mrs. Novey and the class erupted. It’s a line I still use today when someone stumbles over how to pronounce a word.

Dean Smith was the class clown, at least in 7th grade. One morning, to everyone’s horror, Dean asked Mrs. Novey if she wanted to hear a Dead Baby joke. I don’t think the guys understood how inappropriate it was but there was almost a gasp from girls. Mrs. Novey didn’t skip a beat and told Dean to go ahead.

“What’s easier to load into a truck, a pile of bowling balls or a pile of dead babies?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know, ” said Mrs. Novey.

“A pile of dead babies because you can use a pitchfork”

The boys laughed and the girls groaned but most importantly Mrs. Novey was laughing, in fact, she was face down on her desk laughing. This just prompted another joke from Dean.

“What’s worst than a pile of dead babies?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Novey.

“One in the middle eating its way out”

That got universal groans followed by adolescent male titters. Mrs. Novey groaned with a smile and got up to pass out her math assignments for us. We learned that Dean had dozens of Dead Baby jokes at lunch. More were passed along in the coming weeks and the rest of the year.

Another series of jokes going around that year was ‘Mommy, Mommy‘ jokes, which had nothing to do with Dead Baby jokes. They typically went like this:

Mommy, Mommy! I don’t want to play with grandma!
Shut up and keep digging!

Mommy, Mommy! I don’t wanna go to Europe!
Shut up and keep swimming!

After the first few days of Dead Baby and Mommy Mommy jokes, the goal was to find new ones. My kids were shocked to learn how old Dead Baby jokes were when Dead Baby jokes started circulating around in their school. One of my favorites of theirs…

How do you get 100 dead babies in a bathtub?
A blender
How do you get them out?
a straw

I will give my kids’ generation credit for Chuck Norris jokes. These basically place Chuck Norris in a god-like reverence. A couple of my favorites were…

Chuck Norris doesn’t cut his grass, he sits on his porch and dares it to grow.

Chuck Norris doesn’t wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.

Chuck Norris was once bitten by a poisonous snake. And after many days of agony, the snake finally died.

In a cosmic full circle, Naomi had a pregnant teacher in grade school, around the time that Dead Baby and Chuck Norris jokes were going around in her school. All the kids in this teacher’s class referred to her baby as Chuck.

I remember one specific joke in 8th grade told by Todd Combs. Todd was just a 7th grader who lived down the street from me. We met fishing on Lake Eleanor, despite the fact that his family didn’t live on the lake. Technically that was against the Lake rules. But he was a nice kid and liked fishing. Talking his way into fishing on the Lake was telling of Todd’s personality. So despite being Dave and Jim’s age, Todd and I became friends. Eventually, he would join Dave, Jim and I as we went to school – riding our bikes as weather permitted and walking in the winter. In the middle of the winter, we would cut across the lake. It wasn’t unusual for us to walk to school together but we didn’t always walk back together.

At the end of the day one winter, Todd showed up at my locker to walk home. As I got my jacket on for the walk home he asked me if I wanted to hear the Purple Gorilla joke. Sure – Todd was good with jokes. He starts telling the joke, or rather the story, as I’m putting on my hat and gloves. 25 minutes later we are standing on the bay of Lake Eleanor where we split to go to our homes – and he is still telling this story! When it finally finished all I could do is groan. You can read a shorter version here.

Junior high wasn’t all just jokes. One of the worse moments was having to strip naked and take a shower with 30 other guys. Everyone was embarrassed and yet Mr. Laarveld shooed all of us into the showers. Fat kids hate being naked in general. At 12 years old no one saw me naked anymore except my doctor – and apparently 30 other naked boys and 30-year-old gym teacher. And there was that one jerky Life Guard at Mitchell pool that insisted we take a ‘nude soapy’ shower before letting us through the locker room to the pool area.

Looking back I guess the naked shower in Junior High is a rite of passage in Junior Highs across the country. In high school, it was less traumatic because the ground had been broken in junior high. By then the levels of puberty were more consistent among us. Years later I was never worried walking around the health club naked. As I got older, I really didn’t care what people thought – I just wanted a shower to get the stink off.

The absolute worst moment was throwing up in Mr. Frazin’s 8th-grade math class. It was right after lunch and everything was fine – then suddenly it wasn’t. I wasn’t the type of kid that would have to leave to go to the bathroom. I could hold it. Heaven forbid if you actually took a crap at school. I had no stomach issues, except when I had the flu.

But this particular afternoon, as I sat in Mr. Frazin’s class right after lunch, my stomach started somersaulting.  As I do with any illness, I willed it to pass. I focused on keeping my stomach from its gymnastic tricks. Steady, steady, and then nope – suddenly vomit raged up. Despite my efforts to hold it in with my hands, it gushed out between my fingers and onto my desk, and my notebook, and my lap.

I don’t remember the kids’ reaction. Just the unreality of what had just happened. But I did hear Mr. Frazin say, “Go to the nurse’s office.”

And then he added, “and tell them to send the janitor here.”

Dripping and smelling like vomit, I went for the first time to see the nurse in the front office. She called Aunt Joyce. I was picked up and brought home. The stupid part was I felt fine after that. Clearly, something wasn’t right with my lunch. I always blamed the cantaloupe, but no one else in the family seemed to have a problem with it.

