Growing Up With Music

A few days ago I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s 1974 album ‘Sundown’ on cd, and it suddenly reminded me of my bedroom in Schenectady, NY when I was about 8 or 9 years old reading a Hardy Boy book with my parent’s stereo playing in the background.  I closed my eyes and I was there.  I could picture my bedroom near the top of the stairs that led down to the living room, my bed with the blue striped blanket, the thin green carpeting that I used to hide ‘Mad’ magazines under, the old brown tattered Hardy Boy book I was reading that was handed down from my dad when he was a kid, and the sound of ‘Sundown’ drifting up the stairs.  And actually, this Gordon Lightfoot cd I was just listening to was made from my parent’s original Gordon album that I listened to hundreds of times when I was a kid. 

I have a cd burner stereo component that allows me to burn albums to cd’s, so when my parents moved to California I took all of their albums as well as my albums and burned them onto cd.  I started with AC/DC and burned my way through to ZZ Top.  It took several years and I am still not done because I keep buying old used albums from our local record store that sells them for a buck apiece.  It’s cool listening to the cd of an album because you can still hear all the pops and hisses from the album…makes you think you are listening to an album.  I love albums and I miss the album era.  I have a few hundred of them stored in my basement, and as everyone says they sound more warm, natural and real than the cold hard compressed digital music of today’s world. 

Music was a very large part of life those early years growing up in my parent’s house.  My dad’s stereo components were housed in a big wooden cabinet that he made and had two large wooden floor speakers on either side.  It was the altar at which I worshipped for hours on end whenever I could.  In addition to the radio tuner, there was a mysterious reel-to-reel player that only my dad knew how to work.  There was also a cassette tape deck added in later years, but the key was always the cool turntable where you could stack about 10 albums or so on the post and it would play each album on one side, then you would lift the stack and flip them over and it would play all of the other sides.  I would sit on the rug in front of the stereo memorizing all of the words to all of the songs on the albums.  Mostly Beatles, but also Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.

The Beatles were the most popular band in my parent’s house then, and in my house now.  Whenever I listen to the Beatles Anthology cd’s I always read the little accompanying booklet, and each snippet about each song as I listen to the song.  I always get sad when they get to the last song 'The End' where it says:  "No other group has delivered such an apt farewell as the Beatles."  Being born in 1966, I remember it being extremely traumatic for me in 2^nd grade when I overheard a teacher talking to another teacher about the Beatles no longer being around.  What?!  "Yeah, the Beatles broke up." I was told, not realizing that it had happened a couple years earlier.  I remember feeling incredibly sad that I was going to have to be the one to tell my parents.  So when I got home from school I solemnly took my mom aside, told her I had something to tell her, and then almost in tears said:  "Mom...the Beatles have broken up."  I expected her to start crying but instead she looked at my sympathetically and gently told me that they had been broken up for a couple of years...I was shocked and no less saddened.  It was hard to wrap my 6 year old head around the fact that they would not be making any more music together...it didn't make sense to me.

But what did make sense was vinyl in all its forms.  When I was really young I had a couple of albums, including a Beatles ‘Live At the Hollywood Bowl’ and a yellow-vinyl Elvis album that I remember in particular, but mostly I had 45’s.  I had a little blue plastic portable record player that I kept in my room to listen to them, but I could fold it up into a suitcase and drag it around and plug it in wherever I needed to listen to music.  The Beatles ‘Rocky Racoon’, and Peter, Paul & Mary’s ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ are the two that I remember listening to the most.  Then when I was about 6 or 7 years old I got a total of $30 for my First Communion and I wanted a cassette tape recorder.  I do not know what they cost back then, but my dad told me $30 would cover it.  Then a few days later he came home from work and presented me with my new General Electric tape recorder!  It came with one purple 10-minute G.E. cassette, which I still have today pictured above.  I used to place the recorder mic in front of the stereo, record 1 or 2 of my favorite songs on each side, and then go listen to it outside in my tree-fort.  It was like magic being able to take the music out of the livingroom with me wherever I wanted. 

I moved to Wisconsin just before my 11^th birthday and the music followed.  My friends and I all collected 45’s and we had piles of them because they were only 98 cents apiece, but for my birthday and Christmas presents I would always ask for albums.  And if there was an album I really wanted I would save my allowance or paper-route money until I had the $5 or $6 needed, which was a LOT in the 1970’s.  Albums were big and exciting and I would look at the picture on the front and carefully pore over all of the details on the back reading every single word, as well as the album sleeve if it too had words or pictures.  And because each side was only about 20 minutes long, it was not like you would put it on and ignore it or walk away…you would sit there and listen to it for 20 minutes and then flip to the other side. 

It was an era when listening to music was more social…it was an actual activity that you would do with your friends.  You would sit and listen to an entire album…listening carefully to each song and talk about it and then put on another album and listen to that.  Depending on our age we may be doing something else while listening…like aged 5-10 we may be sorting our football cards while listening to the Beatles or K-Tel’s “Looney Tunes”, aged 10-15 playing ping pong while listening to Cheap Trick or Led Zeppelin, aged 15-20 smoking pot while listening to Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead…but the main reason we were there was for the music. 

