Chapter Five - High School Days

In the Spring of my 13th year I found my first true love, which remains with me to this day. My music teacher, Mrs. Siemans, put a guitar into my hands for the first time and gave me a song to learn: "Proud Mary" by Creedence. Thank you so much for helping me find my instrument, Mrs. Siemans. I play all the time, I've written and recorded my own songs and I have four fine instruments: An Epiphone 6-string (my main squeeze), a Martin 12-string, a Guild classical guitar (given to me in 1975) and a Martin Backpacker 6-string, somewhat the bastard child. I noodle with the mandolin as well. I'm as good as Chris Thile with no sleep for a week and broken fingers. Playing music in front of any kind of audience, from one to a thousand, is a drug that can't be synthesized. I think many musicians become addicts to some substance or another because they want to feel that way all the time. Fortunately for me, I never got famous or rich enough to find out. I will be a musician until the day I die because I have been one since the day I was born.

And then there was high school. By the time I started 9th grade I had already gotten high a couple of times on the kind of dirt weed that was around in those days. I was also a pretty decent soccer player. I played on several town league teams and made the Varsity team in my sophomore year. I wanted to play fullback or halfback but I ended up being dropped from the team at the final cut. Coach told me that anyone from the final cut could practice with the team and go to games, but they couldn't get a uniform or play regular games. I decided to stay, and switched to goalie. Weird thing, Fate. The second string goalie got kicked in the head during practice one day and suffered a concussion. Doctors told him to quit the team and I was in! Yes, another bittersweet moment. The first string guy and I played hard and he taught me a lot about the game. I went on to earn a Varsity letter. Thanks, Doug.

Freshman year started out well. Then I started going out the window again. Crap. My folks were getting frustrated and I had no answers.

Around Christmas that year I was out walking with Bud and we were stealing Christmas lights from people's yards and popping them in the street. Big fun in a small town! We turned down one street and saw a couple of other guys approaching us in the darkness. Didn't think much about it until they came up close. It was some redneck bully I usually I avoided and his little ratlike sidekick. Before I knew what was happening he had grabbed me and was beating the turd out of me. After sitting on me and torturing me for a while he got up and went away, laughing. As Bud and I went back to our neighborhood I swore that if that prick got close to me again I would kill him. I found a WWII mess kit knife and sharpened it with my Dad's grindstone, then put it in my coat pocket. It stayed with me for a year, until I heard that the kid had been sent off to some kind of juvey school. Good riddance. How might life have changed for me if that moment of truth had come? Would I have been desperate/brave enough to use it?

Coincidentally, I told my Dad that a) I was going to grow my hair any length I wanted to and b) he wasn't going to hit me any more.

In my sophomore year I discovered drama. I auditioned for a part in Arsenic and Old Lace and got it! I was the Reverend Doctor Harper, a priest, of all things. That's when I found out how exhilarating performing could be. I was also in a one-act play called Bringing it All Back Home. I was the pot-smoking son. What a stretch! I think my folks were a bit put off by the anti-war tone of the play, but the audience loved us.

I also found out that Science Fiction could be incredibly sexy! Stranger in a Strange Land put me solidly in that genre, and I still can't get enough scifi.

But the grades got worse and worse. I was being given ultimatums. Get better or drastic measures would be taken. Sure. Right. Dare ya.

I met my first girlfriend at Madison High School. Her name was Diane DiBella. Red hair, fiery temper, mixed Irish-Italian heritage. Man. Richard Thompson could write a song about her. We lost touch after I went away. And I did have to go away, involuntarily. Like the song says: "One day the axe just fell".

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