The next day was the real challenge. How would kids react to the new kid throwing up in class? There were a few ‘Puke boy’s and ‘What’s Up Chuck’s but honestly, it could have been much worse. After a few weeks, my ‘puking’ episode had all but faded, it seemed a little too convenient. It could have been that junior high kids have short attention spans but I always suspected a conversation was had with the class for my benefit.

Junior High kids are known for doing stupid things. I remember at the end of one day in 7th grade, Jon Sabath was trying to hit the tips of his fingers with his comb. He had heard that if you prick the ends of your fingers and swing your arm around, blood would spray out the ends. Unfortunately, Jon’s comb was not very sharp.

But fortunately for Jon, Dean Smith offered to help. All Jon really needed was a little more force. So Dean took Jon’s comb and as hard as he could, he wailed on Jon’s fingers tips like the comb was a 6-inch machete. We all saw Jon’s pain through his reaction. But as he tried to smother the pain in his mouth Dean shouted, “Now swing your arms around!” After all, that was the point of all this.

Sure enough, little droplets of blood speckled the ceiling tiles above us. All the gathered 7th-grade boys congratulated Jon on his successful blood splatter as he wrapped his fingers in tissue to stop the bleeding.

The lunchroom was always a hive of energy. The loud buzz of adolescent conversation with accents of laughter, screams and howls. The overall buzz would grow in volume after the food was consumed, which was a clear sign to release the animals into the yard. The first step was to stifle the din so the release could be coordinated; and any necessary announcements that needed to be made.

I remember one afternoon in 8th grade when they announced we could no longer have chicken fights during recess or risk detention. Obviously, someone forgot the first rule of Chicken Fights – you don’t talk about Chicken Fights. OK, maybe some of the teachers saw us holding one another on their backs trying to push each other over. We weren’t exactly hiding what we were doing. We were just having fun. And, of course, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

Junior high school kids aren’t always the best behaved. And unfortunately, substitute teachers bore the brunt of this. Something about that temporary teacher brought out the worse in some of us. Kids, in general, like to see what they can get away with. So one day in Mrs. Ivy’s homework and we had a sub. The sub had just finished taking attendance when Tracy Calderie walked in.

“And you are…?” she asked.

“Bob Yancy,” Tracy said. The whole class snickered but the sub did not let on that anything was wrong. “Bob” took his seat on the opposite end of the room from the door as the sub dutifully check his name off the attendance list.

A few minutes later Bob walks in.

“And you are…?” she asks again.

“Tracy Calderie,” Bob says.

Again, the whole class snickered while ‘Tracy’ took his seat right by the door.  But the sub had her attendance list all checked off so everything was fine. This was until someone from the front office knocked on the wall and said, “Excuse me, I need Tracy Calderie to come with me. ”

Now the class cracked up as the sub pointed toward the door while “Bob” stood up in the opposite corner. Best prank bust I had ever seen.

On another Fall afternoon, a month or so after school started in 8th Grade, I was in Mrs. Ivy’s homeroom waiting for the final bell. Earlier that summer I had started collecting Famous Monster magazines. So far I had accumulated 4 magazines. This particular afternoon I had brought them to school so my friends could check them out. A group of us were in the back of the room getting our fill of “Food of the Gods”, “Futureland” and “Space 1999”.

Mr. Camporeale, our Social Studies teacher, would occasionally cut through Mrs. Ivy’s room to get to his room next door. He looked a lot like Mr. Kotter from “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

As he walked passed one of my friends looking at my magazine, he stopped. Grabbed the magazine and flipped it to look at the cover.

“This yours?” he asked.

“No, its Zilligen’s,” he said. Thanks, I couldn’t have been sold out faster if I were a free umbrella in a downpour.

“You got more of these?” he asked.

“Just these four,” I answered. Crap, I had just started collecting these and now they were going to be taken away.

“You know,” Mr. Camporeale said as he grabbed the magazine from my friend casually flipping through it. “I used to buy these when I was a kid. In fact, I have #1”

He had #1? That was worth $500! They didn’t even sell that one in the magazine anymore.

“Where do you get these?”

“In the magazine store in the Commons.” The Commons was a strip mall in downtown Deerfield.

“Can you get me the next issue when you pick one up.”

“Sure,” I said.

So the following month when the new issue arrived I picked up two. The next morning I delivered it to Mr. Camporeale’s room.

“You know,” he said. “Every Halloween I bring my monster magazines in. You can look at them when I do.”

“Including #1?”

“Yep”

Halloween was only a couple of weeks away. And true to his word, when we had Social Studies on Halloween, Mr. Camporeale’s desk was piled with Famous Monster magazines.

From behind his desk, Mr. Camporeale started his class by saying, “When I was a kid, I used to buy Monster magazines. My mom said they would rot my brain but I bought them anyway. So – every year for Halloween, I bring them in to show you kids, that what you read will not rot your brains.”

“OK Zilligen, come up here.”

Uh oh, as much as I wanted to see #1, I didn’t want to be called out in front of everyone. On the other side, it was now no secret that I was now Mr. Camporeale’s supplier, of Famous Monster magazines. I was feeling a bit dirty; dirty about being a teacher’s pet.

“Come on, you know you want to see these.”

Slowly I got up and made my way to his desk.

