Lost In La Puente

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  Saturday morning, sometime during the summer of 1970:

Me: “Hey Dad… I’m heading over to Ken’s house.”

Dad: “OK.  What are you two gonna do today?”

Me: “I dunno… maybe go grab some fries and shakes at Randy’s Burgers. Ride around.”

Dad:  “OK… just be sure to get home before dark. and stay outta trouble.”

Me: (whooshing sound as I blast off into the Great Unknown)

I would jump on my metallic purple 10-speed and haul-ass from home as fast as my pedaling could take me.  Yes, I would make my way to Ken’s house for a few minutos, maybe even find some time to make out with his sister Julie (if no one saw us), but that was only the start of a typical teen-age Saturday morning.  The possibilities were endless, and my hard-earned allowance of $3 a week (handed over to me just before I left) guaranteed that I would not go hungry or thirsty, no matter what adventures came our way.

We might ride up to the top of Pee Hill and tempt injury or death by racing down the steep streets like imbeciles.  We might ride to the (outdoor old-skool) mall in West Covina to look for girls or ride The Broadway elevator up and down 14 times before getting kicked out by the ancient security guard.  We might ride up into La Habra Heights and careen down the steep and twisty tree-lined streets while the neighborhood dogs would race after us to try and bite our legs and tires.  We might ride to Workman High School to watch the cute cheerleaders bouncing and prancing around during field practice.  We might even ride the 35 miles all the way to Huntington Beach to hang out on the sand and eat hot dogs and just be stupid hormone-soaked teenage Cali boys.

We might wind up doing some or all of those things.  Or not.  The point is, once I left the house, I was GONE, baby... totally lost.  The only way Dad would know where I was and what I’d been up to was if I got hurt or in trouble.  Otherwise, he didn’t have a clue where I was, who I was with, or what I/we were doing.  There were phone booths all over town if I had to make a call for any reason, but I had no reason to call unless I was hurt or in trouble, see?  He trusted me enough to let me roam about unhindered, unsupervised, uncontrolled.  That’s how it was for a relatively-good 13-year-old boy in 1970 in La Puente, California.  I know it wasn’t the same for girls… or was it?

I WAS FREE.

No smart phone.  No mobile phone at all.  No tablet.  No pager.  No e-tracking.  No live feeds.  No GPS.  No electronic tethers of any kind to worry about.

I WAS FREE.

No closed-circuit cameras were mounted on buildings, ready to catch me doing brodies on the smooth concrete loading dock at Food Giant.  No motion sensors were activated when we climbed into dumpsters behind the liquor store, looking for ruined copies of PLAYBOY or STAG Magazines.  Active surveillance was limited to being seen and/or heard doing… whatever.

I WAS FREE.

I feel awful for 13-year-old kids in our modern climate change age, with their (not very) smart phones and Fecesbook updates and Twatter feeds and I(B)Ms and all the things that hold them in electronic hostage, whether they are conscious of their condition or not.  Yeah, they might think they have it all… all the electronic goodies and the interconnectivity we modern humans think we cannot live without.  But they are NOT FREE, no way no how.   They can NEVER be as free as I was in 1970, riding my bike (without a helmet) across town, hair flying and sweat streaming and skinny tires glued to the ground by gravity alone.

I’d been thinking about this issue for some time when I read a column in my local paper, written by a school teacher who answers questions posed by unbelievably dense parents.  Seems a Mother’s kindergarten-aged daughter was having trouble making friends at school or her pre-scheduled ‘play dates’ and Mom asked what should she do.  The teacher’s answer was surprising… she basically said that play dates usually don’t work out for kids, because it’s really about the parents being friends and getting together. 

As for the kid making friends in her neighborhood (which the Mom doesn’t allow), the teacher talked about her own Mom letting her leave the house ON HER OWN and walk up the street to make friends, something ‘play dates’ just don’t accommodate.  Kids that don’t learn to make friends unless there is direct adult supervision are just missing out, so Mom needs to take kid to the park and let her run wild, make her own friends and learn how to assimilate into her own age group… on her own. Skip the play dates, lessen the hovering and supervision and little Missy’s ability to make friends at school would probably improve dramatically.

