Cold and Early

If you're still reading, let me hear from you. I get lonely. The Lonely Banana isn't the kind that people eat.
My musical history is drawing toward a close. The story currently recounts the summer of 1971, and though it continues on, my account will stop with the year of 1985.

            Playing in a band with Crowbar was the most fun thing. He was totally pure in his approach. The first time he played his brand new Hofner Beatle Bass was at a band practice. Brillo and I would point out the chord changes and direct him toward the root note of each change. There was no slappin or flappin or freewheeling: it was all root note banging at a more or less primal level. And though Crowbar’s, all our, influences were immediately from the psychedelic era, he was punk, all punk, and nothing but the punk, the living embodiment of rock ethos and demonstration. I’m serious. Crowbar had no choice but to go straight at every song that came up. He’d had no time for lessons or study, and not being a natural musician in the traditional sense (Does it count that he played French horn in the high school marching band?), he just took the path of least resistance. He never objected to any outrageous idea, and by his basic nature was prone to experiment. But that’s the essence of rock music: anybody can do it. It’s campfire music with amplifiers; however, instead of sitting around a pit full of burning wood and plucking on a guitar or thumping on a tambourine while passing around a bottle and howling to the sky, the bandsmen gather in basements and garages and spare rooms to assault life with guitars, basses, drums, keyboards, singers, and occasionally horns, until the players become proficient enough on a selection of songs to play in other basements, garages, and spare rooms and howl at and share whatever with whomever shows up. That’s all there is to it. I don’t belittle great players and playing, I love them and that, but no one has to be great to play. It takes all kinds to make a band.

A Wet Weather Creek

A creek runs through it.

            Along with our Crab pal, Cowpuncher, and my former band mate and football teammate Crowbar (he could drive), we took off for Knoxville way earlier than necessary. It was just past midday when the expedition got started, and along the way stopped at Rose Music. I saw the first Magic Chord organ that day, as well as the apple of my then eye, a Hammond Porta B organ. It was sweet. I thought of all the worlds I could conquer with a keyboard like that. I was glad we’d stopped. We messed with the keyboards and wore out our welcome before getting back on the road.

            Crowbar parked on a bridge between Gay Street and the Coliseum. There were still hours to spare, so we walked up to Gay street to see what was happening, which, in a word, was nothing. I don’t think I’ve been on Gay Street on a Saturday afternoon since that lovely April day, so there’s nothing to judge it by, but it was darn near deserted as we roamed the streets. In fact, the only people we saw on the street at all were former US Senator Albert Gore, Sr. and his wife walking alone on the other side of the street going away from us. That was the first time I had encountered a famous person in the wild (not the last, either). When we got up even to the elderly couple, Cowpuncher yelled, “Give em hell, Brock!” (Bill Brock had defeated Gore a few months earlier), as a good Crab might be expected to do.

            The celebrity hubbub wore quickly off and our little knot of assholes started back toward the Coliseum. This little knot of assholes did have definite anarchist tendencies, and I assure all that not a one of that crowd was above hurling objects for amusement, but our true aims were gentler than that. In truth, we’d all bought into the reality that love was the key to happiness. The Beatles told us that, and we loved The Beatles. The Christian religion (I believe that all The Crabs, at that time, were Christians) told us that, too. The political leaders of the country, then as now and forever more, said it, urged it on us, nearly insisted on it while at the same time waging a pissing contest war with the Soviets in Southeast Asia (using the native population of Viet Nam and America’s drafted poor as punching bags), and that great sore thumb of a contradiction riled the ire of the average Crab. Hell no we won’t go! But would we?

Blue Monday

It's kinda soggy, but I like rain.

            Word that Steppenwolf was coming to Knoxville got me excited. Steppenwolf had the coolest look of any band in the world (though I’ll confess that there was no shortage of cool at that time) and played a rough and ready kind of music soaked in distorted guitars (including slide), rock solid drumming, inventively clever Hammond organ (and other keyboards) playing, and shouted out by a gravelly voiced singer whose songs delivered timely political messages which ranged in tone from the humorous (Don’t Step On the Grass, Sam), to the very serious (Draft Resister and From Here to There Eventually), and all delivered with a little extra jab to the teeth of the establishment. The arrangements and playing in many of Steppenwolf’s songs also displayed a wide eccentric sound and manner. All in all, it was my kinda band.

            Along with Billy D and Tig, I’d been spending a lot of time with my friends Luke and Hook. We’d been buddies at school and beyond for a few years (I’d known Luke since grammar school, especially 6^th grade), and as we approached our late teens were vigorously working toward the contradictory ideals of becoming hippie anarchists. We had practiced those ends as often as possible with various acts of anarchist defiance including a brief concert for our English class (rearranging lyrics and anything else to bend three cover songs to our ends), and several sessions on the railroad tracks near Luke’s house where we would unload torrents of rocks against the windows and bodies of automobiles hauled through the unprotected air in open sided train cars. I always felt damned good when we’d damaged a Caddy or another vehicle.

            We started calling ourselves, and the others who hung around with us, The Crabs (after, yes, those crabs) because we were the unwanted, the cast outs, the shunned, the not ready for anything players. And yet, none of us really wanted to be establishment darlings. We wanted society girls (because they looked good and dressed so well), but the rest of the scene was a big, fat drag to us. Hook’s poem said it best: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,/It’s not a lie, it’s not a sin,/But we are Crabs, we’re tried and true,/ And if you don’t like it—fuck you!” Hardly upscale political discourse, though it captures the essence of Crabdom.

Black Friday

Shop your brain at The Happy Banana.

            Just a little before my second concert, mom and dad announced to me one evening that mom was expecting a child. That news was a shock. Mom was 37 years old, and I thought she was too old to have another baby. I immediately went across the street to talk to my grandmother about the news. I’d figured that she already knew it, but was taken by surprise that she didn’t. I’m not sure she really believed me. It was true, however, and my sister was born in July of 1971. Her birth brought a whole new layer to our existences, especially since Crystal was born with severe cerebral palsy.

            Mom was born in 1934. My grandparents lived in Louisville, Tennessee at that time, but I believe mom spent a lot of her early youth in Kentucky, where her daddy and several of my grandmother’s relatives worked in the Lynch coalmine. She was one of five sisters (one died in infancy) living under the same roof with many of granny’s said relatives. Sometime along the way the family lived between Madisonville and Vonore, where granddad was from, and sometime before or shortly after granddad was drafted into the army, the family lived in Loudon, which is where my grandmother had spent a lot of her childhood.

