Gretchen Goes to Nebraska

It was 30 years ago today that King’s X dropped their second album “Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.”  The year was 1989 and I was a new transfer to Indiana Wesleyan University after an aborted sophomore year at DePauw University.  You might say life wasn’t quite unfolding as I’d imagined it would when I graduated from high school.  I was arrogant, insecure, and eager to make friends, but not so eager to be one.  What a strange time it was.

That’s when King’s X came onto my radar via their sophomore effort and it blew me away, well past Nebraska.  The picture of the band members looked edgy and uber cool.  The album concept was heavily influenced by C.S. Lewis and the first song even shared the name of his best known science fiction novel “Out of the Silent Planet.”  The cover was an illustration of what appeared to be a portal into another world cut into the fabric of space-time.  It’s as if a focus group had recruited me to brainstorm ideas for an album that would bring together elements of what I loved most in my young life.

And the music (Sweet Mercy!) was an eclectic mixture of hard and soft, full of soul, with three part harmonies and a relentless drive.  I’d never heard anything quite like it and I fell in love.  

I have six of their CD’s at present count, at least three of which I’ve acquired in just the past few years.  It’s like the band lay dormant for me for a couple of decades before I rediscovered them and was reminded of how much I adore them.  These CD’s are in my car and I love to play them when I’m driving.  My 14 year old son is not a fan because it is “Rock” and he is not into “Rock,” but my 8yo daughter will do some shared head-banging with me from the back seat with a big smile on her face.  She seems to get it.  

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Unstuck in Time

Aaron has come unstuck in time, much like Billy Pilgrim at the beginning of chapter two in Slaughterhouse-Five.  There’s a kind of snipping sensation when his eyes lose focus and take a rest so that his internal vision can take over the controls.  Don’t try to talk to him when this happens.  You will be just some disembodied voice, like a medium from another plane of existence trying to break through.  He can, and likely will, ignore you.

It is the act of writing that he is experiencing.  The trigger is more often than not a particular memory or, more accurately, the *feeling* of a memory that begs to be re-felt and, in the re-feeling, shared with people who might want to read about such things so they can feel it too.  It is a reflection of our shared experience of the world.  We are all connected, so they say.

Check his backlog.  For some reason a crow is a recurring feature in these stories, especially the ones that reach back into his childhood.  Aaron is not sure why this must necessarily be the case but it seems unavoidable or even inevitable as a stand-in for himself or other key players.  Maybe it’s a symbol for something mysterious or inexplicable, like “all people are connected.”  His favorite, though the title might be a bit too on the nose, is “The Crow.”  That one is a doozy and really happened to his younger self.

What has sparked these thoughts as of today?  Well, for one, he is re-reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five due to this year being the 50^th anniversary of its publication.  He just so happens to be 50 years old himself and is at this very moment writing in 3^rd person in case you were wondering.

And something that happened yesterday as well...  Aaron becomes unstuck in time, but only by one day in order to share something strange that happened that is destined to be a felt memory.  His son has gone to the neighborhood Rec Center to play basketball and upon his return the 14 year old boy is obviously upset about something.  He comes into the kitchen and plops down on a stool and hits his not-quite-adult-sized fist onto the table.  

“What’s wrong, buddy?”  Aaron asks, speaking as his father.

“Nothing.”

They go back and forth with no information being exchanged until Aaron takes a stab at guessing what might be wrong to try and break the fruitless cycle.

“OK, I think you are angry at yourself because you saw an old lady stumble and fall at the Rec Center and you walked away and did nothing.”

The son stops staring into space and focuses on his father with a quizzical look.

“Am I right?”  Which is the only thing Aaron can say in response to such a look because he was not expecting it.

“Dad, I was walking home and I saw an old man fall out of his wheelchair in his driveway and he was saying ‘help, somebody help.’  I didn’t know what to do.  I saw a woman come over and she called 911 on her phone but I just kept walking.  I’m so mad at myself.  Why didn’t I stop and help?”

Aaron assures him that feeling upset at himself is a good thing and a sign that he cares about other people but that there was nothing to be done apart from that woman calling 911.  What the father is really thinking as these reassuring words are coming from his mouth is, “How in the sam hill was I able to interpret my son’s emotions so accurately without knowledge of what had actually happened?!”  He suspects time travel.

***

A Soldier for Uncle Sam

A soldier for Uncle Sam

but

I do not know who I am

Not that it even matters

when

the bullet flies, splatters

Making me less of a man

not

more, unaccording to plan

***

Kung Fu Coffee

The sleeve was gone

Coffee cup hot

Making it hard to hold

Fingers burning

But

Like Kwai Chang Caine

I bravely moved it

From hand to mouth 

For a sip of liquid Chi

***

Blue Light Special

Yesterday after work I had to go pick up my son at a friend’s house who lives a good distance north of us off a busy highway.  In order to avoid the worst of the traffic I went straight there, but had about an hour to wait until I was to pick him up.  To kill some time I stopped by a HalfPrice Books.

I roamed the store a bit, read a bit, and checked out some Facebook stuff online while sitting at a table near the entrance.  Next to that table was a cart filled with old games for sale and curiosity drew me in (or was it the musty smell?).  Amongst the forty or so games I found Stratego and a game called “Break One Nine” which involved using a plastic CB radio and pushing your semi-truck piece around a game board.  It struck me that my kids would have no idea what this game was about or why one would use a number code to communicate information over a radio from a vehicle.  Isn’t that what texting is for?

Speaking of arcane knowledge from the 70’s... I then found a game called “Blue Light Special” and in my mind’s eye I was three feet tall again and running through the tiled aisles of a Kmart store looking to find that spinning blue light shining somewhere just above the height of the shelves, a booming voice overhead egging me on, “Attention shoppers!  There is a Blue Light Special in kitchenwares.”  I’m sure my Mom’s voice was the next to boom out without the help of a speaker, “Aaron!  Where are you?  Get back here!”  

“Blue Light Special” is now a cultural reference and as indecipherable to my kids as “Break one nine.”  Like many phrases and references passed down from my parents that I’ve never had any direct experience of due to the passage of time, my kids will likely hear these things from me that will strike them as peculiar.  The advantage that they have that I did not have is they can immediately “Google it” and discover the origins of what they have not personally experienced.  Maybe their kids will snicker when they hear “Google it” and have no idea what they are talking about in some future Google-free world.

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