“That, my friend, is the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland.”

Sure enough, on the top of the furthest pile was the first issue – worth a cool $500! The most expensive magazine ever! As I was looking at the 40 or 50 magazines, Mr. Camperelli said, “Go ahead, Zilligen. You can touch it.”

I reached out for the magazine but instead I grabbed it and ran back to my desk.

“Hey, Zilligen! Put that back!” Mr. Camperelli yelled. The class laughed their support of my theft.

So I got up and started to put it back.

“Nah, you can go ahead and look it,” he said. “In fact, each of you can come up and take a look at them as I go through today’s lesson. And this WILL be on Friday’s quiz!” he warned.

During his lesson, I flipped through Mr. Camporeale’s #1. I was horrified to see there were pieces of the magazine cut out. It certainly wasn’t worth $500, in fact, the cover was coming off. I bet it was only worth $450, maybe $475.

For the rest of that year, each month I dropped off his copy. He was definitely my favorite teacher that year, despite the fact that I didn’t really care for social studies.

Another Mr. Camporeale story: Unsurprisingly, it turned out Mr. Camporeale was also a movie buff. So it was not unusual for him to supplement his lessons with movies. For kids, this will typically get you on the favorite teacher list.

Now – in 1977 we were told that Drugs were bad. In fact, It turned out drugs were so bad, the teachers in Wilmot Junior High spent an entire week telling us how bad drugs were for us. Having to fill up an entire week it seemed like they found were starting to run out of ways to tell us that drugs were bad for you. This is before Ronald Reagan declared war on Drugs.

The message accumulated in an anti-drug movie shown to us in the lunchroom on a Friday afternoon. It was announced that this movie was rated ‘R’ but we were supposed to pay attention to the message being sent. Once again, for those of us not paying attention earlier in the week – Drugs Are BAD!

For the movie, I was sitting at a table behind the movie projector. Mr. Roeing, my Science teacher, was sitting next to the projector and Mr. Camporeale was next to him. The movie was about a nice girl who turned to drugs and went bad. Toward the end of the movie the now ‘bad girl’ was living with her drug-selling boyfriend. When her dad confronts them in their apartment, the boyfriend gets out of bed, he’s naked. So is the girl.

Suddenly, the film went out of focus. I looked at the project saw Mr. Roeing’s hand on the lens of the projector. I saw Mr. Camporeale look over and hit Mr. Roeing as the two of them animated their best Abbott and Costello routine. His body language said, “What are you doing?”

The movie came back into focus just as the girl got out of bed. Mr. Camporeale made alot of Junior High boys very happy that day.

While Mr. Roeing may have been a bit prudish, he was a fun science teacher. He would encourage students to try things on their own. I remember me and my lab partner were making up a lab – it was either during lunch or after school. Dean Smith had taken Mr. Roeing up on some extracurricular lab work so he was in the lab as well – working on his side project: ‘Contact Fly Paper’.

The concept had a great ‘wow’ factor. Earlier Dean had mixed the chemicals and passed the mixture through a filter. The filter had been drying. Dean was walking passed us gingerly carrying a brownish yellow circle of paper when I asked him what he was working on. Dean explained that the ‘Contact Fly Paper’ would explode when the fly landed on it. He sounded like Peter Brady describing his volcano project. I thought the fact that he was carrying it already proved it wasn’t going work. But just as we got back to our lab we heard a loud “Pop!”

Dean was just at the door a part of the brown paper was floating to the ground. Dean’s hand was now the same color as the filter had been. Son of a bitch – I guess it did work!

In Junior High, us kids were all trying to find our social circles. Mayim Bialik from Big Bang Theory described the difference between Nerds and Geeks – Nerds maintained an interest regardless of the social implications, while the Geeks maintain an interest because of the social group. In Junior High, these social circles were in constant rotation and development. And as we got older these social groups would be increasingly more important to us. The older the ‘social circle’ was, the less ‘geeky’ it was. Also, the more overall acceptance of the ‘social circle’ by society at large, then it was viewed as less ‘geeky’.

The largest and oldest of these circles were Boys and Girls/Dating. As much as I wanted to play in that game, it would still be years for me, I was much too shy. Sports was another group I was not involved with. While Dating andSports were well beyond the ‘Geeky’ label – as described by Mayim – this is because it is so universally accepted. ‘Geeky’ is used for less mainstream interests.

Music, on the other hand, had a wide range of ‘Geekiness’. It was typically based on bands you wanted to follow. The Beach Boys definitely leaned on the nerdy side, while Peter Frampton was the mainstream side. For me, Monster Magazines put me on the ‘nerd’ chart. While there were other kids interested in monsters, we were mostly on the nerdy side. Pop-can collecting – nerdville. My plants, still nerdville – though cactus helped a little. Unfortunately as basic as stamp collecting was, for most Junior High kids, that started me running for various offices in nerdville.

Fads are quick popular things and activities that attracted alot of people. These would also fuel more socials circles. Some of the fads we experienced back then were mood rings, more in 7th grade. Back then everyone had to have a mood ring on display so we could tell if you were ‘calm’ or ‘angry’ or ‘catatonic’.