            Granddad left for the service in 1944, on the day his fifth child was born. Before that year was over he had trained, shipped to Italy, been wounded and captured by Germans, and died a POW. Mom was only 10. Granddad was only 34. He was posthumously awarded The Bronze Star and Purple Heart. The war had been over for several years when his body was returned to the family for burial.

            Even before granddad died the family had led a hard scrabble existence, and nothing changed after he was out of the picture, so mom was used to living on the edge. In fact, she’s lived like that in one way or another most of her life, including all of my childhood, and at times beyond. I can’t say we were destitute, especially since we had a house to live in, but the thin times were very lean. I think we were lucky that we processed a lot of our own food. In 1960 I remember granny and company buying a bunch of chickens for the freezer. My impression was that my family had expected the chickens to be packaged. They weren’t. The poultry waited with bound legs in the carport. In less than an hour granny had set up a makeshift block, got out the old, dull ax, and started chopping heads. With help from neighbors a packaging line was established from block to freezer. The operation took all day, but we ate chicken for a couple of years.

            I can honestly say that my mom is both physically and mentally tough. If there was ever anyone equipped to handle the challenges of having a special needs child it’s my mom. She and my grandmother drove Crystal to physical therapy in Knoxville several times a week for several years. Mom had to organize with other special needs parents to push like hell to make the school system obey the law with regards to handicapped children. One county school superintendant once remarked to my mom that if the state required him to jump eight feet but he could only jump three, what more could be done? Well, more was eventually done, but not without constant pushing against the reluctance of those in power.

            I think that my sister’s living nearly 38 years is as much a testament to mom’s iron will as any other factor. On a daily basis mom had to clean my sister’s immediate habitat and body, dress her, often several times each day, prepare and feed my sister all meals and snacks, as well as do all the usual tasks necessary to run a household. There were lots of other things too, as in all lives, and she handled most of them pretty well. If I had a hat on I’d tip it to her now.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanks for reading The Happy Banana.

            At that point I figured we’d really be in for big doings with Savoy Brown. Of course, being average and only 16 years old, I didn’t know the ways of the world. I didn’t know that the bands on a bill were lined up as much by seniority as talent (which is why Led Zeppelin opened for Iron Butterfly and later Vanilla Fudge on its first trip to the states). I thought the best band took the top spot, but I was wrong.

            Not to be unfair, Savoy Brown was very good. The band members were good players and the musical direction was that of a progressive rock n roll group. The band’s leader and lead guitarist was named Kim, and that caught my interest, too. The musicians came on full of fire (they had to after The Faces) and warmed up on two pretty decent numbers. The third song was very dramatic with a longish section of excellent scat singing. But just when I was about to be won over, Kim Simmons bid the auditorium farewell and the band left the stage. The crowd, small as it was, got rowdy, felt, as did I, cheated. Some official looking gentleman took the stage and announced that we had to leave. A chant of “Hell no, we won’t go,” filled the room. After several warnings of dire consequences by the poor fellow charged with verbal crowd control, Savoy Brown took the stage again. It was easy to see that the band wanted to go home, and the song it played was nothing more than an instrumental three chord shuffle that was half-heartedly executed, but enough to dupe the crowd into standing down and heading for the exits when completed.

            We dropped my cousin off in Strawberry Plains and headed toward home. Billy D had an eight track player in his car and we were able to listen to Santana on the way back. As we sailed through Greenback, I went nuts when Soul Sacrifice came on. Anyone following the car might have thought that I was having some sort of fit with my bobbing, weaving, and spasms. A lot of it was an exaggeration on my part designed to get some reaction from Billy D, but partly because good music has the power to pitch one outside the usual boundaries of normal existence. I got home around 1:00 a.m.

The Teen Years

I'm thinking of the holidays.

            Never assume. I didn’t expect much from The Faces, and thought that Savoy Brown had better be good lest I was out time and money. I watched the crowd between acts. Smoking was allowed at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum. I wondered if we’d encounter the demon weed. Tobacco was all I could identify. The crowd seemed as restless as I felt. The opening acts were busts and nearly everyone probably thought so.

            The first thing I noticed about The Faces was that two of the band members, tall, skinny fellows full of pep, had the most unusual hair styles I’d ever seen. The hair designs looked like English shags with fountains of spikes exploding from the crown. It was a different world. The first number began with a solo slide guitar part (I’d never heard a live slide since Brillo played one in grammar school). The blond singer opened his pipes and let out the voice of god. He and slide man (Ron Wood, current long time guitarist for The Stones), traded off for a bit. The singer, Rod Stewart (I’m not sure I caught his name that night), said, “But she’s my girl,” and the band launched into a measured RNR explosion. The crowd went nuts at the song’s end. I clapped and yelled, but was also in shock. I’d never heard the likes of The Faces. I expected some warmed over 60’s stuff and got hit square in the face with the 70’s.

            Rod was totally different from anything I’d seen or heard. Besides the great voice, he also had a winning manner as a front man. Unlike the guy in Big Brother, Rod didn’t have to say fuck to make a statement. He also had this little shuffling dance he did when Ronny cut to a lead. While the band played Maybe I’m Amazed, Rod put his arm around the bass player’s shoulder like a best pal or brother might do. The entire set looked like the band was having a great time and was glad to be there. The Faces rocked and rocked and were called back for three encores during a set that lasted nearly two hours.

I Dig Music

The saga continues.

            Right at the end of the 1970-71 basketball season, I got the chance to attend my second ever concert. I can’t remember why I got so excited, but when I learned that Savoy Brown had booked a stop in Knoxville, I couldn’t wait to see the concert. The strange part is that I didn’t know anything about the music of SB, and was basing my excitement on a review of the band’s newest album and singer. There were to be two other bands, The Grease Band, who had been Joe Cocker’s band at Woodstock, and Faces (formally The Small Faces), who I had not heard anything from since Itchycoo Park in 1968, on the bill.

            I had scraped up enough money to buy tickets for Billy D, who would be doing the driving, my cousin, who was supposed to be BD’s date, a girl named Ruby, who was supposed to be my date but allegedly came down with some ailment and didn’t make it, and me. We went out to my cousin’s and ate with my aunt and uncle. My cousin allowed us to listen to her copy of Jimi Hendrix’s Monterey Pop album. We also listened to the Otis Redding side of the same disc. We left about an hour and a half before concert time.

            I bought three first balcony tickets at $3.50 a pop, and we waited outside The Knoxville Civic Auditorium until the doors opened. The crowd milling around near us was certainly groovier looking than the bunch I’d seen at my first concert the previous summer, but by the time we had found our seats I could see that the auditorium less than half full. I hoped like hell that the small size of the crowd wasn’t because the bands were going to be shitty. I read the rock press a lot and I didn’t know much about the bands and I figured no one else did either. I kept an open mind.