I read the question and answer over a few times to make sure I understood what was being discussed, and that’s when I flashed back to my yoot.  Even as a little kid, I somehow managed to find other kids my own age, whether at school or in the ‘hood, to play with and fight with and get into trouble with, to the betterment of us all.  Even then, the only time the parents got involved was when we drew blood or needed stitches or to be fed so we could rumble again.

It all relates to my original concern about too much electronic connectivity, parental control, covert and overt supervision.  When you grow up with those things as part of your world, you never know what it means to be without them, and therefore never learn to operate without them or know what it means to be so unencumbered.  This meme is probably not unlike arguments made about landline phones or teevee or any other modern conveniences that changed our lives during the last 100 years, arguments made by olds to youngs, the same arguments that are met with a heavy sigh and rolling eyeballs.  I think the newest digital demons are much more sinister, far more mind-numbing and ADD-causing, and are creating people who never really know what it means to be free, the way I was at 13 years old.

As I've asserted before, I reject the ownership of a smart phone, and will do so unless and until it becomes mandatory for my work.  I make no excuses for this Luddite tendency, even though my current work phone allows me to text and take pictures.  I understand how smart phones have become ubiquitous, their presence almost natural in many people’s lives. However, I draw the line at owning one for a wide variety of reasons.  Example: my boss recently called me into his office and we had the following conversation:

Him: “Here, I have a new phone for you to replace your old one, it’s a smart phone I just got.”

Me:  “Thanks, but I don’t need a smart phone.”

Him: “Whaddaya mean, you don’t need a smart phone?  It’s new and lets you browse the web!”

Me:  “I have a philosophical issue with smart phones and choose not to have one. The phone I have lets me text when I need to and that’s enough for me.”

Him: (sounding slightly confused) “But… you can check your e-mail from your smart phone no matter where you’re at.”

Me:  “I can check my e-mail when I'm working at my desk.  If I’m out and about, that means I’m busy doing something else and my e-mail can wait until I get back to my desk.”

Him:  (with a look of confusion and incredulity on his face, pauses for a few beats) “Well… OK then.  Have it your way.”

I know he didn’t understand my point, but then again his Droid calls out to him all day long, pulling his eyes out of his head in an instant.  For him, not having a smart phone is just… DUMB.  Every time I mention my aversion to smart phones, I get the same reaction, with varying degrees of flabbergast and disbelief.  I’m used to it, but it gets annoying.  I know it’s a losing battle… even my personal phone carrier is dropping their 2G service soon, which will render my ancient Nokia obsolete, forcing me to get a newer, more connected device.  I’m not looking forward to it.

Back to that whole teenage freedom thingie.  It only went so far (as it should), and my 13-year-old self sure as hell knew it.  In the case of being gone on my bike all day, there was one hard and fast Dad rule:  I had BETTER be in the front yard by the time the street lights came on or it was the belt for me, no questions asked, no excuses.  And he whipped HARD.  That was all the motivation I needed to keep me in line, the vision of him hanging on to my arm with one hand, his belt lashing at me with the other, both of us circling around in a weird dance of parental discipline.  Me no likey!

So here’s how it happened (more than once heh heh heh):  me and Ken are at Randy’s Burgers, eating fries and drinking choco shakes and trying to act all cool in front of some girls from another school.  Suddenly, I stopped cold… I realized it was getting dark and I was at least 2 miles from home. HOLY SHIT!!!  I dropped my food and jumped on my bike and blasted off for home, riding like a deranged rabid wolverine through the quickly-darkening neighborhoods, pedaling my ass off.  Somewhere about halfway home, my skinny front tire caught one of the recessed gutters at an intersection and I went down HARD, rolling into the curb and scrubbing flesh off my hands and arms. 

Without missing a beat, I jumped back on my bike and careened around corners, narrowly missing cars and curbs and pedestrians, riding like mad to get home please please PLEASE let me get home in time!!!!!  Rounding the curve near my home, I almost go down again, somehow managing to stay upright, slicing onto the sidewalk and crashing onto the grass in front of my house.  I jump up and see the street lights flickering on, then spin around to see Dad, standing in the front doorway, a stoic look on his face, saying nothing.  Her didn’t need to.  He slowly turns around and goes into the house, closing the door behind him.

I made it, but just barely.

