Forty Three Years...

 Tomorrow is December 9th.  Back in 1980, it was a school day.  It was a Tuesday morning, the morning after a Scout meeting for me.  

My days started around 6:00 am.  I had to get up, get cleaned up enough to spend the day with 750 other kids spread across four buildings, and that took a fair amount of doing.  At 7:10, give or take a few minutes, a bus would appear at the end of our road - a good half mile or longer away.  Fortunately, it was a road that ran maybe a tenth of a mile straight then turned to the left - or north, after running east towards the river, then headed down towards us.  Typically, there were two other houses where kids also got on the bus, then came our house - before the bus headed on into the end of the road where a dead end formed a turn-around spot big enough for a full-length school bus.

Then we headed back down the road, out onto the main road, and made a few more stops before we got to the first drop off - which was the then still relatively new Sartell High School.  A majority of the kids got off there, after which came the second stop, Sartell Elementary, where most of the little kids got off the bus.  Then the bus crossed another street and into the parking lot of my former elementary school.  

That was where you wanted to change seats - the best seats were usually two or more rows behind a heater or the same amount ahead, unless you were suffering through a particularly freezing day.  As we waited there, briefly, a few kids hopped onto our bus from others.  Then we headed off.  

Those days, the bus would take us to a rather decrepit bar parking lot at the edge of St. Cloud, where we'd change to another bus to go a further 3 miles or so to Cathedral High School.  In the fall and winter of 1980 I was an "upperclassman" - a Junior, which sounded pretty cool to my ears back then.  It wasn't one of those nebbish, dweebie, lame Freshmen, or a slightly less bedraggled Sophomore, which usually got shortened to "soff".  I was a junior.  One year away from King of the Hill Senior status, you know, the kids who got to do the fun stuff.  Or so I thought.

And I can remember the route.  Those roads are now very much changed, but when we left my elementary - St. Francis Xavier - we'd head down a hill and take a right turn, south, along the "Great River Road" that ran down the western side of the Mississippi River.  It was mostly straight, a small hill you went down after leaving Sartell Proper, and past the house with the Peacocks in the yard - live, growing, shrieking peacocks, not stuffed statues.  Then we'd continue along to a three-way intersection where the traffic on "the main road" would continue without stopping.  We'd pass the house of one of my classmates whom I'd gone to school with for ten years now - Richard Warzecha - who was pretty quiet, very, very smart, and I don't think we ever spoke together more than three times.  He was quiet, I was an introvert - I know, I know, an introvert who desperately wanted attention and had no idea at all what to do with it.

After that slight bend in the road to the right, we passed a few more houses, including one of the last ones on the left, the river side, before we entered one of my favorite spots in the world. 

The Great River Road, there, has another three-way split.  Turning left used to take you up along the banks of the Sauk River.  These days, a hill, upon which used to sit a house, has since been removed and replaced by a Wal-Mart in what was mostly a farm field surrounding that hill.  But past that, the road on the right fell away about 30 or so feet down to where the Sauk River ran.  It was perhaps a hundred feet from that river to the mighty Mississippi, which was, as far north as we were, not navigable to most larger boats.  Pleasure craft only, which meant your average or highly above average speedboat, your average rowboat with a 10-horse outboard on the back, turning it into a river fishing boat, canoes, and the then-occasional kayak.  This was before the Jet Ski was invented.

On the right, there were some small, beautifully kept homes and yards.  On the right, the same thing.  The land narrowed down until there was almost no room at all.  Then we came to what was, then, the "Heim's Mill Bridge".  Another one-lane road that was one of those cost-efficient methods of travel, which also rather greatly reduced the traffic and made the land around it look a lot more wild and pristine than it probably was.  

After you took your turn and crossed the bridge, which marked the joining point between the Sauk River and the Mississippi, you started up the hill and the curve to the left.  On the left side was a big stone house that was, I imagine, built by some of the early owners of Heim's Mill.  The mill, which was a tall and surprisingly large building on the right bank, sat below a much more modern house which was on the other side of the road.  A few other secluded and very nice houses sat on the riverbanks there, on the left, while the hill on the right continued up, with houses we never saw up a narrow dirt road.

Two rather surprising features came up next.  I can still see them incredibly clearly in my mind's eye.  On the left there was a well-built concrete-block two-car garage.  It was up by the road to permit the homeowner who lived in the house below, closer to the river, to avoid having to try to get a car up an icy slope on some of our worst winter mornings.  And on the right side of the road, just a few feet further along, was a pretty large white house which featured two two-car garages extending towards the road.  Those garages were barely far enough back to permit another car to park on the "driveway" between them and the road, and fools who came screaming up that hill at high speed may well encounter either a car backing out of that driveway, a car coming down the narrow dirt road going up the hill, or a car coming out of the housing development that was just past the white house, and the then-only entrance and exit to it was yet another narrow dirt lane.

Years later, I learned that the house just past that garage had been one massively ugly home.  At the time we were passing it, it was a nicely modest river home.  I don't suppose that makes much sense to people who did not grow up there, or like I did, but it was one of those homes that likely was built back when the place was a little harder to get to, but pretty, and riverfront.  Which made it more valuable than lakefront, because we had so many lakes you couldn't throw a stick and miss one.  Welcome to Minnesota.