Bubble Yum and Pop Rocks became a crazy in 8th grade. Anyone that had connections to someone on the East Coast that could send packages of Bubble Yum was a King/Queen at Wilmot for 24-48 hours. Kiss also came on strong in 8th grade. While I was no artist, I was able to draw the faces of Ace, Gene, Paul and Peter – the members of Kiss. I did a good enough job to get a couple of commission pieces (which I think amounted to a couple of ‘Thank you’s). My cousin John had the Destroyer and Rock’n’Roll Over albums which I borrowed as I tried to work my way into that cool music scene. My obsession with Kiss lasted about two weeks. It basically ended when John and I got into an argument and John wouldn’t let me listen to his Kiss albums anymore (and he had just gotten The Originals collection – their first 3 albums). After another week of grumbling, I simply went back to my Beach Boys – which was #1 on the radio in nerdville.

As I said, I would never consider myself artistic, but I would rate my Kiss portraits above average. On the other end of the spectrum, I also tried to introduce 8th grade’s Team I to Beatleman. Beatleman was a drawing I learned from one of two guys who started a cactus store in the Deerfield Commons the summer of ’76. The two owners named their store Quetzalcoatl, after the Aztec Sun God – that turned out to be wrong. All they sold were cactus – that also turned out to be wrong. By the Fall they started selling regular house plants too because they found out the Deerfield market for cactus was already saturated by the colored Moon Cactus that Jewel was selling in their florist department.

The store was an odd building in the northeast corner of the Commons’ parking lot. In the summer they would put cactus outside to attract customers. Instead, they attracted two nerdy Junior High boys – John and I. The inside was white stucco with a brick floor. It smelled like dried potting soil. I was in heaven.

Any time Aunt Joyce or Uncle Jack would go to the Commons we would visit their store. After mowing Grandma’s lawn, we would stop by their store. John and I so became friends with the owners. We rarely bought anything because they never carried smaller plants. The owners put up with me and John.  I would dare say we may have been friends.

I don’t remember their names but during one of our visits, the clean-shaven owner drew me a Beatleman. It was something he had made up when he was a kid (probably 5 or 6 years ago). He had specific rules on drawing Beatleman – the smile was uneven, one tooth was always bigger and he had 3 hairs on the top of his head. After he taught me, he had me practice it. It felt very important. I decided this was the image I was going to plant at Wilmot Jr. High. Whenever I could, I would draw one on the chalkboard or leave a scrap paper with a Beatleman in one of the classrooms or in the hallway. I imagined everybody going “who is the Beatleman?” “Here’s another one!” “Who keeps drawing this?” Soon there would be other people doing it. It would be the strange little face that would get swept up like the Bicentennial fervor we were already going through.

The results were predictable. Outside of one or two “what is this?”s Beatleman was unceremoniously erased or throw away. Outside of a few friends, he was gone in 3 or 4 weeks. He never reached the level of ‘Kilroy‘ or the Smiley Face. And after a year, the same fate followed the Quetzalcoatl cactus store. The owners sold what plants they could and closed up shop the following summer. Only Beatleman survived with his trusty sidekick Waba.

But before my Jr. High career ended, the Eagles would release “New Kid in Town,” just in time for Christmas in 1976. By that time my new kid smell was pretty much worn off. I still related to being the new kid despite the fact that I was beginning to find my way through the social circles and their traps that we were all maneuvering through. No, I wasn’t hanging out at kids houses regularly. In fact, I would say I had only 2 or 3 kids I would call a good friend. Back then I was just trying to get through school so I could get back home. Back to fishing, my plants, my pop cans, and my stamps.  The song spoke of romance but at that age, the closest I was getting was the occasional glance at a pretty girl.

Don Henley and Glenn Frey’s lyrics captured our need to belong which seemed so important in Junior High. “There’s a new kid in town, Everybody’s talking, There’s a new kid in town, People started walking.” In the song the ‘New Kid’ took the singer’s girlfriend. The singer said everybody wanted to be like him. While the ‘New Kid’ was romantic – I was anything but. I was hoping someday to have a girlfriend but that was still years away. For now, I was happy having a few friends and finding my way as a new teenager. Losing 50 pounds lessened the teasing. Gaining my nickname ‘Waba’ would benefit me for many years to come, and in ways I could never anticipate. But no one was doing what I was doing.

Finding my way through the social labyrinths of Wilmot made moving to Deerfield more comfortable and made leaving my past behind easier. There were good times. Those I would like to repeat. But there were many turns and traps back then that left many bruises and heartaches. Being 12 and 13 years old was a tough age but it was survivable. I will just cherish the memories I have, that now have been time has polished them to reflect the sparkle of memories. I will leave this to remind myself what it was like to be the new kid at Wilmot Jr. High.

