There’s more to Kentucky than horses and bourbon
For nearly as long as I can remember, I have loved listening to music. Music affects me in a lot of different ways. I can talk about music and music trivia all day. But for now, I will just focus on a couple of aspects from my childhood. I have a few other music related topics that I will write about at some other point.
Growing up in the 70’s, we didn’t have the distractions that kids have today. That’s not a statement about lamenting the past. “You kids don’t know how good you have it. When I was a kid, I had to walk 3 miles to school in the snow. There weren’t any school buses.” It’s not one of those stories. It’s just a starting point for where I am headed with this post. When we were in the car, the radio was always on. It was almost always tuned to The Big 89 – WLS AM890. There were no iPads, DVD players, or anything else to keep us occupied. At home I listened to my brother’s vinyl records on his turntable when he wasn’t around. I taped songs off the radio with my little cassette recorder. Or, I listened to the radio with my hand-me-down AM transistor radio. It was probably from the 60’s, and it had what was essentially a single ear piece for listening. You kind of had to hold it in place to keep it from falling out. Imagine the stereotype of secret service agents holding their finger to their ear to hold the clandestine ear piece in. This was a very similar setup. I listened to the radio every night while I went to bed.
Unlike a lot of people, I can hear a song and I am instantly transported to a certain place in time. To this day, whenever Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” comes on, I am sitting in our brown 1973 Buick LeSabre on our way to ice skating lessons at Southwest Ice Arena in Crestwood. That was in 1975 but it seems like it was yesterday. The memories are vivid. I can hear “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind me” by Naked Eyes and I am hanging out with my cousins and swimming at their community pool. When America’s “Sister Golden Hair” comes on, I am at swimming lessons at the Hinsdale South pool. I can still smell the popcorn in the lobby and the chlorine from the pool. I can remember the instructors who would later become my teachers in high school. Certain songs invoke a certain memory or emotion in me that I can’t explain. “Abracadabra” by Steve Miller, and it’s the summer of 1982 driving to one of my travel baseball games. I’m in a van with my teammates and we are in awe of this one kid. This 12 year old kid has a five o’clock shadow and has to shave already. To this day, I have never forgotten that kid’s name. The list goes on. AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Journey, Styx, Elton John. Name a band from the 70’s, and I am sure to have a memory associated with one of their songs.
To a similar, but not as detailed extent, my sister does the same thing. Because of this, we have categories of songs from different parts of our lives. There are Swimming Lesson Songs, Ice Skating Songs, Aunt XXXX Songs, etc. It’s a weird way to compartmentalize memories, but we both do it. Most of my memories are good ones that make me laugh. Zager and Evans’s “In the Year 2525” is an exception. It always creeps me out when I hear it. I heard that song shortly after my mom told me that my great grandmother died. I always associate that song with her death. Other than that, things are pretty good. Except, except, except…
Then there is Bob Seger. I hate Bob Segar and for the first time I will reveal why I hate him. It was around the summer of 1977. It was a time when 6 and 7 year olds could play outside until it was dark without a slew of parents hovering over us. No playdate was set up 3 weeks in advance just to play running bases in someone’s yard. We all just got together and played on our own. One summer evening after playing, a small group of us were sitting around in one of the neighbor’s front yards just talking. One of the older kids, who was probably 12, started talking about camping in Kentucky. The conversation quickly turned with the sole purpose of scaring the crap out of the younger kids. I can’t remember who else was there and if they remember what I do, but what this older boy told us indeed scared the living daylights out of me. Again, I was probably 7 years old at the time. He starting talking about one time he was camping and he saw UFOs. He had to explain to me what a UFO was. I had not seen Star Wars yet. He told me that they were these bright lights in the sky that would appear and disappear without warning. They were flying saucers with aliens inside them. They would land and abduct people and take them to outer space. I never wanted to go to Kentucky. Every time I looked up to the sky at night and saw flashing lights from an airplane, I thought it was a UFO that was going to swoop me up and take me to outer space. This fear lasted a couple of years. This kid got me and he got me good. What does this have to do with my hatred for Bob Seger? I’ll get to that now. So the night he tells me of the UFOs and aliens, I go running home before he tells any more scary stories. It’s only a couple of houses down, but I still run as fast as I can. I go to my bedroom and get ready for bed. I get my little AM transistor radio out and make sure the ear piece is plugged in and it’s tuned to WLS. I lay down on my pillow and put the ear piece into my ear. What is the first song I hear? That’s right. “Night Moves” by Bob Seger. “I was a little too tall, could’ve used a few pounds…” His voice and the opening acoustic guitar were haunting to me as a kid. The background singers did me in too. I have heard it many times since and it’s not a scary song at all. I guess I just associate it with UFOs and aliens. Because of this, the whole Bob Seger catalog is affected. I hear his voice and I tense up. Whenever it is possible, I change the radio station as quickly as possible. You companies that have soft rock stations on hold while I am waiting for the next available operator, I hate you too. Luckily, my wife is not a big Bob Seger fan. I can change the channel without a fight when we are driving together.
I refused to watch “Risky Business” for the longest time because I kept seeing people slide around on wood floors in their underwear wearing Wayfarers listening to “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Thanks MTV and every other show that parodied that scene. I curse thee. Those Chevy Like a Rock commercials? I couldn’t switch the channel quickly enough and I have never owned a Chevy. My hatred for this man’s music runs deep. I can understand why Elvis shot out his television when Robert Goulet came on it. Is it a bit obsessive? Have I taken my hated a little too far? I’m sure I have. At this stage in my life, I’m not going to change and I’m okay with it. I’m sure Mr. Seger is a very nice man. He seems to have done a lot for his native Detroit. Because of this one kid, on one summer night almost 40 years ago, I hate his music. That simply will never change.
What makes the Bob Seger story funny to me is something my wife told the kids when they were younger. They were going through a monster phase. They were afraid that monsters were in their rooms at night. They wanted to sleep with the lights on and have us lay down with them until they fell asleep. This got old pretty quickly. My wife had heard about getting a spray bottle of anything and calling it “Monster Spray.” Each night before the kids went to bed, they would spray their rooms with “Monster Spray” to prevent the monsters from entering the house. She also proceeded to tell them that monsters did not like nice houses. She told the kids that monsters lived in, you guessed it, Kentucky, with the hillbillies. No disrespect to the underprivileged Appalachian folk in the great state of Kentucky, but I found this to be hilarious. I instantly thought of the UFO and aliens that resided in Kentucky that scared me as a kid. Apparently, everything that is frightening to a child lives in Kentucky. I have been to and through Kentucky several times and I have yet to see a monster, alien, or UFO. It’s funny how things came around full circle.
Whenever I discuss music with people, very few people even remember the songs I am talking about. Not only do I remember them, I can give a detailed memory of listening to them as a kid. I don’t know if that makes we weird or I just have a good memory when it comes to that kind of stuff. Either way, I have all these memories stored in the recesses of my brain. Every once in awhile when a particular song comes on the radio or my iPod, I’m that kid listening to it on my old transistor radio.
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