            Just like my first concert, an unannounced opening act warmed up the crowd. I don’t remember the guy’s name, and hence have no idea of his place in music, but he was in my eyes a fairly average folk singer, and probably a local act. I’m sure I watched him while listening intently, yet no lasting impression marked itself in my brain.

            Same’s true for The Grease Band. To be perfectly frank, they were terrible. I don’t mean that the members couldn’t play. Everybody had heard the band backing Joe Cocker in Woodstock (one of the highlights of the film), but whatever fire exhibited during the movie was absent in Knoxville. I could see a Hammond organ on stage and was excited about what might come from it, but nothing ever did, save for one song that sounded like Three Dog Night’s Out in the Country.

Turkey On My Mind

There's no day like today.

            I had surgery on a broken finger around that same time and could play neither basketball nor music. I fell deeply into an intense depression and moped my way through everything. My family knew something was up, but I couldn’t tell them anything because I didn’t know what the problem was. A gnawing mental grind stayed with me to a greater or lesser extent for many years. The agony wasn’t something I grew out of. As time has worn on I have become better able to deal with internal chemicals running amuck. I finally learned to accept such things as part of my own normal life-cycle. Do I feel better? Sometimes.

            My finger healed and I was able to rejoin the basketball team and finish the season. The local dance scene had, after too long an absence, sort of come back around. The lead singer for The Heroes formed a new band and began to gig in the area again. Instead of weekly engagements in Madisonville, the new band often played at The National Guard Armory in Sweetwater. The core of that new band was the bass player, his brother keyboard player (playing a very sweet Hammond B-3 organ amplified by two Leslie cabinets), and the guitar player, all of whom had been members of a well known Vonore High School band, The Jewels. When that band dissolved, the three members and drummer had worked up a goodly number of Booker T and the MG’s tunes. The new band, The Blues Blogs, had absolutely nothing to do with blues, and played, to my disappointment, too much bubblegumish Top 40 fluff, along with some Carolina beach music, and the Booker T songs, which somehow stayed on the playlist. The singer once told a friend of mine that I should mind my own business when I had given some friends a less than stellar review to the band. I understand his consternation with my appraisal, but if you can’t take the heat, you know, but that’s not the point. The real point is that The Blues Blogs didn’t have the love of the high school as The Heroes had, and that even a nobody like me could put a little jitter into the fabric of things. Look, no offense, but what I thought was that with such a group of fine musicians, including horn players (rare around Madisonville in those days), the band could stretch its muscle by playing something a little more challenging than Hitchin a Ride. I still liked The Blues Blogs and never missed any chance to see a performance. I don’t know whatever happened to The Blues Blogs, but after the early spring of 1971 I never saw nor heard of the band again.

After the Meteor Shower

I never feel cleaner than after a meteor shower.

            No band came out of those jams, but I did get an offer to play a gig with Tig. Two members of his group had departed, so he and the drummer, Ears, replaced them with vocalist OJB, me on organ, and The Third on bass. The band rehearsed in a spare room at The Third’s house. Tig, The Third, and I were members of the high school football team. The Third was the starting tight end and defensive end, and he and I had always been friendly. Along with CEP, Lawman, the head coach, and several others, I had played football in his backyard many Sunday afternoons during my freshman year. The House of Representatives had borrowed The Third’s amplifier for vocals and guitar when we’d played the Farm Bureau a couple of years earlier.

            I don’t remember the name of that band, but we played a Thursday night gig in the gym of Hiwassee College in Madisonville after that single practice. Ears had this enormous Whitehall drum kit with double bass drums, and his Wipe Out-ish drum playing on our rather lame version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida seemed to excite the crowd, especially when OJB put his head into a hollowed bass drum front as Ears stomped the shit out of them. A small number of patrons formed a semi-circle around the band to groove with OJB’s Jim Morrison-like behavior. When the song was over, rather than allow the crowd to cool, we pulled the one ace from our deck by playing a not half bad cover version of Steppenwolf’s The Pusher. I had never heard another band play that song (except for Steppenwolf, I haven’t heard anybody do it), so I guess we were the first. The Pusher still had a lot of power then, and the college kids liked it, I think, because the Hippie ethos had finally penetrated the mainstream of a little place like Madisonville, Tennessee, even though it had been largely over for a couple of years in the major cities. Whatever the reason, the band was well received that evening, and I felt very good about the experience.

            Tig got us to practice at The Third’s twice for a scheduled dance at the Farm Bureau following a Friday night basketball game. I don’t know what happened, but OJB, The Third, and I were all sacked before the week was out, and the two former members rejoined for that engagement. I was a little ticked-off at Tig, but I was playing varsity basketball and didn’t really have time to devote too much effort to a band.

Frankensteiny Day

There's nothing I like better than a gloomy day.

Phase 11

            My second year of high school started much like the first in that I again played football. It was, as usual, a bad decision on my part, even though I got the chance to play quarterback (again on the B team). Most of the B team duty and direction was given over to two guys who had played on the team the previous year. It was a bad decision by the coach to allow those guys that power. Both guys had powerful dads, and that probably played into the coach’s decision, though neither guy was mature enough to handle the responsibility. I don’t know what eventually happened, but both guys lost interest or something and they were gone long before the season was over. So was I. No, I didn’t do the honorable thing and quit, I would occasionally attend a practice, but most of the time I just hid out in the restroom to make a break for the busses when the bell rang. Whatever love I’d had for football and the team spirit of things was gone, and it never came back. The idea that I was supposed to help and support guys who wouldn’t give me the time of day started to eat at my craw, so I took a fuck it all approach and that seemed to work best for me.

            Billy D was home from basic training (he’d spent six months on active duty to begin his guardom) and I believe attending barber school. His marriage had already broken up and he was looking for something to do. He still owned a Farfisa organ, and had collected a guitar, a fuzz tone, a small amp, a mic and stand, and a set of drums, and lived with his mom, step dad, and two younger brothers. We often jammed in Billy D’s bedroom. The Thumbers’ drummer had begun playing guitar, so Billy D and I would back his seemingly endless stream of improvised licks. “I don’t wanna play drums no more,” he said, sitting on the edge of Billy D’s bed while picking away on some guitar he’d borrowed. “Listen to this.” He played a lick. “That’s Stephen Stills,” he said. “I just love the way he does that.” He replayed the lick and added a variation. “Stephen Stills, man.”