One of the things that tended to make most days traveling that route wonderful was the light.  Mind you, I would be getting on the bus at about 7:15 am, which was still pre-dawn.  The skies might be brighter, but they weren't full-on sun.  I do remember the light on December 9 because the sun was out, and driving through those leafless trees gave a wonderful color to that golden sunrise.

And it was as we passed that lone garage on the left, Imagine ended on the radio, and the DJ came on and said that was in memory of the late John Lennon.  The man shared my father's birthday, but then, back in 1980, I was still figuring out who the Beatles were.  No, I was not a fan of Disco, I leaned very much into older rock and roll, heavy metal, and ... well, KISS, Boston, Journey was on the horizon, and REO Speedwagon was about to discover how far Hi Infidelity was going to take them.  

But when the announce said that John Lennon had been shot the night before, I looked over at one of the other girls on the bus.  Back in December of 1980, three of the nine kids on that bus had my last name - that's right, me and two sisters.  One of the other girls was a year ahead of me, I looked at her, and her eyes teared up.  "What happened?"  "I don't know.  I just heard."  That was about it.  

Literally less than a minute later, we reached The Bucket.  It had to be a little after 8:15, because we always got to school late.  It wasn't until my senior year that Cathedral changed their start of class to 8:45, and used the 8:30-8:45 "mod" - we used a "modular" schedule, everything was based around a 15-minute block and we had a six day cycle, though most of the time your schedule worked out to an even/odd rotation.  But back in 1980, Homeroom started at 8:15.  About the only time I made it on time was if my dad took me to school, because the bus didn't get us there until 8:30 - 8:35, depending on traffic, weather, and so forth.

But I remember getting off the warm bus, walking the ten or so feet around to the other bus door, the un-Junior-like tears on my cheeks not letting me hide my shock.  We rode the bus for the 15 minutes or so it took, and then got off in front of the South Building.  I'd head up the stairs and off to my first class.  I did not use my junior year locker, down in the basement of the south building just outside the lunch room, because it was definitely non-central.  I had religion class down in that hallway, which was every other day, and the rare "large group" classroom, typically only used when teachers needed to give a test, so they would spread 20 or so kids out among sixty or so seats in that classroom - the one that later became the stand-in choir room when they had to condemn what was left of the old North building, which was where our band program remained after they shut down the upper two floors which had been home to the John XXIII junior high and our high school art department - and our auditorium which got used for performances of school plays, and the occasional singing group.  Larger performances had to take place in one of the gyms, with terrible acoustics, but they held all 750 or so kids, plus staff.

But there, on December 9, 1980, I learned that one Beatle who shared my name was gone.  There was another one who had my middle name for his first name, but he had moved on from the Beatles to form Wings.  And Ringo was still a drummer.  But one bullet by one very, very sick man ended a lot of things.  

I still remember the argument I got into with my father a few months later.  We watched WKRP In Cincinnati regularly, and the episode was about a radio station cleaning up it's act.  The evangelist who was attempting to program the radio station was totally against Imagine.  And at the end of the episode, I will not forget the evangelist fellow listening to and insisting that Imagine's lyrics were terrible.  "He doesn't believe in Heaven!"  "But all he said was 'imagine'.  Aren't you trying to tell people how, and what, to think?"  

My dad and I must have gone back and forth for an hour.  I haven't changed my position, I don't know if he did, but I maintain that the freedom of what does in one's own mind is the most important of freedoms.  If you are not free to think, and think of anything you wish to think about, nothing else matters.  Nothing at all.  Because that freedom of thought is critical.  

And this was years before I'd stumbled across Robert Heinlein or any other more philosophical science fiction.  I was just coming from the point of look, we're all free to think.  It's what we do that will both define us and may bring forth the need for punishment, reward, or discussion.  So I guess in the end, what I'm trying to say is a big thank you to John Lennon and television for generally giving me some brain dead moments of just joy, and some moments where I had to pull the brain out of the quiet sleepy corner it tries to hide in and put it to work.  Sure, the Beatles did say they were more popular than God.  But it was not a brag.  It was a lament.  And much like many other moments in our history, a few rabid voices took a quote out of context, threw it in the faces of their less-capable of independent thought followers, who were easily whipped into action, making the point the Beatles tried to make even more obvious.  Some people do not think, they hand that responsibility over to others who happily abuse their trust and accomplish some pretty terrible things.  

But it's well past my bedtime, so good night.  Spend tomorrow wisely, because none of us knows how much time we have left, it could be taken without warning by traffic accidents, moments of stupidity, or moments of violence.  A better writer than I might pull out the appropriate Lennon lyric at this point, but the only thing that comes to mind is that moment from Day Before Tomorrow where Judd Hirsch's character says "John Lennon.  Shot in the back.  Nice man."  If I have to be summed up in two words, I guess there are worse ones.  Fortunately, stubborn son of a bitch is too long, but "stubborn jackass" may well end up on my tombstone.  Beats "Is that queer?"  When I was attempting to yell "Is that CLEAR?" at my children, who had just beaned me in the head, indoors, throwing dog toys.

Oh well.  I have had the chance to see children I never imagined I would have in 1980 grow to be adults.  And the oldest one was born two days before what would have been 53rd birthday.  And he was born on my father's 18th birthday.  Small world.  In some ways.  Would that we would have seen John Lennon see his sons become grown men with their own families.  And given us more music and wisdom.  But maybe we just weren't ready to hear it.  So it goes.