New Kid in Town
There’s talk on the street; it sounds so familiar
Great expectations, everybody’s watching you
People you meet, they all seem to know you
Even your old friends treat you like you’re something new
Johnny come lately, the new kid in town
Everybody loves you, so don’t let them down
You look in her eyes; the music begins to play
Hopeless romantics, here we go again
But after a while you’re looking the other way
It’s those restless hearts that never mend
Johnny come lately, the new kid in town
Will she still love you when you’re not around?
There’s so many things you should have told her,
But night after night you’re willing to hold her, just hold her
Tears on your shoulder
There’s talk on the street; it’s there to remind you
It doesn’t really matter which side you’re on
You’re walking away and they’re talking behind you
They will never forget you till somebody new comes along
Where you been lately? There’s a new kid in town
Everybody loves him, don’t they?
And he’s holding her, and you’re still around. Oh, my, my
There’s a new kid in town, just another new kid in town

Ooh, hoo. Everybody’s talking ’bout the new kid in town
Ooh, hoo. Everybody’s walking like the new kid in town
There’s a new kid in town. I don’t want to hear it
There’s a new kid in town. I don’t want to hear it
There’s a new kid in town. There’s a new kid in town
There’s a new kid in town. Everybody’s talking
There’s a new kid in town. People started walking
There’s a new kid in town
There’s a new kid in town

Songs of My Life: In My Room


songsofmylifeDave and I met Grandma after we moved in with the Beckmans. Obviously not our grandma but nor was she John and Jim’s grandma on Uncle Jack’s side. Mary Welch was a friend of Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack’s after they got married. They lived in an apartment next door to John and Mary Welch. The four became good friends despite their age difference. John Welch was postmaster of Deerfield and Mary Welch worked at Lighting Products, a company on the outskirts of Waukegan that made lighting fixtures. They did not have children of their own. After John Welch passed away from a heart attack, Mary Welch adopted John and Jim as her grandchildren. The Beckmans, in return, adopted her as Grandma.

When I first met Grandma she reminded me of Etta, a great aunt that lived with Grandma & Grandpa on my Dad’s side. But this Grandma was actually the complete opposite. Etta was a sister of my grandma or grandpa. She lived with them but we never actually interacted with her. She was an older and scarier version of my Grandma. John and Jim’s Grandma was very nice, wonderful, lovely, beautiful. I don’t remember exactly when I met her but she would occasionally come over for dinner, especially holidays. She was also John and Jim’s babysitter. Dave and I no longer needed a babysitter. She wasn’t so much a babysitter for John and Jim as she would play a referee.

Within the first week, Dave and I learned that besides cutting the lawn at Aunt Joyce and Uncle’s house, we also would cut Grandma’s lawn. The real trick was getting the Beckman’s lawnmower over to Grandma’s – she didn’t own one. Since they only had one car, one of us would go with Uncle Jack the evening before and drop the lawnmower off in her garage. There was plenty of room in the garage. Grandma didn’t own a car either.

John, Jim and Aunt Joyce showed Dave and I the path to take as we rode our bikes to Grandma’s. It was a zig-zaggy path that we would pick-up at Wilmot Road. From there we would cut through Woodland Elementary, Dave and Jim’s school, turn left onto Greenwood, a right on Broadway, left onto Somerset, a right onto Prairie, which was just fields at the time, left onto Hazel for a bit before taking a right onto Forest which sloped downward, to our left to Walnut finally taking a right onto Chestnut. We would cross at the light on Deerfield Road to Grandma’s house which was on the southeast corner of the intersection. There were other ways to get there but they would be the wrong way. We would try these ‘other ways’ as the four of us would sometimes race to get there.

The general rule with mowing was everyone did a bag. Mowing a lawn without collecting the grass was considered uncouth. My Dad never collected the grass. This same process was followed both at home and at Grandma’s. The process of cutting the lawn at Grandma’s was pretty much the same – we would park our bikes on her driveway and knock on her backdoor to say we were there to cut her lawn. One of us would start, by the time we had each done a bag full, Grandma would have come out with a soda for each of us. Many times her lawn would only take a bag each. Aunt Joyce would weed or plant flowers depending on the season, or talk with Grandma about Lighting Products. Aunt Joyce used to work there with Grandma.

I loved talking Grandma about plants and she was a great listener. She had a flower garden on the east part of her property that we would walk through together pointing out how the various plants were doing. Plants were something Grandma and I could bond over. Every holiday she would send the most beautiful flower arrangements from the Deerfield Blossom Shop. We would be eager to show her interesting flowers the Blossom Shop would use in her arrangements when she would come over for the holiday meal.

One of my worse memory after moving in the Beckmans occurred during one of our lawn cutting sessions. There were two parkways we would need to cut, one on Chestnut and one on Deerfield Road. The one on Deerfield Road was tricky. Besides the big oak or walnut there, Deerfield was a busy road and it was a little nerve racking cutting that first strip right next to the road. The other issue with that the parkway was the water pipe that stuck up by the sidewalk near the driveway and the tree. You had to be careful mowing around it because it stuck up pretty high but not as high as the picture to the right. Unfortunately, during one of my turns mowing at Grandma’s around the water pipe, there was a loud thud. The lawnmower, while still running, rattled like crazy and sounded terrible. I had hit the water pipe with the lawnmower. So I turned it off and got Aunt Joyce. Aunt Joyce went inside and called Uncle Jack at work to let him know what happened. Waiting for Uncle Jack was like waiting for the Hangman.

Uncle Jack arrived at Grandma’s to check out the lawnmower. I started it up and as soon as he heard the engine’s mangled growl and saw it vibrate. “Turn it off!” he yelled. He was pissed.

“Didn’t you see that pipe there?” he yelled.

“Ye-yes,” I stammered. ” I was trying to get close.”

“God Dammit,” he said – one of his favorite curses I would learn.