I don’t begrudge the use of smart phones per se, but I do worry about the subliminal effects the electronic leash will have on the young’uns.  I am totally OK with how this technology has asserted itself into our daily lives, as all modern conveniences tend to do.  However, I can choose which of these tools to use, which ones to avoid, and which ones to rail against with vigor and contempt.  You know, just like Abe Simpson yelling at clouds… it will have the same impact.

For the time being, I’ll just keep using whatever mobile device(s) that allow me to have the least amount of connectivity possible and avoid the inevitable encroachment of streaming mega-data into my conscious sphere.  And I will continue to value that time in my life when I was pedaling around La Puente on a Saturday with my friend Ken, untethered, completely unattached from any web of any kind, thinking only of being on my own and away from home, eating fries and dodging cars, making out with Julie and getting totally and completely lost.

Epilogue: 

Ken was one of my best friends all through Junior and High School, and we spent lots of idle days cruising around town on our 10-speeds.  He was the first among my circle of friends that got his driver’s license and a car in 1972, and we managed to get into all sorts of bitchin’ situations in that faded blue beast.  I had sporadic contact with him after we left high school, and the last time I saw him was in 1990 when he stopped in to visit The Artist and me at our home in Long Beach.  I always wanted to reconnect with him again, but I found out just last year that both he and his sister had died under sad and unfortunate circumstances.

I was really depressed when I realized I could not and would not ever see him again, but that depression has passed and now I will always have him in my head and my heart. Sometimes I can almost hear him, calling my name and softly knocking on my bedroom window at 4AM on Saturday morning, ready to begin our 3-hour ride to the beach, climbing through La Habra Heights in the cool dark, careening down the other side and pedaling all the way down Beach Boulevard until we reached the sand and the ocean and the sweet escape it offered.

Thanks, Ken… we did it on the good foot, unconnected, lost in La Puente.

Lead image, gracias de flickr.com; Jimi Hendrix 'Freedom' and Bread 'Mother Freedom' videos, muchismas gracias de youtube.com; R.I.P. Ken & Julie Wallis.

1970: A Space Odyssey

I’m not sure why these weird time-warp mind games keep happening. When I bring up the subject of my 'time slip', The Artist claims that I am too obsessed with time. She’s right, of course, but I am obsessed with what happens in time, whether then or now, and what impact it can and does have, and how that impact resonates throughout our lives.

In this case, methinks the current political screeching from the Ignorant Right about how they ‘don’t need no damned science’ pushed me into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, back to what became one of the most important days of my life. The fact that it happened when I was only 13 years old is of Major Significance as, naturally, everything that happens at 13 years old seems to be earth-shattering and important.

So here goes… stick with me, because it all happened in one day.

Summer of 1970, weeks before the start of my Freshman year in high school, saw me at the cusp of an emotional and philosophical breakout. As with most 13-year-old males, I was in a constant state of agitation over girls, school, parents, girls, homework, Playboy Magazine, Boy Scouts (figger that one out), music, girls, reading sci-fi, cars, girls, building car models, going to the drag races, girls... you know, typical stuff. Mostly it was girls and school. I was on the verge of an important personal epiphany, but on that fateful 1970 summer day, it was all about girls. One girl in particular.

Her name was Janet, and although she was the object of undeserved scorn from many of my friends (something about her buck teeth and the way she sat in the cafeteria during lunch), I was smitten. I’d had her in a few classes at junior high but never really got to know her until we paired up at several year-end Friday night dances. In that brief summer between junior and high school, we sorta ‘went around’ (a.k.a. going steady, do teens still do that?), but it was really only a handful of languid afternoons spent at her house, making out junior-high-stylie while her parents were gone, just being dumb teens, you know?

That summer afternoon I walked to her house, making sure her folks were gone because I dinna think they knew what their only daughter had been up to. She let me in, we drank some lemonade, she put on some 45’s and we started necking as usual. After a few minutes of heavy teen-dream-breathing, she pulled away and said “There’s something one of my friends showed me today… wanna try it?” Being as suave as possible, I answered “Uh… well, OK. What is it?” She stood up and instructed me to stand behind her with my arms around her stomach. “I’m gonna start breathing in and out really fast”, she told me, “ …and when I tell you, squeeze your arms really tight around my stomach… it’ll make me pass out for a minute. It’s really neat!”

