Heavy Metal hit the theaters in my area at the beginning of my junior year. My friends and I wasted no time in high-tailing it up to Landover Mall to see it. Despite it’s “R” rating and our obviously younger than 17 age, we had no problems securing tickets. Afterward we hit the local ice cream place and bailed on the bill. We did leave a tip though!
Heavy Metal definitely spoke to us at the time, especially the Den story, about a geeky kid getting sucked into an alternate world where he looks like a body builder and sleeps with beautiful women.
Little did I know at the time how prophetic Devo’s Working in a Coal Mine would turn out to be…..
Like many a youth of my (or any) generation, I served a sentence at the requisite fast food restaurant. My prison of choice was McDonald’s, where I slaved away 20-30 hours a week during my junior and senior years of high school. Minimum wage in 1982-1983 was $3.35, so my take-home was $60-90 a week. Pitiful from today’s perspective, but more than enough to keep me in gas and support the occasional movie date (tickets were $3 each) and trips to the mall.
Friday and Saturday I worked as a closer, from 4:00pm - 1:30am. The closing crew was pretty regular: me, Troy, Judy, Sarah, Kim, Gordon, Porter and a few others. Sometimes, after shift, we’d get together and do a little partying, enjoying a few cold beers pulled from the green 5-gallon pickle bucket (courtesy of McDonald’s) stuffed with ice (also courtesy of McDonald’s) that had been chilling in the trunk of my car.
One night we rolled out of the parking lot after closing and headed down to park behind a nearby school. We popped a few and put on an Eagles tape (you remember cassette tapes don’t you?). Troy and I were in the front seat, Judy and Sarah in the back. It was a beautiful spring night, a slight breeze, the stars bits of glass on black cloth. The radio cast a faint blue light.
We drank our Michelob (the high schooler’s beer of choice in the early 80s) and listened. After the the song finished, Judy sighed and said “Now that’s harmony”.
Yeah, sometimes I was a bit of a delinquent. Cruising the back rounds of Calvert County in my 1972 Buick Skylark, this song blaring, Ted hanging out the window with a baseball bat, teaching mailboxes a lesson while the rest of us cheered him on…..
When I was young, CDs didn’t exist. It was the age of vinyl. My friend Billy and I went through a Beatles phase, enticed by the stories of Paul’s death and the secret messages supposedly embedded in the Beatles later songs.
I’m not sure how old I was (maybe 12 or so), but whenever I hear Strawberry Fields, I’m back in Billy’s basement, the two of us hunched over a turntable, using the eraser end of a pencil to spin a Beatles album backwards, trying to hear it’s secrets.
