Memories and Music

Middle school didn’t have the well-demarcated social divisions of high school, but the groups were beginning to splinter. One of the better defined social experiments was what we called the ‘heads’. Like most groups, they were easily distinguished by their fashion sense. They wore jeans, jean jackets, high top Chuck Taylor tennis shoes (black or white), and faded concert T-shirts, usually Rush, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin or some other hard rocker group. Their most distinguishing fashion characteristic was the wallet; an oversize leather wallet (usually decorated with the Harley Davidson emblem) protruding out of a back pocket, a chain running from a ring in one corner to an equally ornate tooled leather belt. In my day, these were the kids that acted out, got bad grades, and smoked in the bathroom. They were the Bad Element.

There were two fine examples of this counter-culture group that rode my bus in eighth grade: David and Sean. At one time, we had played together, riding bikes around the neighborhood, exploring the woods, playing at the elementary school playground. David and I had even been on the same little league baseball team. From about middle school on though, I didn’t have much to do with them. They were in their group, and I in mine.

By eighth grade, they were firmly entrenched in the ‘head’ culture. My knowledge of the drug scene was peripheral at best, but I have solid recollections of these two huddled together at the side of the bus, sniffing something out a what looked to be a baby food jar. I have no idea what it was, but they called it ‘rush’.

Some two years after high school, I got the news from my mother: David was dead. He had committed suicide by hanging himself with an extension from a tree in his front yard. It was a few years after that I learned that Sean was dead as well, killed in Washington D.C. during a drug deal gone bad.

Although this song isn’t directly tied to any specific moment, whenever I hear a Rush song, and this song in particular, I think of David and Sean. There’s a memory I distinctly recall: David had just finished sniffing whatever was in the baby food jar. He leaned back against the bus and I saw he wore a Rush concert T-shirt. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes closed, saying “Man, I’m spinning now!”

Tom Sawyer, by Rush

What memories does this song make you think of?

There was a guy named David in my home room in seventh grade. Blond hair, thin, glasses. He wore an auto-winding watch way too large for his wrist, a technological marvel to me at the time. It was a gift from his father. Later, in high school, we were on the Cross Country team together, although I was never the runner he was.

Renee was also on the Cross Country team. She was a couple of years younger, but had skipped two grades and so was only a year behind us. She and David began dating and ended up getting married. He went on to college and graduated with a degree in engineering. They had three kids.

One winter day he was walking to his car after work when two teenagers robbed him. They shot him before running off. He crawled over 100 feet through the snow before someone found him and called an ambulance. He died later that day. My mother sent me the newspaper clipping.

In middle school, they played music over the speakers in the morning before classes started. I remember sitting in seventh grade home room before first bell, this song playing, and David said to me, “This is a pretty cool song. I like it.”

Yes, it is. And I like it too.

Fly Like an Eagle, by Steve Miller Band

What memories does this song make you think of?