Lower Manhattan is much as I remember it from last year’s visit. Unfortunately, check-in at my hotel is, too. As with last year, I’m at the M Social Hotel (the former Millenium Hilton – and that’s not a typo; it was intentionally spelled with one “n”) across from the World Trade Center. This is a neat hotel and you can’t beat the rates, but getting checked in can be an adventure. The guest lobby is on the third floor. As I get in the elevator, a guy probably in his mid-40s who’s also on the way up says, “How long you been waiting?” I told him I’d just arrived. Turns out he’s been waiting a couple hours to get checked in.

The good news is that this year, the lobby’s not under construction. The bad news is that, like last year, there’s a long line. There’s exactly two clerks working check-in, and there are all kinds of problems: IT issues, rooms not ready, you name it. A lot of people are sitting at tables or on couches waiting for issues to be resolved. At times some of them are vocal about it. There’s a young couple that’s flown in from Turkey, and they’re very unhappy; the female half of the couple marches up to the counter, loudly protesting, almost in tears. Another frustrated guest issues a few four-letter words to one of the clerks about the lack of personnel up front. The guy I was on the elevator with is in front of me, and at times he turns and gives me a sardonic look. I’m tired, of course, and I need something to eat and something to drink, and after about 20 minutes the standing there with my bag’s strap digging into my shoulder gets to me. I start to wonder a little bit if I’m going to be sitting around like some of these other poor souls, waiting and waiting and waiting. Last night’s reading comes back to me. How would Marcus Aurelius handle it? I can’t control the circumstances, but I can control how I feel about it and I can control my response to it, and no matter what happens, this moment will pass. Float with it. 

As it happens, after a half-hour’s wait, I’m up at the counter checking in, and it all goes well. Not only did the “why not?” upgrade offer I took a chance on pay off (to what the clerk promises is a great room), but the clerk throws in a drink voucher to thank me for my patience, and she calls me “dear” three or four times throughout the transaction. (I get the impression she’s very thankful I’m not yelling at her. I feel for her and the other staffers who are having to deal with a mess that likely stems from management issues.)

With happy relief I go to the elevator. The room number starts with 30. The last button on this elevator’s panel is 30. “Top of the house, Ma!” I chortle as the elevator zooms up, Willy Wonka-style. Then up on 30 and to the end of the hall, and I open the door…and have my breath taken away by a corner suite. The sitting room looks north, with views toward City Hall and the Woolworth Building. The bathroom is between the sitting room and the bedroom around the corner. On one side, the view north is toward Midtown. The view west is toward the World Trade Center. I’m overwhelmed. I’m just some kid just up from the country, grew up in a tiny rural town, and here I am with an amazing corner room on a high floor of a fancy hotel in lower Manhattan. It’s too good, too much. I’m too happy.

None of that, however, is going to make up for more urgent needs. I walk a couple blocks up to Walgreens for some provisions, then head back. Before going back to the hotel for the night, there was one more thing. Last year, I visited the World Trade Center memorial and found some names that were significant to me, in particular the flight crews of American 11 and United 175. I’d been haunted, however, that I’d forgotten to find Father Mychal Judge at the memorial. This time, I didn’t leave until I did.

Back in the room for the night, I got cleaned up, scarfed down some food, caught up on things (including the outcome of the Preakness, whose victor made me think of Robert Vaughn), and took lots of photos from up on high. But I also knew I had an early report time next morning, so I didn’t stay up too late. Somehow I eked out about four hours of rest.

Then the day dawned. I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful it would look: the orange glow over the horizon out one window; through another, warm light reflecting off One World Trade Center’s curtain of glass. This huge city, and yet this moment of quiet beauty and wonder. What a blessing to see this, to have this moment.

I didn’t want it to end. But a day was waiting on me. One last check of everything, one more elevator ride. Out in the lobby is the hotel’s flag from September 11, 2001, now preserved behind glass. (Last year I wrote about this hotel’s association with that awful day and how it’s haunted me.)

Then out the door, up to the subway station and Houston Street, then over to Varick and 7 Hudson Square. Into the lobby and the security desk. Why is it every time I check in at ABC, I get nervous and own-goal myself? All set, I wait for my friend Dennis to meet me in the lobby.