            We got to jamming pretty regularly, and were mightily influenced by The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, especially the song, Dear Mr. Fantasy. The guitar guy had heard Stephen Stills jamming with Bloomfield and Kooper on the Super Session studio album. Several times when I’d ditched football practice I headed over to Billy D’s to get in a living room jam before his parents got home. We seemed to be moving toward a band, at one time even inviting two former Heroes to join us. I don’t know why, but I was surprised that the former Heroes were fairly terrible at the art of jamming. Those guys, the bass player and drummer, were really swell fellows, and we were lucky that they actually accepted our invitation, but they worked better within a tight framework where everyone knew what was coming at all times. Our approach was a bit looser than that, to the point where at times no one had any idea where the music was going, but maintained the faith that everything would eventually work itself out, and even if it didn’t, the jam would be a fun ride.

The End of Another Beginning

Hello.

            Since we’d been there that long, Tig and I decided to stay on. Vanilla Fudge finally took to the stage at 2:00 a.m. It was a strange Fudge, too. Instead of the four piece lineup (we knew that the drummer and bass player had already left to form Cactus), five guys, one a singer, made up the group. The band launched right into a long piece. I was tired but loving it, while at the same time worried about what would happen to our asses when we got home. We left while Vanilla Fudge played its third song, a cover of the Spencer Davis Group’s I’m a Man. The time was around 2:30 a.m.

            On the way back home Tig remarked that he had never been awake that late at night before. What was worse was that we got turned around and drove by several landmarks several times each before getting back on track. When we finally reached my parents’ house, everybody was, predictably, still awake. By then it was getting toward 6 a.m., and my mom said Tig’s parents were insanely worried. Mom called them and prepped them with the story that we told her, that Tig and I had become lost (we let on that we had been lost for nearly six hours instead of a shade over three. Everyone was so relieved to have us back that there was no talk about grounding or any punishment, and as far as they were concerned we were still trustworthy and in good standing.

The Talk Is On

Since I write about music, I also think about music. If any reader wants to engage me about specific or general music topics, then do so on Face Book. I'll respond to almost anything.

            The opening act was a local band that mostly did covers from Grand Funk Railroad’s first album, On Time. The singer had long hair and a headband, but the get-up was a wig and he removed it after the first song. Despite the phoniness of the beginning of that presentation, I thought the band played well and sounded good. Tig and I heard a great commotion at the entrance, almost directly under our seats. The disturbance turned out to be a small gang of young men who had stormed an unguarded gate and climbed over the locked door. One of the voices sounded familiar and turned out to be Billy D’s younger brother. After getting lost in the crowd, he spotted us and came over and talked for a little bit (offering us some “grass”) before disappearing again into the crowd.

            The first big league band on the bill was Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys, who had recently made the charts with a song called Good Old Rock ’N’ Roll. I don’t know what the deal was, and I really didn’t care, but the band never played its hit that night. Instead, the crowd was treated to a little over an hour’s worth of heady, progressive music. I was very impressed with the flute playing that figured into several songs. Cat Mother’s persona for the show was laid back, but the music was intense. I really liked what the band did.

            Before the second act could take the stage, a conflict began to emerge. A big part of Tig’s and my getting permission to go to the concert in the first place was our promise to be home near midnight. Well, Cat Mother hadn’t left the stage until nearly 9:30, and it was around 10 p.m. when Blue Cheer came on. I wanted to see the entire set and so did Tig, so we dug in. I had always liked Blue Cheer since their 1968 cover hit of Summertime Blues. The band played more covers than I had expected, including the Cream songs, Politician and Sitting On Top of the World. Blue Cheer played some hard-assed music and Tig and I decided to stay in hopes of hearing the Fudge after them.

            That was not to be because the next band to play was Big Brother and the Holding Company. Don’t get too excited. Janis was already long gone and had been replaced by a harmonica player. Neither Tig nor I expected too much from the band, and we really didn’t get that much, but the front man was unlike anything I’d ever seen in that he was great at talking to the audience and adding an additional angle to the show. That night was the first time I had ever heard anybody say “fuck” on stage (quite often, as I recall). The set lasted for nearly two hours.

Howdy

It's good to feel ok.

            Tig had turned 16 and had been regularly driving for a few months when, in early summer, we discovered that Vanilla Fudge would be playing at a racetrack east of  Knoxville. Of course both of us were excited nearly beyond our capacities to contain ourselves. We plotted carefully how we would raise ticket money and how we’d get to the place. A big sale would be our parents. I was only 15 and had rarely been allowed outside the county, and Tig was little older and had no practical experience driving in the big city. But it was the Fudge coming, so we would pull out all necessary stops to make the trip happen.

            Things really went better than we had hoped. We were quickly granted parental consent, and the concert cost, I believe, was around four dollars each. Great. My dad worked in Knoxville and gave us directions, which he assured us were easy to follow, and that the location was easy to find. Tig’s folks allowed him to use the main family vehicle, equipped with an eight track tape player. Everything came together.

            We got rolling a little early on the night of the concert in case we took a wrong turn or in some other way got lost. New Interstate 75 had not yet been completed, so everyone from Madisonville took Highway 411 to get to K-town, which meant also that going through town during rush hour was a necessity to get to the concert. My dad had stressed that all we had to do was stay on the road to Virginia and we couldn’t miss the place. As coincidence would have it, we stopped at a convenience store to make sure we were on the correct road, and ran into my dad who just happened to be there. He confirmed our location, and not long afterword we parked in the racetrack lot.

            I was expecting a scene like Woodstock, but except for the occasional long haired boy, the crowd looked about the same as one at a high school football game. Tig and I bought tickets and were allowed through a narrow, gated passageway. We found an isolated spot on the bleachers and prepared for the crowd to come that never came. Not only were the seats largely unfilled, but no one even sat near us. The majority of concert goers had settled on spread blankets arrayed near the stage.

The Weakend

It's a sweet morning.

            After basketball season, a very successful campaign which included the school’s first win over McMinn Central, an 18 game winning streak, and the first trip by Madisonville to the regions of state tournament (The Heroes’ guitarist was the big man on team), The Heroes regrouped for its last gigs. I believe The Heroes played a time of two in the high school cafeteria, and I recall, though I might be a tad mixed-up, that the last two gigs were played in the newly rebuilt gym in the late spring.  As I remember them, the band’s performances were laid back and effective. Some songs from the past like Lonely Too Long and You Keep Me Hanging On came out of mothballs, and sounded sweet to boot, and the note for note version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida proved what the band members were made of. The Heroes did not survive the graduation of the drummer and guitarist (the bass player had graduated the year before but played with The Heroes while attending a local college).

            Around that same time Tig and I had become closer friends and spent a goodly amount of time talking about and listening to music. Three bands we always agreed on were Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf, and Vanilla Fudge, especially the Fudge. To us the Fudge seemed the perfect band due to the members’ abilities to play airy, atmospheric passages and still deliver a blow to the head whenever one was called for. Both Tig and I liked Oh, Well, by Fleetwood Mac, a shortened version of which had charted on Top 40 radio.