Before I could say anything, she began to hyperventilate herself and, when she felt lightheaded enough, gave me the signal to squeeze, which I did with vigor. In an instant, she passed out in my arms, something she’d said would happen but caught me by surprise. It was pretty weird and kinda sexy, holding this limp cutie in my arms, but in just a few seconds she came to and began to laugh at what had just happened.

“OH WOW THAT WAS CRAZY NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!!!!!!” she shouted, spun me around and wrapped me in her arms from behind. At this point, I was feeling like I’d rather get back on the couch, but she was adamant that it was my turn to pass out. Wishing I could suck her face instead of sucking wind, I started hyperventilating and after a minute or so, felt lightheaded and gave her the signal to squeeze and then...

I awoke and realized I was lying on the floor, with Janet screaming hysterically and jumping around. I slowly sat up, rubbed the back of my head and felt something wet. I looked at my hand and saw it was covered with blood, same as my arm, the floor, the carpet and the corner of the coffee table that my head had smacked when I passed out and fell because she wasn’t strong enough to hold me up. There was blood everywhere, Janet was screaming, and I gingerly felt the huge opening on the back of my head with my index finger. I stuck it in there and realized I was racked up pretty good, a 2-inch gash at the very least.

I felt OK, maybe a little weak, but was able to stand and get my bearings. Janet was beside herself, looking at the bloody mess in her den, knowing she was in deep shit now, same as me. She threw me a towel and, thanks to my excellent Boy Scout training, I knew to press and hold it to the wound to stop the bleeding, which was flowing pretty good. After a few moments, I told her I needed to get home right away, so without helping to clean the mess, streaked with blood and holding the blood-stained towel to my head, I walked slowly home.

That would be the last time Janet and I ever spoke to each other. I would see her at high school in the fall, but she never again acknowledged my existence. I figgered she got nailed pretty hard by her folks, coming home to find the bloody aftermath of our teenage games. I can’t say that I blamed her, maybe I should have talked her out of the whole thing. Maybe we would have, you know, gotten to first base instead (yeah, right). I really liked her, too… even her buck teeth.

So anyways, I walked the half-mile or so home, with people staring at me all along the way, but that’s not what I was thinking about. I knew that I would have to call my Dad at work and tell him what happened, because I’d need to get stitches at the hospital. I was frantically thinking of an excuse as to how I cracked open my head, because I sure as hell wasn’t gonna fink out on Janet. By the time I got home I had decided that it was a trip and fall accident, hitting my head on the curb, yeah, that’s the ticket, that’ll be a plausible scenario, no one saw me, someone gave me a towel for my head as I walked home, makes sense to me, right right right.

I called Dad. He was really pissed off, but he came home immediately and took me to the ER at our local community hospital where the Doc sewed up my noggin. The Doc asked me what happened, I told him my huge lie, he just went “Hmmm… OK”, and finished the job (thanks, Doc!). It felt really weird having the needle push back and forth through the skin on the back of my head… kinda cool, actually. I got a tetanus shot, they bandaged my head and we left the hospital.

I knew I was in trouble, dragging Dad home in the afternoon to go patch me up, but he seemed bemused, almost like he thought it was funny, so I was relieved that he didn’t start yelling at me for getting hurt. We got home and just hung out for a while when he surprised me with a question. “Son, you probably don’t feel like going to the scout meeting tonite, right? Why don’t we skip it and go see a movie instead?” I didn’t fall to the floor again, but I felt like it… this was a totally unexpected turn. Without hesitation, I said “Let’s go see ‘2001: A Space Odyssey!!”. I instantly knew this was not what he was hoping to hear, but being the most Awesome Dad Ever, he agreed.

Now, this was a Big Deal, skipping our Wednesday night Boy Scout troop meeting. Not only was Dad the Scoutmaster, but I was a patrol leader. We NEVER missed scout metings, so for him to take a night off was rare.

At this point, I need to fold a few pertinent facts into this recipe for context.