It was the first time I saw Uncle Jack get angry at me. Needless to say, it would not be the last. Grandma knew I was scared. She could have predicted Uncle Jack’s reaction. Apparently, I had broken a ‘Lawn Boy’, which was a very expensive lawn mower. I didn’t know there were even different types of lawn mowers at the time.

The Lawn Boy was brought into the shop but there was no fixing it. I had broken the drive shaft. The whole lawnmower would have to be replaced. A few weeks later when Grandma was ‘babysitting’ us, she talked to me about the Uncle Jack and the Lawn Boy. She told me to give Uncle Jack time. Everyone knows it was an accident. Once there was a new lawnmower everything will be in the past. Just be careful around that water pipe she warned. I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a ‘next time’.

Within a few weeks with the new lawnmower, we were cutting the grass at Grandma’s again. With the bag rotations, I ended up doing the parkway with the water pipe. Everyone knew the care I had taken around the water pipe by the long grass I left around the pipe. In the months and years later. There would be comments about being careful and not to break the lawnmower. The sting of the comments faded and eventually turned into jokes. Which I would eventually accept. Cutting the grass at Grandma’s once again became a family activity. And we would take our turns cutting the grass and sitting with Grandma on the stoop, drinking our sodas.

In the winter after a snow storm, we would be driven over to shovel her driveway and sidewalks, mainly so Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack could pull their car into her driveway. Grandma very generous, slipping each of us a few dollars that we would refuse. Then she would force the money into our hands with instructions not to tell Aunt Joyce or Uncle Jack.

That Christmas Dave and I learned just how generous Grandma could be. Underneath the tree that morning were two stereos, one for each bedroom. We were excited to receive such extravagant gifts. These were clearly marked ‘from Grandma’. Each stereo came with 8-track player – the latest in audio quality. So each of us received an 8-track tape. When I was writing this story I ask Dave, Jim and John if they remember what 8-tape they received. None of them could remember. I could never forget, I received The Beach Boy’s ‘Endless Summer’.

As excited as we were to receive the stereos, we were not allowed to start the process of setting up them up since church was merely three hours away and we had to get ready. So Dave and I explored all the contents of the box the stereo came in. On the way to and from church, I read the pamphlet that accompanied our stereo so I would be prepared to set it up when we got home.

We picked up Grandma from her church, she was a devout Catholic and went to Holy Cross in Deerfield off Waukegan Road. We were Lutheran and went to Zion Lutheran Church on Deerfield Road. Holy Cross was on the way home for us. This was a pretty normal routine for the holidays – picking Grandma up on the way home to spend time and share a holiday meal. This year, we boys, thanked her profusely for the new stereos. And when we got home, we piled out of the car, we ran to our bedrooms to change and began setting up our stereos to show them off to her. Dave and I needed shelves to put our speakers on since there was nowhere else in our room to put them. For the time being, we propped them up on each of our beds. Grandma came to each room and properly admired the gifts she had given us. So John and Jim had the radio playing our of theirs. It would be a number of months before I realized Dave and I needed to connect the power cord to the radio antenna ground post to get FM stations so Dave and I did could not get the FM radio to work that morning. So instead of the radio, we soon had ‘Surfin’ Safari’ playing from the speakers. Soon a ‘stereo war’ broke out as Dave and I challenged Jim and John. Grandma stood in the hallway cringing and Aunt Joyce came down laughing as we tried to outdo each other. Uncle Jack yelled at us to turn them down and warned that future infractions would have appropriate punishments.

Later that afternoon after Christmas dinner, Grandma’s generosity continued as she presented us with another gift, a gift certificate for Deerfield Record Shop so we could get another 8-track, an album or more 45’s. Unfortunately, Grandma, with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack did not know what they had released in me with this introduction to the world of music. It would turn out to be a lifetime interest, collecting albums, making social connections and, for a little while, a career that revolved around music. While we were already buying 45’s, 8-tracks brought me closer to my future obsession.

At the time, 8-track tapes offered a higher quality for music and the convenience to allow people to bring their music with them for the first time. 8-Tracks were originally developed Ampex Magnetic Tape Company, Lear Jet Company and RCA Records but embraced by Ford Motors in the Fall of 1965. Ford started offering 8-track stereo in all their cars. It knocked out the original 4-track tape but those were only available in California. By the time we had received our stereos from Grandma, 8-Tracks were at their peak. While cassette tapes were already available for recording purposes, they were deemed inferior to 8-tapes due to their low fidelity.

The technology of 8-tracks was great. OK, not really. First, there was the annoying ‘click-CLUNK’ when the player switched from one program to the next. A program was a collection of songs on the album. There were 4 programs per 8-track and two tracks for each song (left and right track) which is why they were called ‘8-tracks’. Typically two programs would make up one side of an album. As we got more 8-tracks, we would learn that sometimes to avoid long periods of silence at the end of a program, the record company would split the song over two programs. So in the middle of the song, it would fade out, click to the next program and fade back in. That was annoying.