It doesn’t take long, and Dennis brings me up to the multi-purpose room where the editing and other magic happens. There’s my friend Gary, who’s happy to see me again. The next four hours or so are a blur, as Dennis does updates and fixes for Good Morning America while Gary manages things, and I observe all of this while devouring one of the delicious cranberry muffins that’s been brought in for our enjoyment. (The guys don’t know this, but what keeps me coming back are these muffins.) They practice their trade the way skilled, experienced hands do them: what seems intricate to the layperson is quickly dispatched with quiet precision, then it’s on to the next task.

Fortunately, there’s not a whole lot to fix today (and when I have a chance to help clarify where a fix was needed, I get this little thrill! Yes! I got to help out in big-time teevee!), and that leaves plenty of time to talk shop. At points visitors drop by, including the weekend executive producer. At another point, we visit the control room to take care of an errand. This, really, has become why I like to visit: the people, all of whom are very kind and welcoming to an interested outsider who works on the fringes of this business. Last year, and in 2024 at the old ABC campus on 66th, so much of why I was there was to see the place and go everywhere we could. Now, it’s different. As much as I like looking around, I’ve seen it. I’m here because Dennis and Gary are my friends and I don’t get to see them enough. And, as I tell Gary, I keep coming back because I learn stuff (including, this time, such valuable life skills as who to channel when leading a labor negotiation). I can then take that back and use it for what I do with the students. It’s an ongoing education, and it’s always worth the effort to get here. 

The morning passes quickly and we have a lunch date to keep, so Dennis and I head out and catch the subway up to Lincoln Center, then cross over to 66th. Two years ago, this was where my first visit to ABC took place. There was a tall office tower in the middle of ABC’s campus. Now, almost everything is gone. There’s about eight stories left of the office tower, and even that’s not long for the world. The site is surrounded by plywood sheets with diamond-shaped Plexiglas windows, but there’s not much to see; just rubble. I see a strangely intact brick and wish I could levitate it over the fence as a souvenir. Dennis takes several photos over the fence and from the opposite side of the street, while I amble down the sidewalk and try to peer between the gaps. In what had been the office tower’s lobby, I see shattered windows and what’s left of an escalator. It’s sad to think that two years ago this place was alive, functional, busy. Now it’s a wreck, and soon what’s left will be hauled away. The old, landmarked portion that once housed Durland’s Riding Academy remains, and I hope it’ll find new purpose, but everything else is gone. Soon the only reminder that anything television happened here will be the street sign reading “Peter Jennings Way.” 

As I wander along, I see an older couple, obviously tourists, looking through the fence and trying to piece together the scene. I don’t ask where they’re from, but their accent sounds kind of German. They see me and ask what was going on here. I tell them that this is where the ABC Television Network used to be. We strike up a brief conversation and they ask me where I’m from. I’m up from South Carolina, I tell them. They start telling me about the places down my way they’ve been, most of them in the Lowcountry. I’m in full Southern charm mode by this point, nodding and smiling and laughing a little. The man goes on in a little bit of detail, gets hung up on remembering where this one place was, and then the wife says in this weary way, “Do you think she really wants to hear all this?” The interplay between them is a hoot. We wish each other well and part ways, I catch up with Dennis, and then it’s off to our lunch date at P.J. Clarke’s. As we’re walking along we’re alongside a family group with a couple pre-teen kids who are trying to top one another with gross-out bodily function humor of the sort pre-teens will do. The mother suggests something that’s kind of a tongue-twister. It’s all I can do to not suggest the “cottonpickin’ finger-lickin’ chicken plucker” routine. Instead, I kind of laugh to myself at a scene that’ll never play out.

There’s a table waiting at P.J. Clarke’s, and already there is our friend Gady. With him is his lifelong friend Joel, whom I met last year when I was up to visit Gady. I knew we were going to meet up with Gady, but I didn’t expect Joel, so that’s very much a treat. They’ve got a lot of stories to tell, since Gady worked at CBS for more than five decades and Joel worked at NBC for a long, long time. A little bit later, Gary joins us. The next hour and a half are a fun blur of stories and history and remembrances of folks from back when, and laughter and the enjoyment of sharing good company over a good meal. I try to take the scene in as best I can, knowing how rare a treat this is, that back home this kind of thing doesn’t happen. Memento mori. 