Firstly, I had just finished reading the novella of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ by Arthur C. Clark, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. (I recently found out he wrote the novella after Stanly Kubrick had agreed to direct the film but needed more than the original short story). The novella had a dramatic impact on me, and the sci-fi books I was inhaling at the time were simply blowing my mind, philosophically-speaking. I wanted to see that movie… BADLY.

Secondly, I was in the throes of seriously questioning my Catholic faith, and had been for at least a year. After attending the obligatory church studies known as catechism, I found the whole religion thing far more unbelievable and ridiculous than anything I was reading by Asimov, Clark, Bradbury or any of the other sci-fi stalwarts that had captured my imagination. The whole god/jesus/heaven/hell/sinner/saved/bible meme had left me cold, had not incorporated into my brain, had not convinced me that it made one iota of sense. Attending church services seemed like a monumental waste of a good Sunday morning, especially since my brother and I weren’t allowed to have breakfast until after we got home from church. THE HORROR!!!!

Thirdly, I was ripe for a new way of thinking, of understanding the world around me. I had already decided there was more to this existence than what they talked about in church… much, much more, but I didn’t know what that was. I was ready for The Enlightenment, but little did I know that it would soon enough stomp me hard without any warning.

OK, back to the story of that weird day. I knew Dad was going way out of his comfort zone by agreeing to take me to see ‘2001’, just out in its wide theatrical release. He didn’t like sci-fi, didn’t like movies that made you think, only wanted to be entertained. Methinks my bandaged head and ugly wound gave him enough reason to swallow hard and do something that he abhorred, but I reveled in. So we drove to a local theater, known far and wide as one of the few left to still have a live organist play muzak between the features.

How can I describe what happened to me that evening, sitting in that theater with my bandaged head, sitting there with my Dad who honestly would have rather seen any other movie in the world? Yes, I already knew the movie’s plot line, but from the very start of the film, I was transfixed at what I was seeing on that huge screen. The moment when, after discovering the violent uses for their newly-discovered tools, the Chief Ape threw his bone-weapon into the air… and it changed into a modern spacecraft circling the Earth, I was spellbound. When Strauss’ ‘Blue Danube Waltz’ began to play (still my favorite piece of classical music) and the spacecraft swam in the blackness of orbit around the space station, I was OUT THERE WITH THEM, living the reality of our future, floating in zero-g.

That movie… a film, a vision, a director’s perspective… it affected me to my very core. I had read Clark’s words, but when they were transformed into the stunning images before me, well... it moved me deeply. I was sitting right there next to my Dad, and he didn’t have a clue what was happening. Clark’s story came to life for me, it resonated with my understanding of the universe, and it confirmed my newfound concept that religious belief was nothing more than man’s pitiful attempt to explain away the vastness of the cosmos. And at the film’s end, when Dave was mutated from an old man to the Earth’s embryonic savior, returning to protect mankind from his own pending self-inflicted destruction, I found the answers I had been searching for. Which means, of course, that I finally discovered there ARE NO ANSWERS, only questions that push us to seek and explore and query and discover, without end.

We left the theater, me totally changed and raw and new, Dad bored to tears. To this day, he still says ‘2001’ is the worst movie he’s ever seen. I wasn’t the same teenager that entered the theater two hours earlier. I was this new being with an expanded mind and a new understanding about my place in the universe. In the weeks that followed, I would attend church services for the last time, never to return except for weddings and funerals. I had left behind the simple fables of religion. I felt alive, maybe for the first time.

From then to now, the epiphany I reached in that darkened theater still resonates and gives me strength. Would I have felt the same way had I seen ‘2001’ on a different day, under different circumstances? Hard to say, but I’m glad it happened the way it did. I have learned a lot about the world, a lot about myself, but my understanding about my place in the universe, thankfully without the shackles of religious belief, is healthier and more defined than ever.

I reckon this essay was spurred by the pronouncements of former Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a devoutly religious man who claims his God and Bible are first in his life, as he believes it should and must be for everyone. He has belittled the concepts of evolution and climate change, has denigrated the importance of a college or post- high school education (while holding two degrees himself), and claims that “colleges are responsible for indoctrinating liberal ideas in students, coercing them to leave behind their well-formed traditional religious beliefs.” He is not alone in his conviction, as there are many people who feel the same way. How tragic that is.