‘Endless Summer’ introduced me to not only The Beach Boys but to fandom. A few weeks later I would declare myself a Beach Boys fan. Endless Summer was originally released June of ’74. It was a brilliant move on Micheal Love’s part, the current leader of the Beach Boys. ‘Endless Summer’ spent almost 3 years on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. But it was not only MY introduction to The Beach Boys but also for millions of young people who had not heard of them since their fade from the music scene which began in 1967. In 1967, they rivaled The Beatles for the top of the music scene. The ‘Endless Summer’ double album greatest hits was a perfect 8-track that hid the fading problems of 8-track tapes during the height of their popularity. It was a perfect album to take advantage of 8-track’s portability.

‘Endless Summer’ set a pattern on how I would listen to music in the coming years. My sister Hope taught me how to shuffle and bridge cards. So I would perfect my shuffling technique while playing solitaire. So as our 8-track collect would grow or the occasional stack of 45’s, I would listen to music while playing solitaire on my bed. Eventually, vinyl records become my primary media format for my listening/solitaire sessions.

The Beach Boys were my first band – Alan Jardine, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Micheal Love. For a young boy, they were like my first girlfriend. I loved anything they did. They opened my eyes to the world around me. They changed how I looked at myself and others. And yes, they would eventually disappoint me. But that was years away and I had a lot to learn. I was an eager student.

‘Endless Summer’ was soon joined with another Beach Boys collection – ‘Spirit of America‘, another double album greatest hits, though more secondary hits. It was from their illustrated portraits on ‘Endless Summer’ that I decided I wanted to grow a beard. They were my first representation of ‘cool’ in band form. The Beatles were right there too but their Red and Blue Greatest Hits were still another year away for Dave and me.

I remember watching an award show one evening and the nominees were ‘The Beatles’, ‘The Rolling Stones’, ‘The Beach Boys’ and ‘The Kinks’. I was actually surprised that The Beach Boys didn’t win – surely The Beatles were not better than The Beach Boys! It showed how biased and how nieve I was about music. I would learn a lot in the years to come. But at the beginning of 1976, The Beach Boys ruled my ears.

Even as I became a Beach Boys fan it was always about their music. I didn’t read much about them. I didn’t really care what they looked like (except most of them had beards). I didn’t know their historical place as a Rock ‘n’ Roll archetype. I enjoyed their music. The more I heard – the more I wanted to hear. I learned their names and understood Brian Wilson was the band’s leader and the true creative force behind The Beach Boys’ success. That summer they released ’15 Big Ones’ and the Chuck Berry cover ‘Rock and Roll Music’ was a huge hit for them.

In 1976 ‘Happy Days‘ was near the top ten for TV shows, making it to #1 the following year. Their theme song,  “Happy Days” written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, was released as a single that year peaking at #5. Another notable oldie released that year was The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life.” This was The Beatles first single since they broke up 6 years earlier. It was released to promote their ‘Rock and Roll Music‘ compilation. So The Beach Boys were not the only ones riding a wave of nostalgia that year. There was a lot of nostalgia that year as we celebrated America’s Bicentennial.

Today when you think about ‘comeback bands’ – bands that had drifted into obscurity only to reclaim their relevancy – people typically think of Aerosmith and Heart. While The Beach Boys didn’t reclaim their full relevancy, they did become standard fare for the next 20 years for the Summer Concert scene. While this would be a huge success for any band, you have to know that The Beach Boys were once as popular as The Beatles – until the ‘Smile’ album.

While The Beach Boys started out as Brian Wilson’s vocal instruments for surf music, it was soon apparent he wasn’t just any songwriter. Brian Wilson was gifted. Sure he cranked out songs about something The Beach Boys never did – surf (with the exception of Dennis Wilson) and the California culture – at a three album a year pace! But by their ninth album, ‘Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)‘ (which spawned ‘Help Me, Rhonda‘ and ‘California Girls‘) the music industry was well aware of Brian’s talent. So when he wanted to do something ‘different’ the studio gave him their full support.

The album was ‘Pet Sounds‘. It was a complete departure for The Beach Boys. It was Brian Wilson exploring his ‘In-My-Room’ type of music which he developed while the rest of the band was on tour in Japan. Brian was no longer touring with the band so he could focus on songwriting.  The new album was recorded mostly with studio musicians (know as The Wrecking Crew) with The Beach Boys filling in their vocals when they returned. The album wasn’t well received by the critics or the public. It was a songwriter’s album. In England, however, it was in the top ten for six months. The Beatles and The Who were blown away by what Brian had done. Now ‘Pet Sounds’ is legendary. Some say it inspired The Beatles to make Sgt. Peppers. What it did do is change how artists and the public look at the album format.

Sadly Brian Wilson’s accomplishments would also become The Beach Boys’ albatross. With the late success of ‘Pet Sounds’, Brian would begin their next project – ‘Smile‘. Brian ‘locked’ himself in the studio for over a year (02/17/66 – 05/18/67) working on ‘Smile’; missing the original January release date. One single was released as a teaser – ‘Good Vibrations‘. It was The Beach Boys’ first single to sell a million copies. Anticipation for ‘Smile’ was huge. But the pressure proved to be too much for Brian. The project was eventually scrapped. And when The Beatles released Sgt. Peppers, it would be the nail in ‘Smiles’ coffin – almost. ‘Smile’ was officially released 44 years later. The stories of Brian’s depression and instability in though following years would be on par with Bill Murray but without any of Bill Murray’s charm and playfulness.

