wine and roses and shamrocks

On Saturday X and I (I call us the eleven) are heading up into Maryland for a visit with Sue and one St. Patrick. The boys will be off on a visit and you know the first thing two 30-somethings (shhh…) would plan on doing; that’s right, flee across the state line and drink green beer, sleep on someone’s floor, and eventually wend our way back to Virginia. I believe there will be an Irish band and a bar involved.

The last time I planned to drive to another state, sleep in someone else’s house, and a see a band on a calendar holiday, was New Year’s Eve 1983 / 1984. It may well have been events like this that contributed to ending my attempt at college in 1985.

The cast of characters: two of my best friends from high school, Skip (aka CitiesSkip) and Jeff; Jeff’s friend Ben (who was at Cornell College with him), and me.

The trip: Omaha to Bloomington, Illinois.

The rig(s): At first it was a sweet Dodge Omni* that only managed to get us about 45 miles to Avoca, Iowa. At that point we called Skip’s mom (on a pay phone!) and she ferried the family’s Ford LTD station wagon to us at the crappy truck stop in Avoca, gave us the one working vehicle, and STAYED in Avoca until the Omni was either fixed and back on the road or she had it towed back to Omaha. She was a gem.

It was only Skip, Jeff, and I for the first 300-mile leg of the journey across Iowa on I-80 – we were scheduled to pick up Ben in the Quad Cities (Moline, Davenport, Rock Island, and East Moline…if you must know the quads). We set out on such a mission on long December 31st because we were trailing a once great 1980s ska bank, The Uptown Rulers, of whom Skip still has a nearly 25 year-old two tape, live recording that he’s burned to CD. They hailed from the Bloomington-Normal area and were gigging that night in their hometown for the New Year’s Eve bash. We must have seen them dozens of times between 1983 an 1985 when they toured the Big Ten college circuit and stopped in Iowa City five or six times a year.

As was expected during our lives of 1983 the car was stocked with the accoutrements of our days: a cooler full of Mt. Dew, No-Doz, the beat-up stuffed Odie that served as our mascot, tons of Wonder Bread and bologna and cheese, all the Maxell UD-XLII cassette tapes filled with the great bands** of the day, and just enough money to get us there and back…hopefully.

We managed to find Ben in the Quad Cities that afternoon and headed onto Bloomington for the show. Our planning was such that we believed we’d surely come across some other Rulers fans who’d put us up on their floor for the night, and if not, surely four college guys could find somewhere to sleep in a college town. That didn’t happen…and we tried. After the show we decided to drive the 200 miles back to Iowa City where Skip and I had our dorm room at the U. This decision represents that listener eye-rolling moment that happens all too often when we relive questionable, long ago decisions. Don’t fret, nothing really bad happened.

We got in the car in the dark of night, fairly heavy snow had started to fall, but it didn’t look too threatening. Of course, we didn’t put our heads together and think out the whole west to east travel of weather before we started driving west into the storm. We were no more than 20 miles out of Bloomington when we realized our error: this was a big ol’ blizzard and the only way to make it anywhere on the interstate was to get behind the only semi on the road and stay in its wheels tracks. The interstate was basically a whiteout and the snow was blasting down. There were a sum total of two vehicles on the road tha long and lonely two: the LTD wagon and the J.B. Hunt semi. Turning back didn’t seem an option so we simply chugged Dew and popped No Doz. It took five or six hours to just make it back to the Quad Cities where Jeff and Ben were dumped since they were heading back to school from there. The state line had proven the end of the snowstorm; the roads were clear, the sky was sunny (it was already morning), and Skip and I decided to push on the last 60 miles to Iowa City. Skip drove while I rode shotgun trying to keep both of us awake over that final hurdle. We had the windows cracked to allow winter's blast to keep us awake, we had the music turned up loud (no doubt The Tubes taking us home), and everything seemed fine. About 30 miles into this final leg Skip started talking – but not to me...and he certainly wasn’t singing along to Sushi Girl. As one would, I said “Dude. Who are you talking to?”, to which he replies “Jeff.” At this point the 24 hours of no sleep, the Dew, and No Doz had clearly screwed up his neurons. I reminded him that we dropped Jeff off 40 miles ago and his reply was “No. I can see him in the mirror. He's sitting in the back seat.” This is the point where everyone gets to think I’m really smart for having him pull over, giving me the keys, and putting him to sleep in the back of the wagon. He saw him in the mirror? Yikes. This was the very point in our young lives when we swore off the 'Doz.

I got us Iowa City and our dorm where we fell head long into our bunk beds and slept for about 12 hours. We eventually pulled ourselves out of bed for some sandwiches at the Hamburg Inn and a very gentle evening on the Iowa City town before heading back to Omaha the next day.

Why anyone needs to hear this story is beyond me. I was just wondering how it will go this weekend.

I think Sue’ll let us stay, she's like that.

T.


*The very same Dodge Omni that took Skip and I on our first road trip to Iowa City in the fall of 1981 (that was a ‘dear diary’ trip). The same Omni whose front axle was snapped when I slid into a curb on an icy street in Milford, Iowa (Christmas break 1982?) when we were on our way to ‘visit’ Thelma and her friends. As an aside, we (Skip, Jeff, the other Todd, and I) ended up spending the night on the living room floor with MTV playing endlessly until morning. I still get wierded out when I hear that “duh duh-duh duh duh duh-duh” that coming back from a commercial jingle that MTV used to play between actual videos – the astronaut holding the MTV flag on the moon. If you were a teen back then you know EXACTLY what I mean.

**The Tubes, The Cars, REO Speedwagon, maybe some Police, Wang Chung, Culture Club, Thompson Twins, Rick Springfield…you know what I’m talking about.