Memoir

Life was Perfect on our Private Lane Before Dad Left

Music became the ‘friend’ I could always count on

When I was about a year old, my parents packed up the car and moved from a crappy neighborhood to a duplex on a private, dead-end road. This is where my earliest memories formed and where my love of music began. For the next four years, life was perfect. This snapshot of time was like a series of Norman Rockwell paintings.

At the end of our road, the Smiths had a farm with horses. They also had two boys named Dave and Stan, who were my pals. Summers were great on the private lane. We spent a lot of time outdoors, exploring and playing. We rode on the farm tractor and the ponies. We explored the woods behind my house and played in the hay piles in the barn.

Walking through the grass barefoot was a delight until I got stung by a bee near the swing set. When we got too hot, we’d retreat to their air-conditioned house. Mrs. Smith gave us homemade Kool-aid Popsicles, while we watched Star Trek in the basement.

On the lazy summer afternoons, my dad spent time working on his car in the driveway, while my dog Bandit and I roamed around the yard. My mom spent time inside, doing housewife things, like cleaning and cooking. One of the sharpest memories I have is of the bright sunlight coming through the green living room curtains, along with a gentle breeze.

My mom hummed to Simon & Garfunkel while she wiped the furniture with Pledge. It was soothing. In the evenings, my dad and I laid on the living room floor and watched the Acre Creature Feature. On the Fourth of July, the neighbors gathered for a cookout and the adults lit fireworks in the small church parking lot on our private lane. It was our own little world, tucked away from everyone else.

My dad operated the Clark Gas Station down the road in the small town. Once in a while, my mom pulled me in the little red wagon to go visit my dad at work. I remember smelling the marigolds that were planted near the parking lot.

One summer there was a tornado warning, so my mom took my brother and me to the neighbors to wait out the storm in their basement. My dad wasn’t home, so perhaps my mom felt safer with another adult.

There was an abandoned house.

Across the street from our duplex, there was a small, abandoned brick house. My mom warned me not to venture over there because there was a “monster” who lived there.

My mom’s strange parenting tactic worked because I never dared go across the street to the spooky house for fear of seeing a monster. Ironically, my mom took me to the house with her one day and she found some dishes left behind that she took home. I didn’t see any monsters and I became skeptical of my mom’s earlier warning of monsters and things to fear.

Strange things occurred.

There were other things to fear on the private lane, some strange occurrences that to this day I cannot explain. Because the memories are from so long ago, I don’t fully trust them, but they are there and I know they happened.

One of the strange events occurred while Dave, Stan and I explored the woods. We came across a creepy wooden sign with a man painted on it. He had a wide grin that I didn’t trust. The sign was situated across the creek and gave me the creeps. Looking back now, the sign seemed to be a 1950s-era advertisement of some sort that I would relish today. Perhaps he was a milkman or the Maytag man.

The other more unexplainable mystery happened one night while I was lying in the little pink wooden bed my grandpa made me. It was always a cozy, safe place, where my mom would sit beside me when she tucked me in for the night.

Together, we’d recite: “Now I lay me down to sleep…” But one night, my cozy world turned into a nightmare. It was summertime and the window was open. I couldn’t sleep, so I stared out the window and watched the curtain flapping in the breeze. I saw a light come from the sky and hover at my window and disappear. My brain could not comprehend what I just witnessed and it scared me.

My brother and I shared a room, so I tried climbing into his crib so I would feel safer with him, but I couldn’t get over the railing. So, I reluctantly woke my parents. My mom told me to go back to bed. To this day, I wonder if I saw a shooting star or something else.

Downstairs, it wasn’t spooky at all. My dad had a pool table, and more importantly, a record player. I invited Dave and Stan over, and we ate squirt-can cheese on Chicken in a Biskit crackers in between rolling the pool balls on the table. I put James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” on the turntable, and my love of music began.

Nothing Gold Can Stay.

Like many others, my musical influences were made by those closest to me. I didn’t have older siblings, so early introductions were from my dad’s album collection. Other influences came from the hits on an AM radio station, and a little later by the bands I watched on “The Midnight Special.”

Life was simpler and slower-paced. This was before the internet and cell phones. It was even before cable TV. For fun, adults got together to play cards. Driving around town at night with the windows down, listening to the radio, was another popular pastime for my mom and her sisters.

They especially liked to drive along a road in the city and look at the mansions and dream. They’d tuck my brother and me in the backseat to ride along. I enjoyed listening to the radio. It was warm in the backseat of Mom’s little VW Bug, and later, her MG. The songs on the radio were “At Seventeen” by Janis Ian and my first favorite song, “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks.

But, “nothing gold can stay,” and we left our little house on the lane and moved to another town where I started school, entering the world of responsibility, a lifelong endeavor of doing things you don’t necessarily want to do, but have to do.

But I still had lots of fun. My friend Mindy came over and we jumped up and down on my bed underneath my Barry Manilow poster, listening to The Beach Boys' song “Wendy” and my favorite, “I Get Around.”

My mom and her sisters often took my cousins and me to a local diner for pizza. In the corner was a jukebox, and every time I went I had to play “Mandy” by Barry Manilow. Barry was my first crush, even before Andy Gibb. He was the first pinup in my room until my brother ripped up the poster. I was livid and complained to my mom. At the time my brother and I shared a room. He told Mom he felt like Barry was staring at him all the time so he destroyed the poster.

My parents married young.

My parents were likely feeling the full impact of responsibility in their marriage. They were young when they married at 19 and 20. I came along a year later.

They met while cruising Main Street at Steak N Shake. My dad was way into cars and drove a Chevy. My mom drove a Mustang. She also rode her own motorcycle since she was a tomboy. Perhaps this is what pulled them together initially. But, it didn’t last.

It was the ’70s and my dad liked to party. His friends came over to our house often. They’d drink beer and play volleyball in the front yard. Another time, Dad had a party in the basement. I ventured down there and “Whole Lotta Love” was blaring through the stereo speakers. Upstairs in the living room, Dad had two speakers hanging on the walls, one in each corner of the room (early surround sound) to listen to his albums. The only record I remember him listening to with his friends was “Cheech & Chong.” This is probably because he didn’t live there very long.

I got bad news on the way to school.

As I started third grade, my dad drove me to the bus stop in his Corvette. He told me he was moving out and I began to cry. My perfect little cocoon was ripped apart but I still had music. It would provide comfort to me over the next several years as I adjusted to the loss of my dad’s presence. Music was my constant; it would never abandon me.