Regrettably, the time comes. There’s a train leaving Penn Station at a quarter after 3, and my name’s on a ticket for it. There’s handshakes and hugs, a request from Joel to come back soon, and I head off to begin the long journey home. As I wait at the subway station, it’s oddly still. Fifteen minutes ago, there was fun and there were friends. Now I’m alone, and it’s too quiet. My heart is full of love for the guys I was just with, and I ache for having left them; yet I also know there are folks (and critters) back home who need me. It’s an exquisite agony, the simultaneous joy and ache of having people you care about in so many far-apart places, knowing you’re blessed to have them but knowing that blessing comes with an ache, and for a moment I’m verklempt. But soon the train is here, and I’m quickly at Penn Station. There’s a picket line of striking Long Island Railroad workers outside the entrance. Then past the Garden and into Moynihan Train Hall, where I stop in the Walgreens and get a couple supplies for the trip, and then wait for the boarding call.

Soon enough, down we go to the track. This time, it’s a regular train back to Baltimore instead of an Acela, but I’m in no hurry; the nice thing about the trip from here on out is that I have no deadlines to meet. The three hours pass without anything of note, and it’s back to the BWI station. I get Supercar out of hock, program the moving map, and follow the directions south. I’m very deliberately making the transit past the District of Columbia on a Sunday evening, hoping the traffic will be a little less, and the transit east of town works well. Where things do back up is in northern Virginia, and there’s a lot of stop-go-stop for at least 45 minutes. Once we’re past Quantico, things open up and I make Thornburg in good time. 

All was going well…or so I thought. The directions in the moving map were supposed to take me to a Holiday Inn Express. Instead, they take me to a little shopping center in the corner of a Food Lion parking lot. I’m rather perplexed by this, and for a moment wonder if the hotel actually exists. I pull over into a parking space to sort things through and find out that, yep, I’ve been pranked by a whopper of a map issue. (Cue Lewis Grizzard saying “We been ho-axed!”) I figure out where the hotel is, set course, and inside about five minutes I’m there. It isn’t the most inspiring location; there’s at least two semi trucks parked in the small lot, and there’s a lot of clientele between this hotel and the adjacent hotel, but it’ll do. I finally find a place to park, get my bags and stuff, and check in. It takes a couple minutes to get a clerk, and when I do get my room, it’s on the first floor…right next to the breakfast lounge. I can hear the television from the lobby through the wall. At least it’s a short hike, though, and for my purposes this room will be fine. I get cleaned up, eat something, catch up on computer chores, and turn in.

The next morning I’m up bright and early, ready for the rest of the journey home at my own pace. I refuel the car and set out, taking the bypass around Richmond, and then into North Carolina. There’s a brief stop in Fayetteville to visit a hobby shop I hadn’t visited in about a decade, and then on toward South Carolina, resisting the urge to travel east to Kinston and commune, at least in spirit, with Vivian Howard. I content myself with a wave as I fly past on 95.

At the state line, there’s the now-obligatory stop at South of the Border (and by this point in the drive, obligatory because I need a restroom stop), and I amble around one of the shops for a little bit, soaking in the ambience of a bygone roadside era I knew way back when, and buying a couple suitably tacky souvenirs. After that, it’s back on 95, then to 20, and then the first signs of Columbia start to materialize. Then north on 77, a stop for fuel, and then my giant circle closes as I take an exit toward Winnsboro and the last miles home, and the folks and the critters who are glad to have me back. 

Others have ably told Savannah’s story, and this is as good a jumping off point as any for the many resources out there. My own memories are of when the ship was at Patriots Point in the 1980s and early 1990s. The museum had designs on being large back then, and as opportunities came along the museum took them. Savannah was one such opportunity. There were ambitions for parts of the ship to become hotel and recreation space, exhibit space and so forth. For more reasons than I care to go into here, that never happened. Savannah was also a white elephant in a collection of fighting ships, and who’s going to be interested in a big merchant ship when there’s a larger ship next door with airplanes parked on top, right? I remember being aboard Savannah and having the ship pretty much to myself, which was eerie and kind of sad. The ship never got the TLC she needed, which is a shame because hers is a huge, historic story. But, for the kids (big and small) who made up most of the museum’s clientele, Savannah was a plate of broccoli while Yorktown and that collection of zoomy airplanes was a king-sized Happy Meal.

There was yet another wrinkle: Savannah still had a nuclear reactor on board, and that obligated the museum to a carefully-regulated regimen of inspections and other requirements. (I have copies of all that paperwork, so…yeah, it wasn’t small.) When you realize that ships of any size are maintenance hogs as it is and that museums only have so much budget to go around…you sort of understand why, when Savannah was due for drydocking and hull inspection in 1994, the museum gave the ship back. The Maritime Administration did what needed doing, and then Savannah was sent to slumber in the James River Reserve Fleet. They couldn’t just sell Savannah for surplus, not with the reactor and all. To make a long story short, Savannah ended up in Baltimore for upkeep, the reactor was pulled out a couple years ago, and now last details are being worked out so that the project can formally end this December. After that, MarAd can dispose of the ship like any other surplus hull.