I’m all for every individual choosing for themselves what and what not to believe, but it seems to me that as a 13-year-old, I was more self-aware and mind-expansive than this man who wanted to lead our nation, using his long and firmly-held religious beliefs as his guide. I read a commentary regarding his statements that asserted it isn’t the education that tramples traditional religious beliefs… it's called GROWING UP, and it happens all the time. The Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch (45-125 AD), said “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled”.

That summer Wednesday in 1970 started out simply enough for my 13-year-old self, but it escalated beyond anything I could have expected. I had no clue that would be the last day I would ever speak to Janet again. I had no clue that I’d crack my head open on a coffee table. I had no clue that by day’s end, I would experience a philosophical and life-affirming epiphany that would stay engrained in my psyche for my entire adult life. But that’s how these things work. You just… never… know.

I’ll never forget those makeout sessions with Janet, coated with the gauzy haze of time and space. I hope she’s still out there, somewhere, wondering whatever happened to the cute moron who got her in so much trouble by bleeding all over everything in her parent’s den.

I wouldn’t trade one split-second of that day for anything.



Update 4/3/12: I watched '2001' again this past weekend, with special thanks to The Artist for recording it. She RULES. I hadn't seen the film in perhaps a decade, but I completely enjoyed the story, the nuanced perspective of humanity and the grand vision that Mr. Kubrick committed to film. I was also surprised at Kier Dullea's subtle but powerful performance as Dr. Dave Bowman, caught in deep space with a rogue computer and nowhere to go but further out. I can totally understand how this film might confuse someone who doesn't have the foundation of reading Clark's novella, but I highly recommend reading the book and then watching the film. It might prove to be a very interesting journey.

Lead image, Gracias de cheap-modern-wall-decor.blog.hr; video 'In The Summertime' by Mungo Jerry (#3 on the 1970 Billboard Top 100!!!), Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.com.

Dancing In The Dark

Several months ago, I wrote about how certain songs can push me into a mental time-slip, allowing me to instantly travel to a specific place in the distant past of my 55 years. I wish that I had some control over this phenomenon, but it just sorta sneaks up and goes BOOM when one of those songs drifts into my conscious state. I am powerless to stop it. I just let it roll and see what mental images, sights, feelings and emotions pop up from my gray matter’s hard drive.

As I’ve only recently discovered, the musical time slippage is usually keyed to a strong emotional happenstance. It doesn’t seem to matter if the connection is good or bad, pain or pleasure, because none of those emotions are wrong, they are just… human. Methinks they are what really separates us from the rest of the life forms on this small Blue Planet. At least, the acknowledgement of those emotions, because I believe there are many other life forms dwelling here that feel emotions, but are not quite capable of understanding the resonance they hold. Wasted effort compared to, you know, surviving.

‘Born On The Bayou’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of those songs, and when I hear it I whip back to the same place, every time.

‘Born On The Bayou’, released on their 1969 ‘Bayou Country’ LP, had become a major hit for the band. As a fevered 8th grader at Willow Junior High School in Southern California, I was enthralled with this new ‘swamp rock’ sound, all moody and slow and a little sleazy and sexy. So it was no surprise that on a certain evening in late 1969 or early 1970, I was among a gathering of guys and girls who found themselves together, dancing in the darkened Willow choir rehearsal room to a stack of vinyl 45rpm singles, moving as only junior high schoolers can.

I don’t know if it was a normal practice for other teens in dem days, but for some strange and wonderful reason I remember being at lots of dance parties, sometimes at a friend's home or in a school cafeteria, and always with the ever-present chaperones hovering on the fringes. This time, though… I cannot recall there were any adults around, and I remember the electricity in that beautiful darkened room. There was likely a single bank of accent beams glowing just to keep the place from going totally dark. Oh yeah.

I remember the girls were all cute in that junior high way, wearing mini-skirts or culottes or some other junior high-approved fashion of the day. We guys had crushes on the girls, and I’m sure they knew it and played us like little fiddles. All we knew was that cute girls were dancing with us, fast and slow, and they smelled good and moved good and were smiling and laughing and clapping their hands and spinning around and flinging their hair and they made us a little crazy.