Like if my friend Gary got a new Rush album we would all go over to his house and sit in his room and listen to it several times over…or if I got a new Ozzy album my friends would come to my house and we would sit in my basement and just devour it.  My Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ album still has all of the old ancient pot resin stains on it.  Remember sitting in your room with your friends cranking The Wall and using the fold out album to clean a bag of weed?  Watching the seeds roll down the center of the album into the mason jar FULL of seeds that you planned on planting some day.  I don’t know if music is like that these days as it seems like everyone just pops in the ear buds and listens to their IPods.  Not saying that’s good or bad, but ‘music’ was very different back then.  It was nice listening to that Gordon Lightfoot album and being transported back in time.     

Crossing Into Canada

The date was 7/1/88.  My girlfriend Lona and I had just finished the 1988 Grateful Dead summer tour, starting in our home town of Minneapolis, MN on June 17^th…through Alpine Valley, WI…Buckeye Lake, OH…Pittsburgh, PA…Saratoga, NY…and finally to Silver Stadium in Rochester, NY on June 30th.  It was an insanely hot summer with temps in the hundreds on most days, making it an extremely long and uncomfortable 2 weeks of life on the road sleeping in our tent in venue parking lots, or in the car at rest areas and hotel parking lots.  ‘Showers’ consisted of washing our hair in sinks at the rest areas, or sneaking into large hotels and using their pool/showers.  Also we were selling tee-shirts in the venue parking lots to fund the trip and make extra cash, so after partying all night in the lot we would have to get up in the blazing sun and walk around trying to hawk the 288 Doonesbury/Dead shirts I had designed and colored with fabric markers.  It was such a hot and exhausting tour that on that last night in Rochester, Lona collapsed half-way through the 2^nd set of the concert.  I had to drag her through the crush of people out to the warning track of the baseball field that the band was playing on where she could lay down, get some air and recover. 

As much as we loved touring with the Dead, we were kind of relieved it was the last night and that we were going to be starting the trip back home to Minneapolis the next day.  It was normally a 2-day drive from there, but we decided to take it easy and do it in 3 shorter days of driving.  Usually from New York we would take I-90 west and go the southern way around Lake Erie through Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana over to Chicago and then up to Minneapolis.  But we looked at the map and decided it would not be too much farther to go the northern way around Lake Erie through Canada.  We figured it would be fun to visit another country, and we would get to stop and see Niagara Falls along the way.  I had seen the Falls before but it’s relentless power and size never ceases to amaze, so that was the plan:  go home through Canada, leaving the states at Niagara Falls, NY and reenter the U.S. on the other end of Lake Erie in Detroit, MI.

So we got up the morning of July 1^st and made the short 1 ½ hour drive to beautiful Niagara Falls.  After spending a couple of hours hiking around, checking out the Falls and feeling the cool spray on our faces, we decided it was time to get on the road.  We figured we would drive a few hours and then camp somewhere along the way in Canada.  We got to the checkpoint for crossing into Canada and there was a line of cars waiting to get through.  As we sat there waiting, I started taking mental inventory of the various drugs, alcohol and paraphernalia we had brought with us and accumulated along the way.  In addition to the cooler with a few beers floating around in it, there was what was left of a chunk of black hash that had survived the trip, a couple of hits of chocolate mescaline, a metal pipe that somebody had traded me for a tee-shirt, and a small block of what looked like violin bow rosin that someone had given me.  There had been a serious weed drought that summer so people were looking for any and all alternatives, and this ‘resin’ stuff they were calling it had been floating around the parking lot at Alpine Valley.  I think it was supposed to be some sort of opium, but I do not remember it working and I have a feeling it was just that – bow rosin for a violin or cello.

I had crossed previously into Canada one other time in my life, breezing through the checkpoint in a matter of seconds with just a couple of short answers to some questions.  So I naively figured it was always that easy, that the checkpoint was just a formality and that Canada would usher me back in with open arms.  But as I sat there waiting my turn to get to the booth, I thought for the hell of it I better make a small effort to hide the drugs that were now sitting in the glove compartment…just in case.  But where?  Time was running out as there was only a couple of cars now between me and the checkpoint guards.  Suddenly I remembered the 10-12” diameter hole in the roof right above my head. 

As blistering hot as that summer had been, the previous winter had been brutally cold, with one murderous stretch of subzero temps where it did not get above zero degrees Fahrenheit for like a week straight.  One day that past winter I had reached over from the front seat and grabbed an ice scraper from the backseat but accidentally scraped the ceiling of my car with it, ripping a tear in the brittle frozen fabric that was hanging down about 3 or 4 inches.  Over the months that tear had evolved into a round circle slightly larger than the size of a human head, right above where your head would be in the driver’s seat.  It was kind of an obvious hiding spot if noticed, but it had to be better than the glove compartment.

