I started college a semester late, having taken six months off for a trip to California, where I lived with my father in Sacramento. In January 1984, I returned to Maryland, and in February I started college at Salisbury State College (now Salisbury State University). I was in the dorms, and my roommate was a guy named Chris, also from Maryland. Chris was a goalie on the lacrosse team and, after being introduced to marijuana in college, had become a huge pot head.
The semester started promising enough, but as the days passed, Chris pretty much stopped going to classes altogether. Once lacrosse practice started in the spring, his days assumed a predictable routine: sleep until around three in the afternoon, quick trip to the chow hall to grab dinner as soon as it opened, then off to lacrosse practice until six or so. After that it was party time with his teammates, then back to the dorm around dawn and finally to sleep.
This cycle continued until about two or three weeks before the end of the semester, when Chris abruptly became cognizant of the fact that he hadn’t been to classes in months. Thereafter ensued a mad scramble, where he visited all his teachers in an effort to work out some way of not receiving a failing grade. He must have reached some agreement, because I one afternoon he came back to the room excited, convinced he’d found the solution and that he’d be able to implement it in the short amount of time remaining and “beat the system”.
Evidently his plan failed to come to fruition, for when I returned to school the following fall, I ran into his former girlfriend, who told me he’d failed out and was now working in a shoe store in a mall. And that was the last I heard of Chris.
Chris fancied himself a music connoisseur. He had a collection of (at the time) eclectic albums, and he wasn’t adverse to playing them at o-dark-thirty in the morning when he finally stumbled in from his all night carousing. On the one hand, Chris introduced me to some musical groups I might not have heard of. On the other, my appreciation for his pre-dawn music expanding efforts was minimal. Many was the time I jumped out of bed and pulled the plug on the stereo, much to his amusement. When stoned, he also had fascination with Crazy Glue, and would spend a considerable amount of time gluing things (shoes, books, keys, you name it…) to the walls and ceiling.
Crack the Sky was one of his favorite groups, and All American Boy one of his favorite songs.
All American Boy, by Crack the Sky
What memories does this song make you think of?