And there we were, perhaps three dozen guys and girls, about the same age of 13 or 14 years young, dancing and moving and flirting and swaying and posing and trying to be cool. Most of us knew each other, so there was no veil of anonymity. We’d done this before, so the familiarity helped with the mood of friendly teenage lust, the kind junior high schoolers used to have all the time before rampant libidos and unfettered freedom and electronics smashed down the borders we shared. There we were, dancing, and one song ended and the next single dropped onto the spinning platter and the needle drifted gently down and clicked into the groove.

That’s when the magic happened. I will never, ever forget it.



(Click to play for a relevant sountrack)

The first sounds of ‘Born On The Bayou’ are a stretched guitar chord that morphs into a sequence of notes and chords, and it slowly choogles into the melody, pure rock sexuality. We had been dancing in a scattered fashion all over the place in that barely-lit room. But for some reason, when this song came on, something came over us. As the intro filled that room, we began to form two long lines, one of guys, one of girls, facing each other with about ten feet between us. No one spoke, no one said ‘HEY… let’s get in a line!’ Nope, nothing like that... it was unspoken and it just happened. We were all dancing in place, and the guys were facing the girls who were facing the guys. Our parents would have recognized the set-up for ‘The Stroll’, but we knew nothing about that. It just happened.

The song was swampy and sexy and we all danced facing each other across that ten foot space. Then, without a word, one guy and one girl at the far end dropped into that space and began to dance side-by-side and slowly danced to the far end of the line, then took their place in line again. How we all seemed to move in synch evades me now, maybe we weren’t in synch at all, but I remember everyone swaying and dancing in a weird unison. The ‘inside’ couple were a matched pair, shuffling and dancing along between the lines, with the rest of us whooping and clapping and doing the same where we stood. Eventually, it came time for me and my female other to ‘drop in’ and so we did. I think during that 5-minute plus song, we rotated thru the lines at least twice, each couple taking the limelight in a room with very little light. When the song ended, another single dropped and began to play, and the lines scattered and some of us danced and others went outside or went… someplace else?

Why this song, this moment, this memory? What made it so special that I whip-saw through time when this song plays? Was I smitten with puppy love for one of those cute dancing girls? I know that sometime during that party, one of those girls and I snuck into the small adjacent storage closet and necked for a few minutes… nothing serious, just goofy French kissing and, you know, necking… nothing more. For the life of me, I can’t remember who it was, but I know that I was over the moon for the rest of the evening, and her sweet perfume stuck to my Pendleton shirt like the nectar of the gods. How many other couples snuck off like we did, creating a vibrant memory or (more likely) none at all?

I don’t remember who all was dancing in that room, but I know they were all my friends, my classmates, guys I liked and girls I wanted to ‘go around’ with. I know that many of them were among my classmates in high school, and mebbe I even dated a couple of the girls when we got older. Some of them disappeared into the time/space continuum, never to be seen or heard from again. I can sit here at my keyboard, close my eyes and see the choir room and people dancing, but the 41 intervening years have fogged the names and faces in my mind's eye, perhaps now gone forever. But the two lines dancing, the moving, the necking, the music... it never fades, never leaves me, always stays with me and offers a mental anchor to another time, another place, another person that was me.

Was it a simpler time? My first reaction would be 'Yes', but it's really a matter of measure. Compared to our parents, we were all little rebels with flared pants and untucked shirts and hair over our collars, or too-short skirts and nylons and heavy eyeliner and mebbe a pack of smokes hidden in our locker. We thought of ourselves as awkwardly unique, as so totally different and misunderstood. Such has it always been for each succeeding generation of youngsters who sneer and sniff at the previous pack, all old and responsible and, you know, parental.

I'm glad that I was in junior high in 1969 and 1970, because now I know that it was a time of major change and upheaval, of so many new things to see and touch and eat and love and hate and want. It was all good, and I was barely a teenager and every day was filled with youthful anticipation. And now, as I recall those teenage minutes and hours and days, I get it. It is with me instantly, every time I hear 'Born On The Bayou' and the guitar chords progress and time slips and I am once again in that darkened choir rehearsal room, dancing and laughing and feeling strange and gawky and alive. Just like right now.

Choir rehearsal room image, Gracias de chestnutst.org; 'Born On The Bayou' vid by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Muchismas Gracias de youtube.com. Keep On Chooglin'.