            I wanted to play in a band with Tig, but he was already in a band. Two of the band’s members, the drummer and bassist/keyboardist, came from the high school marching band. The lead vocalist and co-lead guitarist used a strange, rag-tag assemblage of equipment. He used a Hagstrum guitar (a brand I had only seen in advertisements a few years earlier featuring The Mothers of Invention), a decent Fender amp, and some kind of bullhorn PA system which delivered a harsh, metallic vocal tone. I’d once jammed with the guitar player, but nothing came of it.

Bloggo

Have mercy!

            If playing gigs was the standard, then my freshman year in high school was a total bust. Football and basketball took their tolls on my time, as did the never ending quest to keep my head bobbing above water in the classroom, and I could never garner enough interest from anyone to get a group together. I felt sad about it all, and walked around in a mostly depressed state. The only thing to be happy about was my growing record collection. I put every nickel into bringing home new music. Mom’s job at The Big K figured mightily into the equation when she’d had first crack at a stack of albums and bundled packs of singles a night before they officially went on sale.

            As might have been predicted, some of the selections were busts, though I don’t fault my mom because she was running blind. That she scored as well as she did was a miracle, all things considered. An album that stuck to the present was After Bathing at Baxter’s, by Jefferson Airplane. I’d read a lot about the album when it had been current (a few years before), but had never heard it. I also got a couple of singles by The Doors, and one of the greatest singles ever released, The Memphis Train, backed with I Think I Made a Boo Boo, by the incredible Rufus Thomas. He soon had the nation prancing with his hit, The Funky Chicken.

            I’d dodged the coach and pretty much stayed out of the way rather than playing football in the spring. I never liked playing in the cold, and I figured a musical opportunity might come my way and I didn’t want to miss that, so football was a memory. I had no intension of playing the next year or any other time.

            Billy D came around to invite me into a new group he was about to join. He had left The Thumbers, who were themselves going through some sort of change, and was thinking of singing with a new group. To my surprise, The Truck drove us over to the first practice. In fact, The Truck was a little surprised to see me because his plan was for Billy D to play the organ, since he already had enlisted another guy to sing. We drove around for a couple of hours waiting on the bass player to get home so we could set up and practice. I think we ran through a single song when the guy arrived.

            No one contacted me for two or three weeks after that, but one night The Truck dropped by to haul me to practice. When I asked about Billy D, everyone in the car laughed. “He’s gone,” The Truck said. “Whatta ya mean, gone?” I asked. “He’s in the National Guard. He got married and joined to stay out of the draft.” This was news. I wasn’t ready for it. I’d always had Billy D to fall back on, to direct me when I was in a fix. I didn’t know what to do. The band rehearsed a few times, then fell apart. I liked all the members, and the rhythm guitarist seemed to want to mentor me, but there really wasn’t enough of anything to hold the group together.

            The local music scene played possum for a while. I saw The Thumbers playing at the Gudger Community Center as the house band for The Gudger Jubilee, a local radio show. The band’s former guitarist, on leave from the army and still in uniform, played on the night I attended. When he was discharged, The Thumbers bought some large, padded Kustom amps and a PA system and morphed into a Creedence Clearwater Revival-type cover band.

What Doesn't Kill Us, Kills Us

I love the music of early morning birds.

            To the people who know me this may come as a shock, but in truth, I’m quite shy, at least when I first meet people. I also am not a big fan of mass events or crowds of any kind. I have a friend who likes to go out with a crowd of people to dinner. He’s not happy unless several couples and whatever singles want to join in. And though I’ve gone to many such occasions with him and his posse, I feel mostly like retreating like a turtle into my shell because I never feel as though I hear or say anything that isn’t on a totally superficial level. No, I much prefer one on ones or just another couple to a crowd, especially since I’ve gotten old and find it difficult to decipher dialog over the din of loud music and hubbub in some restaurants. The same is true of parties, where I will often latch onto some poor soul and stick with that person for the entire event, or even of family (and I love my family and friends), or church dinners, or nearly anything along that line. Perhaps this marks me as selfish, but I don’t mind spending time alone. Since I’m such a loudmouth around people I know, it may be difficult to see me as I see me, which is as a pensive, introverted personality. In that light, much of my time at public events is spent as an observer, so the idea that there would be a lotta women at the square dance was more about experiencing the event through my eyes and ears than in a more interactive manner.

            When the music and dancing began, I just roamed around for a long time. Every so often I’d sit with CEP in the bleachers, then I’d roam about a bit more without asking anyone to dance, and without any appreciation for the music. I fancied myself suffering, feeling sorry for myself and the pitiful conditions I imagined myself subject to, and wondered why I’d let Lawman and CEP talk me into a second foray to Squaresville.

            About two hours in, I tired and went back to the bleachers for a sit behind where Lawman and his girlfriend and her friend sat. Lawman’s girlfriend turned and asked me if I had met her friend. Of course I hadn’t, so she made the introduction. I don’t remember the girl’s name (nor Lawman’s girl’s name, either), but I can remember how she looked, and I thought her quite attractive. I sat next to her and talked for awhile before asking her to dance. I’m incredibly white when it comes to rhythmic movement and there’s no way in hell I could ever impress anybody with that, but I wasn’t so removed from the rest of the pack, at least that night.

            The dancing went on for a few songs before we retreated to the bleachers as another call dance started up (some of those songs had lasted 15 to 20 minutes in a sort of unconscious and boringly repetitious homage to lengthy rock songs). Lawman’s girlfriend’s friend and I talked together for the rest of the evening. I found her interesting to talk to, and again thought her to be good looking (her hair was frosted a little). She revealed that she was a sophomore at Greenback High School (I guess Lawman’s girlfriend was as well), and before we left the two girls had invited us to play basketball with them early the next morning (Sunday).

            I felt a somewhat conflicted about the proposed basketball trip. First, I’d have to get up early and venture into the cold to play on someone else’s home court. That was a lot to ask. Then again, I knew that the girl I’d met and I had gotten along better than I would ordinarily have expected. Usually the girls seemed to leave me behind for CEP, so I was in unfamiliar territory. Lawman and CEP had definitely noticed the good vibes and had teased me (ridden me like a horse, in fact) all the way home, and I figured that they’d use any additional ammo generated by such a trip to ride me further (my skin was so thin in those days) because they knew the teasing really got to me (I’m no better in that I have picked on others in the same way). But I still hadn’t decided until the next morning when the fellows came by to pick me up. I begged off and they split. I figured that would be the end of it, but CEP came back by after the game. “She asked where you were. She’s got the sweet ass on you, man,” he said. That was kind of what I’d figured, but wondered if I’d made a mistake in not going. We’ll never know.

