Out in the Desert

Whenever I’m out on the road I have a lot of time to think.

The trip to the Midwest at the start of this week was good for my mental state. I put on Apple Car Play with all my tunes stored and I drove.

Across the flat land.

Cows on the side of the road, drinking out of a pond.

Twenty miles later, more cows.

This is truly a beautiful country.

I kept thinking about that and I also, as I’m prone to do, I replayed a lot of scenes from days gone by.

So many great friends.

A tremendous family.

A good career.

I listened to The Cars first record. Thought about standing on the baseball diamond talking it over with Sam Rizzo. He had just won a copy of the record from a radio station.

“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” I said.

“I’ll burn you a copy,” he said.

I had no idea how one would do such a thing, but Sam was true to his word. He gave me a tape with that record on it.

I wore that tape out.

That was 41 years ago. Benjamin Orr and Ric Ocasek, the driving force behind that music are gone now.

But imagine...

...now a man...

...not old, but not young anymore...

...driving from Shawnee to Wichita...

...singing the songs as they wrote them.

I thought about Sam and my old high school crushes and my buddies. Lions one and all.

Switched to the Stones and Sticky Fingers...

...absolutely blasted it.

‘Bitch’ came on and I thought of drinking beer with my buddy Tom and brother John...

...we’d blast that song. Me singing, Tom playing lead air guitar.

“My heart was beating louder than a big bass drum.”

Turned it down a little bit for Van Morrison and Moondance.

Kathy and I would throw darts in a bar that had  limited choices on the jukebox. 

We were in the Malamute every Friday night and I remembered the owner, Rose. She was a funny, funny lady. She wouldn’t put Springsteen on the jukebox because:

“You love him and I don’t want you to be happy.”

Rose died of a brain tumor and we were crushed by her early death.

Van Morrison was wailing on ‘Jackie Wilson Said’ and I was singing along.

Happy times.

The beer was cold, our love was new, we were young...

...so many blank pages left in the story we were writing.

A shining sun and a perfect blue sky. Mile after mile of road, disappearing behind me, a lot of road to cover in front of the hood of the rental car, and the music doing its job, bringing faces from the past into my mind.

Time seems to stop when I’m out there on the road, my life playing like a movie, as the cows stand in those fields of deep green and sip from the ponds of dirty water.

“Remember this day,” I told myself as I walked along the construction site in Topeka.

I thought of a day from 1986. I was with one of my now golf partners way back then.

Scott Weiser and me were out in California and we hit an ice cream stand. I ordered a plain vanilla cone.

“So many things I haven’t tried or done and I’m eating a plain vanilla cone,” I said.

I recalled how me and Scott marveled at that line way back then.

“We gotta’ try things in life,” Scott said back then.

We did.

We both did.

What a long, winding road it’s been.