So I reached over Lona who was sleeping soundly in the front passenger seat and grabbed the handful of drugs and the pipe out of the glove compartment.  Trying not to attract attention I casually reached up without looking and slipped the handful of stuff into the hole above me.  I pushed it a couple of inches back behind my head so it was not right on the edge of the hole, but not so far that it would slip out of reach into the back of the car ceiling.  A couple of minutes later we got to the booth and just then Lona woke up.  “Where are we?” she said sleepily.  “Crossing into Canada.” I said.  “Relax.”  Then I rolled down the window to talk to the lady.

Like I said I figured we would sail through like last time with no problem.  But last time my hair was not half-way down my back, I was not driving a rusty old 1977 Toyota Celica covered with Grateful Dead/hippie stickers, and it was not the day after a huge Grateful Dead concert that was performed a mere 85 miles away.  How stupid could I be?  Well…after answering many more questions than I remember getting the last time, the lady smiled and asked me to pull up to the guard house on the left and wait for someone to be with me shortly.  What?!!  Why??  They weren’t just going to wave me through?!  Oh my god!  My heart started racing and I thought I was going to pass out from nervousness. 

We pulled up to the stall and Lona looked over at me with panic in her eyes and I told her to be cool.  But she couldn’t be cool.  She was freaking out.  She was sleeping when I hid the drugs so she thought they were still in the glove compartment.  The guard was at my window now instructing us to get out and wait next to the car so I did not have a chance to let Lona know the drugs had been put elsewhere.  Of course the guard started his search by sitting in Lona’s seat and opening the glove compartment.  At this point she panicked and stammered that she had to go to the bathroom.  She thought we were done for and she could not bear to watch.  She had to get away from the awfulness of the scene that she was sure was about to happen, so after she croaked out the words “Need…bathroom” the man pointed to the door of the building and told her she could use the one in there.  She practically ran in.

The guard was making a clockwise sweep, so after going through the glove compartment, front right seat, and back right seat he asked me to pop the hatchback.  He opened the cooler, frowned and told us he was going to have to confiscate our beers.  Fine, I could a flying f*ck about the stupid beers…I was too busy wondering what Canadian jail was going to be like.  Would they be really polite?  I figured it had to be way better than Mexico, but still not very fun.  Were they going to confiscate my car?  What were my parents going to say?  I was 22 now, so how old would I be when I got out?  Would I be able to finish college?  Would Lona and I be in separate jails?  Would she even have to go if I said the drugs were all mine?  A million thoughts were rushing through my head.  After grabbing our beers he then looks through the back left seat.  Now there was one last place to look.  The driver’s seat.  This was it.  The moment of truth.

After looking all around under the seat, the dash, and the console in the middle I thought he was done.  I was about to breathe a huge sigh of relief when for some reason he looked up.  There was the head-sized hole in the ceiling.  What’s this?  From his sitting position in my seat he lifted himself up and stuck his head in the hole, eyes forward.  I almost threw up as I watched him turn 90 degrees to the left, back to the middle, 90 degrees to the right, then back to the middle.  He hovered for a few seconds, and then pulled his head out and said:  “Okay, you’re free to leave.”  What?!  Really??!  That was it?  We were done!  The drugs had been resting on the edge of the fabric, not more than a couple inches from the back of his head.  He had looked everywhere in the hole except directly behind his head because he had been facing forward. 

I could not believe our luck.  Lona was still hiding in the bathroom, waiting for the tap on the door from a guard to lead her to jail.  I knocked on the door and trying to contain my happiness I casually said:  “Hey, we can go…you done in there?”  She came out with eyes like saucers, not understanding why I was not in handcuffs.  I made the “Be cool!” eyes and told her to get in the car.  The guard was waiting outside and he stood in front of our car waving goodbye as I started it and prepared to back up out of the stall.  The car was a stick shift, and as I nervously put it into gear to back up I did not clutch/brake very well and the car suddenly jolted back about 1 foot and died.  The violent jolt jerked the entire pile of drugs and pipe out of the hole, right into my lap.  Are you f*cking kidding me?  I looked up and the guy was still standing there waving, but now laughing at my inability to work a clutch.  Somehow he had not seen the pile of stuff drop down into my lap! 

I quickly re-started the car and peeled out of there as fast as I could go without raising attention.  We made it!!  I explained to Lona how I had moved the stuff out of the glove compartment while she was sleeping.  Our relief at not being in jail was immeasurable, but we were still in a foreign country with a bunch of illegal drugs and moments removed from almost being caught, so we stopped at the first gas station we came to and did what I should have done an hour ago…I took every single illegal thing out of the car and threw it in a trash can.  We were now so sufficiently freaked out that we decided we did not like Canada and did not want to camp there.  We made the 4 ½ hour drive to Detroit, nervously went through that border with no problem, and camped that night in Michigan.  I have only been to Canada two times since then, and NEVER with anything illegal in my car.  After escaping that episode safely I never wanted to tempt fate again and I did not cross another foreign border with anything illegal.  Well…until we went to Greece in 1990, but that’s another story.