Fall Back

The history rolls on.

            I got a pretty good haul for Christmas. Apart from the essentials like clothing, of which I remember little, my parents bought me Are You Experienced, by Hendrix, and Goodbye, by Cream, and Near the Beginning, by Vanilla Fudge. I wore them out. My grandmother commented that she “couldn’t stand” the Cream song I’m So Glad, because I played the album a couple of times per day, and often listened to one side while dozing off to sleep for the night.

            The New Year began a little rocky due to the uncertainty at school concerning the demolished gym, a separate building connected by a covered walkway between it and the main educational side. The area looked like a mini war zone, as though a bomb or missile or huge meteor had landed on the building.

            The Pug-a-Nut had also crashed, at least as a business. There was some inner controversy, but I don’t remember anything about that. I’d also heard that Billy D had gotten married. Wow. I didn’t see that coming. With those developments I figured for a return to the earlier status quo, but The Heroes were still kind of on ice, partly because of the guitarist’s basketball commitment, but there may have been other reasons as well. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who missed the dance scene.

            One Friday night, CEP, Lawman, and another guy, TP, who had just gotten out of the army, showed up at my grandmother’s house. “Comon, we’re going to a square dance.” A square dance? Were they kidding? The optimal word is “square” and all the negative implications the word implies. Why go to a square dance? I wondered. “Be a lotta women there,” Lawman said. Really? I was having trouble grasping that concept. I was a youth music guy moving increasingly toward the more progressive side of that genre, so I just couldn’t see how this would be any fun. “I want you to meet my girlfriend,” Lawman said. I grudgingly consented to go.

            The particular square dance was held, I believe, in Athens, Tennessee. There was a band that played sort of down home country type songs, and every few numbers a guy would jump up behind the mic and start the calling. I’d seen similar things on television, but didn’t understand them any more than I understood an auctioneer babbling away. One problem that evening was that just a few people showed up, and so the squares were constantly lobbying CEP and me to join in. It seemed pointless to me since I had no idea what the calls meant, nor how to execute any of the moves. Still, the pressure finally got to us and we tried a couple of the call events, to a mostly mixed success rate, though the results were more inept than disastrous.

            When the next week rolled around, same thing. Lawman and CEP, minus TP, wanted to go to a like event in Lenoir City, Tennessee. “They’ll be a lotta women there,” Lawman said. “Yeah? That’s what you said last week,” I answered. “I’ll bet your girlfriend will be there, though.” “She’ll be there. She said one of her friends would be there, too.” We went.

            The dance was held in a fairly huge hall, which appeared to have some gymnasium-like qualities, and I recall it being referred to as a community center. The crowd, unlike in Athens a week earlier, was overflowing, with both dance floor and bleachers packed to the gills. I couldn’t believe it. Even more unusual to me was the crowd mix of all ages of people dancing together. I also noticed that young people danced the square and everything else. In that respect the event was very interesting to me. Best of all was that Lawman didn’t lie: lotta women there.

Wild Ride

Another week and more more.

            So, what does a freshman do after membership on a football team that went 3-7 and was used as punching bags for the entire season? Go out for basketball, of course. Small schools like Madisonville usually had some combination of athletes that played two or all three of the sports offered. I tried out for and made the B-team in the 1969-1970 season. It was a great experience. Many of the guys from the 1969 junior high team also made the roster, along with a couple of others who had not played, and the rest were sophomores who landed there for a variety of reasons. I believe everyone tried out for the main varsity team, and we were the 12 (later to be known as The Dirty Dozen) who were sent down to play the other cast-offs of other programs.

            What The Dirty Dozen lacked in finesse, we made up for in assholism. We were rough and mean and not likely to be pushed around. That we didn’t win a lot of games didn’t seem to matter to any of us. We always played hard, though not as dirty as the nickname implied. The lot of us were experienced cussers, and we cussed nearly all the time, even in minor flaps, or for no particular reason. Several of my best friends were members, three of whom were former band mates and another was a future one, and we liked playing on that team.

            The varsity started out slowly, too, losing three games by the first week of December, in one case losing to a much weaker opponent. But I had great hopes for that team. It had great size, depth, and an experienced backcourt, including a crafty and skillful point guard. The lead guitarist of The Heroes had finally become the starting center for the team. At 6’5”, he, too, was a highly skilled ball handler, and he had mastered classic pivoting and footwork. He also had a deadly weak side corner jumper. Like the team, he started slowly early on, but when he heated up I wondered why he hadn’t played much the year before. The previous team had a frontcourt of senior starters, all fairly tall, big guys. The starting center had been the starting center on the football team. The star of the show was a 6’5” fellow who played close to the basket. He had very good court sense and had an accurate mid-range jump shot. Some of his points came on tip-in of misses. The poor guy did occasionally disappear in some games; however, the new center always showed up.

            A game was scheduled for the evening of the last day of classes leading into Christmas break. Though the B team didn’t have a game, I went to support The Tornadoes. The usual game crowd was mightily thinned that night. I sat in the stands with my coach where we commented often on various technical aspects of the playing during the game, which was a Tornado victory. I spoke to the principal on my way out, and left a nice feeling. The next week, on Christmas day, snow started falling a little before 11 a.m., and didn’t stop until a blanket of six or seven inches covered nearly everything. A little after midnight the gymnasiums at Madisonville High School and Tellico Plains High School (near duplicate designs, and build by the same company) collapsed under the weight of snow. A hard freeze gripped the land for a few days and I wondered what was going to happen.

Wu

The end of the weak.

            Along with listening and playing (all at home), reading was just about as important. In my freshman year of high school I loved the band Cream best of all. I owned a couple of singles by them, and in early fall I bought a greatest hits album (it’s the one with an unfinished painting of fruit on the cover) at Big K in Athens, which is where my mom worked at that time. Cream had been a non entity for awhile, and like so many things before and since, I was playing catch-up on my musical education. I can’t remember where I got the information, but the music press talked up a new band called Mountain. The band’s producer, second vocalist, and bass player, Felix Pappalardi, who was also Cream’s producer (and often played accompaniment on such instruments as Swiss hand bells, mellotron, and trumpet with the band, and who had produced the great Youngbloods’ song, Get Together) had begun a band with a guitarist named Leslie West (and had produced West’s album Mountain). I thought it sounded like something I might like.