With the failure to release ‘Smile’ The Beach Boys would begin to fail. ‘Smile’ was turned into ‘Smiley Smile‘. For four years The Beach Boys albums would fail to chart better than their predecessor, each album peaking lower and lower. Their comeback album ‘Surf’s Up‘ stopped the descent but barely cracked the top 30. But The Beach Boys would return. And while that request would not come from their wives (an ode to the ‘Odd Couple’ sitcom), it did come from Jerry Garcia.

After a classic 3-hour Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore East in April 1971, The Beach Boys joined The Dead on stage for 7 songs. This was an awkward transition from The Dead to the washed-up Beach Boys but by the end of their set, the crowd was going wild for their familiar California sound. After this impromptu performance, The Beach Boys go off to Holland to record ‘Holland‘ – which doesn’t do well on the charts – but ‘the cool kids’ (ie – Dead Heads) begin to think The Beach Boys are cool again. A few years of VW buses crisscrossing the American concert scenes and The Dead Heads giving high praise to The Beach Boys, and I’m sure a few other things,  a buzz begins -as one would expect.

So sometimes a band has a member that plays the villain. With The Beach Boys, this was Micheal Love, Brian Wilson’s cousin. Michael did not like the direction Brian had taken the band with ‘Pet Sounds’. While Michael Love was a key contributor to The Beach Boys’ lyrics, he was not the creative genius Brian was. Michael was more like his Uncle Murray, the Wilson brother’s dad when it came to business. Michael smelled the buzz during the tour for ‘Holland’ and recorded ‘The Beach Boys In Concert‘ which actually charted better than ‘Surf’s Up’. And it was Micheal Love that put together the ‘Endless Summer’ collection. I thank him for that business intuition. ‘Endless Summer’ introduced me and millions of others to more than just The Beach Boys, for me, ‘Endless Summer’ introduced me to music at a different level.

‘Endless Summer’ was a great collection of Beach Boys hits. Michael Love had alternated between upbeats songs with slow songs on each side or program in 8-track tape terms. All those great Summer songs made me long to see the West Coast. But it was ‘In My Room’ that captured my new sanctuary, a 10 x 10 room that Dave and I shared. With Brian Wilson’s vocal arrangements, ‘In My Room’ it would transport me to another quiet room where palm trees stood outside instead a Russian Olive. A room that was just outside sunshine, the beach and the possibilities of love.

I bought “The Smile Session” in 2011 to see what Brian was actually planning with ‘Smile’. (Brian Wilson actually release his version of ‘Smile’ as “Brian Wilson Presents Smile“, which I also bought.) For Christmas in 2015, I had “The Pet Sounds Sessions” on my Christmas List which Josh got me. It was great insight to those recording sessions.

Let me pause to explain how I listen to my music now since I no longer have an 8-track stereo next to me in my bedroom. Over the years of constantly buying new albums, currently in the compact disc format, I have developed a process on how I listen to my new music. In full disclosure, checking my Amazon account, I purchase about 20-25 albums a year. Until my kids came along I would first listen to a new album when I had time to sit down and focus on the album. I would follow along with anything that came with the album – liner notes, lyrics, etc. I used to say I would get over 50% of my enjoyment from that first listening session.

Until one evening in the basement our home I was in the middle of one of my ‘listening sessions’ – with headphones so I did not disturb my newborn son or my wife, who was working the next morning. Suddenly the overhead light started flashing causing me to take my headphones off. I could now hear Desi informing/yelling at me that our infant son Nate was crying. He had woken Desi up while I was ear-deep into one of my cd’s. I was on dad duty and had failed miserably! So I lost my ‘listening sessions’. I would have to skip directly listening to the album in the car, typically on the way to work. I would record the new CD on to a cassette and listen to the cassette for a week on my commute to work. Once I got a CD player for the car I would not need that extra step of transferring them to cassette. After that week, the album would be moved to be rotated into the CD player in our stereo system that I would typically have played over the weekend. From there they get incorporated into my entire cd collection. I went through this process because to get an intimate appreciation of the music.

So dear reader, call it coincidence, cosmic energy, destiny or the hand of God, I thought I would share this bit of serendipity with you. The year I wrote this story, for my birthday, Desi gave me ‘Made In California‘ a 6-disc Beach Boys box set. When I started writing this story in the beginning of April, there 6 discs were waiting their turn for my daily commute.  As I finish this story the last discs are now playing on the home stereo system.

So to finish this story, 12 year old me, soon to be 13, did not know who The Beach Boys were when I began listening to ‘Endless Summer’. Thus began this journey of musical knowledge. Not just on discovering The Beach Boys but how music would soon encompass my life. But in the early moments, as I sat on my bed playing solitaire, the ‘Endless Summer’ 8-track would click along next to me allowing me to follow Brian Wilson’s muse through his music. Contrary to the lyrics of ‘In My Room’, I did not “lock out all my worries and my fears”, I was actually locking them in. I was working through my real worries and fears, and I had a lot of them. In the darkness ‘My Room’ (actually ‘our room’),  I would ‘lie awake’ and cry and sigh and pray. And despite my brother being 3 feet away, I was alone in these thoughts. And I was afraid. My yesterday was not a laughing matter. But with Brian Wilson’s help, the Beckmans and Mary Welch – Grandma – I learned not to be afraid – ‘In My Room’ or anywhere else.

There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my room

Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday

Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room