            Like everyone else in the world who listened to Top 40 radio, I heard the band’s single, and only hit, Mississippi Queen. I bought a copy of that record at the Dime Store. Actually, I kind of tired of MQ, but was fascinated by the flip side, The Laird, which in some ways reminded me of the more eccentric songs of Cream (As You Said or Passing the Time, for instance). That just made me hungrier for an extended play artifact. When the album finally came to the drug store rack in Madisonville, as usual, I didn’t have the money, but hoped I was the only one who noticed it until I became rich.

            OJB, a friend who had been the vocalist for Tig’s band Aftermath, was in pretty much the same boat as me as far as relative wealth was concerned, and, like me, has his eye on Mountain’s album Climbing! I don’t remember how the money came into my hands, but when I had enough, I purchased the album and went quickly to my grandmother’s house and played it on her little monophonic GE record player. I still love that record. On the back cover was an instruction that the album was to be played loud. I managed as best as I could. At any rate, I had gotten there before OJB, who not long afterward asked me if I had beaten him to the punch. I told him with glee that I had. He called me an asshole in a good natured manner and we went our ways (though I had a smile on my face). That’s the way it was then. If you didn’t hurry you could miss out, as Tig had when OJB got to Santana before he could.

            It was all in the game, and the music press was part of that game, as were television shows (The Tonight Show, The Red Skelton Show (saw Iron Butterfly lip-syncing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on Red’s show), and various variety shows that featured a pop slot or were dedicated to youth music), and the radio. Many of the stories in the music press, even about music or groups, had as much to do with the alleged cultural aspects of the music and its presentation as the impact of the sound itself. Sorry, but that stuff always left me cold. I could never see how growing a beard or getting a haircut or wearing certain clothes had anything whatsoever to do with what came through the speakers or across the airwaves. To me that’s just part of the cult of personality that I find largely meaningless. I read interviews with musicians that mentioned various points of view, but I couldn’t see what any of that had to do with me or with sound. A friend of mine told me that for years he ordered and drank scotch and coke because he’d read or heard somewhere that The Beatles liked that drink. I don’t know how to approach that kind of reasoning. Another friend and mentor told me he listened to classical music (classical not of that particular period, but of that genre) because he wanted to be a cultured person and that’s what cultured people listened to. Again, that seems like the cart before the horse. I listen to music that I like and I don’t care where it’s from or who does it, and I don’t care what another thinks of me because of what I prefer. Life’s too short for any of that nonsense. If I can’t be myself, what’s the point in continuing? I’m not here to impress anybody but me. If others dig that, great. If not, ok. I’m still me no matter what.

Too Early for Rational Thought

I'll be posting more video material throughout the rest of the week and beyond. I'm trying to sync it with the history. I hope you enjoy.

            Football at Madisonville High School was hellish in 1969. First of all, the turnout for the team was low, around 33 to begin the season, and one guy who earlier quit was allowed to return four games into the season. Two starters went down with season-ending knee injuries, and numerous problems plagued the team along the way. Some days there weren’t enough players at practice to scrimmage. The head coach was brand new (as in just out of college), and the assistant was really the head basketball guy (and not a bad football coach). Nearly every starter was brand new from the previous year.

            A huge problem was the schedule. The former coach, who had played at UT, wanted little Madisonville to play big teams in the area and had signed to play them. The 1969 season was the first where schools were classified according to student population, and there were three classes, A, AA, and AAA. Madisonville was in class A, the division for the smallest schools, but we were slated to compete against several AA opponents. This was compounded when the principal cut a deal to add a tenth game after the schedule had already been printed and distributed to the community (in one page calendar form with schedule at the top of the page and 12 months in tiny print under that).

            Hell took off on the team in the very first game, a 69-8 loss at Maryville. CEP, the new starting quarterback, took a real beating that night, as did everyone, though he seemed to take the brunt of the pain. I got into that game near its end, playing defensive back, which I never before played. No big deal until I had to go back to receive a punt (also something I’d never done before). No surprise to anyone, including me, I muffed the punt and a Maryville player scooped it up and ran into the end zone to complete scoring for the evening. During the replay on the radio the next morning, I was misidentified as someone else. Thanks, and I mean that.

            The team limped along throughout the season. Poor CEP got pounded in nearly every game. Already mostly demoralized, The Golden Tornadoes were unlucky enough to walk into the game at Bradley County on its homecoming, and were defeated 48-8. Near the end of the game, CEP ran around left end. The ensuing tackle tore off his helmet and broke his nose. Damn! It happened right in front of where I was keeping a safe spot on the bench. The coach offered to send me into the game, but I had accidently left my shoes in Madisonville and did not have proper equipment to enter a game. I really wasn’t too sad about that.

            A hard loss came in a 3-0 game at Copper Basin decided on a late field goal (I’d never seen a field goal in high school before), but the granddaddy of all losses came via a 78-0 drubbing on the Madisonville field by arch rival Sweetwater, whose starters took us apart, handed us to their second team, which did the same thing, and then went to third team players before the end of the first quarter. Madisonville players were lucky to escape injury.

            Unfortunately, the team still had to travel to Jefferson County and play that tack-on game the principal had arranged. I caught some virus that laid me low that week and could not dress for the game, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise due to a weird change in the weather. In 1969, unlike now, the high school season started a bit later and ran past Halloween (Madisonville won on its home field 12-7 against McMinn Central on Halloween night), so in the third week of November a battered Madisonville left town for JC. When the bus stopped at a traffic light before getting out of town, the time and temp display at the bank (now a restaurant) flashed 18 degrees.

            Jefferson County is northeast of Knoxville, and a long way off. Before reaching even Maryville, the bus broke down and parked in the lot of the Gilded Mirrors business (it’s still there), and we were forced to wait for a replacement bus. That was bad, but the real shock was yet to come because when the team arrived in Jefferson City, about an inch of snow covered the field and the temperature was 9 degrees. It was truly Madisonville’s version of The Ice Bowl. No one was really prepared for 18 degrees much less 9. Since I didn’t dress out, I gave up my gloves, but even with all gloves collected and given to starters, some players had none, and most only one.

            My parents and CEP’s parents drove together to the game but did not get out of the car. There were only two people in the stands (Crowbar’s parents) on either side of the field, no bands, and only Madisonville cheerleaders (with whom I huddled in the JC Rescue Squad’s vehicle) in attendance. It was a horrible, horrible night in which The Golden Tornadoes went down 34-13 to close out the season. The only bright spot was a team dinner on the road after the game. Do I long for those days again? Are you kidding me?

Cool Mornings

Morning is opening like a yolk.

            As much as I fumbled around in the classroom and on the football field, my life as a music listener became richer that year. Brillo and I remained good friends even after I had left the band, and I often ended up in his basement listening to some of his records. Brillo often became obsessed with some band or album and would play the grooves thin when he found something he liked, so we listened to Led Zeppelin for a couple of months. I don’t know that I was any less obsessed than Brillo, it’s just that I noticed his obsessions more than I realized mine.

            Like everyone else, I listened to the radio. Lots of big music came through the tiny speaker of my transistor radio as I listened to WKYZ in Madisonville, WENR in Athens, and the granddaddy of them all, WNOX in Knoxville. I couldn’t argue with or fault the Top 40 at that time because the psychedelic period had confused the singles charts and all kinds of things hit and were played. I’ve heard that some stations in the south wouldn’t play black music, but that wasn’t the case where I lived. Stations around here seemed to play just about everything except the most progressive music, and even that was played if it hit the charts.

            Near the end of 8^th grade several of important things happened to my ideas. One came from music class. The guy who taught music played with The New York Symphony Orchestra for a number of years before settling in Athens, Tennessee to work a family farm after his stint with NYSO. I’d experienced his classes once a week through 7^th and 8^th grades bored out of my mind as he played the classics of the Classics. Most of it fell heavily upon my tin ear. There was just nothing there I could approach. I had no use for any of it as far as I could see. To some extent I still feel the same way. Things like Bach (who is a master) just sounded like a lot of busy work to me. Neither could I connect with Beethoven or Mozart, though I admittedly had not had a fair sampling of their output. Most of the Romantic Period, especially the early part, also fell with a thud on my eardrums. In fact, I have a theory that one could take a random sampling of recordings of that period’s music, put any number of them onto a turntable, drop the needle at random, and only the ardent fan could decipher the difference from one to another (I feel pretty much the same way about some heavy metal and a lot of rap). But one day, near the end of the school year, the teacher played Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It sounded strange and interesting to me. I looked over at Eric (who was in my homeroom that year). “This is kinda cool,” I said. The music not only caught my attention, but sort of blew me away. The music teacher is long since dead, but I thank him because he unknowingly changed my life that day.

            I also thank my uncle who was kind enough to give me a cast-off stereo record player. That was a really big deal because it allowed me to listen to records in my room rather than the living room where the record player was attached to the television set. My parents weren’t at all interested in giving up viewing so I could dominate the air space with sounds they didn’t want to hear. This freedom meant that I needed something to play on the machine, so I seriously went about building my record collection. My parents were responsible for starting my collection with the various record company selections, and had bought me several Smothers Brothers discs, and also the first Vanilla Fudge album. Although I rarely had enough money at any one time to purchase an album (at $3.27 a pop), I was often able to scrape up enough dough (called bread then) for the occasional single (usually at 75 to 95 cents each), and my collection included as many as I could afford.

            My junior high and high school singles collection was not very large, but at least kept me in music I wanted to hear. I’m a big Canned Heat fan and at the beginning of 8^th grade bought On the Road Again from the singles rack at the dime store (which is the only place I found that sold current singles in Madisonville). The hit side of the record is wonderful, especially the opening chimes and the constant buzzing drone that pushed the music along, and the added bonus of the flip side, Boogie Music. I later bought Going Up the Country, backed by One Kind Favor (a standard, covered by Bob Dylan, though I didn’t know any of that then), with its big fuzzy leads, sent me on. I also bought a Vanilla Fudge single of Take Me for a Little While, backed with Thoughts, and a kind of obscure single by Cream of Anyone for Tennis backed by Pressed Rat and Warthog. There were a few more (I recently fished them out of my collection to make sure I had all the titles correct), some of which were procured in packages of three, much like the comics of years before, that my mom bought for about a buck each.

            When I had enough money for an LP, I bought it from one of the local drug stores (the only one that sold records), which always seemed to have many of the latest releases. Of course this stream of new titles drove me crazy because I wanted nearly every LP I saw, and when I had enough money would stand before the rack for quite a while thumbing through the titles and looking for the perfect record to purchase, but always leaving behind at least 20 others that I desperately wanted. The care I put into the selections rarely left me disappointed.

Love the Day of the Dead

Well, my favorite holiday is now a sugar encrusted memory. On to Thanksgiving!

Phase 10

            High school was something new. I’d already been practicing football for a couple of weeks before classes started, and I can assure anyone that there are few things worse than two-a-day football sessions. Getting up early was the worst part for me. I’ve always enjoyed the night life. No, that doesn’t mean I was out tomcatting all hours (I was only 14 then), it’s just that I’m not a big fan of the daylight hours. Nothing but official stuff happens during the day, and if there’s anything I hate it’s everything official. I still don’t understand why school has to begin as early as it does (hell, it starts earlier now than when I went). Having been in the education business off and on for quite a number of years, very little of education makes sense to me. I’m living proof that one can learn next to nothing in high school, make horrible grades throughout, and still succeed in college. Intellectually, high school was (still is) a waste of time. Had it not been for the girls it would have been a total waste. Still, I was looking for gridiron glory and was willing to play at least some of the game to get it.

            One of the things used to scare freshmen was the so-called freshman punch, a palm delivered blow to the forehead to show who was boss. I’m no tushhog, but I drew the line. Asshole that does that to me, I allowed, would have to fight. I decided that I’d probably get my ass kicked, but there’s some shit that people cannot be allowed to do. Look, I had to go out there and play against guys bigger than me (5’11” and 110 lbs) everyday, so what’s a little more? Turns out that the freshman punch was never administered to me or anyone else. I don’t know why the practice ended, but it did.

            I somehow managed to have the single worst schedule in the history of Madisonville High School. For the mandatory four classes and study hall, I had a total of two teachers, both of whom hated my guts (I didn’t like them, either), and that was it. As shameful as my grades were in junior high, they started out even worse in high school. To say that I was an unmotivated student is an understatement. I didn’t give a shit about any of it at all. Other than being a total babe fest (sorry girls, ladies, whatever, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I couldn’t help but love you all), high school was total bullshit. I wasn’t interested in what it offered.

            Football, too, was a bit of a drag. The politics that surrounded players and playing took my innocent ass off guard. I had seen it in action before, in the classroom in lower grades, but the practice seemed, in some ways, to be even more prominent at the higher levels. How so? Well, then as now, the rich kids get breaks and the benefits of the doubts that others just do not. Of course those of wealth always looked well groomed and nicely dressed. Few of these students flirted with hippie ideals and fashion, or even music (at least until some aspect from that culture became mainstream). And I can’t say that the kids themselves were all assholes, some of them were then and are now friends of mine, so my complaint isn’t against them so much as the system that treats them differently. The part that pissed me off was that the rest of us were supposed to acknowledge and agree that we were of a diminished quality from the wealthy. This was supposed to prepare us for subservient roles to better serve those who could buy the rest of us.