The preferred outcome of all this would be that Savannah is preserved as a museum. A lot of interior and exterior work has been done throughout this process that would make it a turnkey project. The reactor is gone, of course, but the ship feels like a living thing again, right down to the ship’s music system being back in working order, playing music the passengers would have heard back in the day. Modifications have been made in machinery and reactor spaces that make them the perfect setting for science exhibits (you can walk through the containment vessel!). Not to mention, there’s so much furniture and art still aboard. The ship’s a time capsule in all the best ways. It’s the polar opposite of what happened with poor old United States, where so much was just gone (and butchered) and the ship was a shell. Savannah‘s ready to go, thanks to a lot of work and a lot of people who have cared.

That’s the most-wanted outcome. Savannah, Georgia wants the ship and seemed like a lock until a wrinkle came up that may or may not be resolved by December. There’s interest in keeping the ship in Baltimore but a permanent berth there will be a couple years in the making. And, unfortunately, the owner of the current pier wants the ship gone in December. Some things need to happen fast to get Savannah an interim berth. Otherwise, it’s entirely possible the ship goes back to the James River Reserve Fleet, a lot of loving work goes to ruin, and the ship ends up sold for scrap or reefed. The Association has a video in which Jim Delgado spells out the stakes, and when Jim Delgado speaks, it’s worth listening. This is important enough that I’ll let you watch it before we continue.

All of this means that all of us have a lot on our minds, including the possibility of the unthinkable…and while I’ve got too many memories of what happened to the Big U for me to not not worry, today is a chance to see the ship again, be amazed by what’s been done, and have a grand time in the company of folks who love this ship as much as I do.

Once you’re aboard, you’ve stepped into another era. Someone once described the ship as a cross between Star Trek and Mad Men, and it’s apt. This ship is alive in a way I’ve never seen before, and members of the Association and people involved in the decommissioning are on hand, telling stories and sharing information. One gentleman is telling stories of his days in the nuclear Navy. When he talks about his own interview by Admiral Rickover, I immediately stop and listen in. This gentleman’s interrogation by the Kindly Old Gentleman wasn’t the wringer that others went through (and there’s tons of Rickover stories here), but no way was I going to miss a firsthand account. 

After a little bit, we’re summoned into the ship’s lounge for a presentation about the ship’s status and future, and then there’s a few moments for some Association business. We get to see the video that I linked above. There’s a moment when a lady whose father served aboard Savannah donated a plaque she found in his collection, commemorating the ship’s port call in South Korea. And then it’s time for lunch in the veranda bar. There’s deli sandwiches, boxes of pizza, what looks like spaghetti or lasagna in big aluminum pans. It’s a really generous spread. I help myself to a big slice of cheese pizza and a can of root beer, then plop down at a table. I never thought I’d have a meal aboard this ship; yet here I am, and life is good. After that, I roam around the deck just aft, then come inside and buy a few things from the souvenir shop, do a little more exploring and take some pictures.

Out aft of the bar, one of the docents is talking with someone and I join the conversation, sharing recollections of the Patriots Point days and how much better things look now. Off in the distance, we can see what’s left of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and after all I’d seen and read from far away, the reality was chilling to see in person. 

The docent and I head down one deck, and we happen into a former crewman who’s helping out today. One thing leads to another, and this gentleman gives me a private tour of the ship. We spend probably the next 90 minutes going anywhere and everywhere, from former cabins and dining areas and the kitchen spaces, to the reactor spaces (including a walk through the reactor containment vessel) and engineering spaces.

There’s also a visit to the control room, where they will let you touch one button, and it’s a lot of fun to mash:

Along the way, my guide’s telling me stories and sharing anecdotes, at one point proudly pointing out a bracket he was told to make and that’s still there. We have the best time going through everything, and I’m listening and asking questions and cracking the occasional joke, and knowing the ship as well as he does, I get to see some things the average visitor doesn’t. It just couldn’t have gone better.

We end up back in the purser’s lounge, resting after more of a workout than we realized, but it was so worth it. After talking for a little bit, it’s time for me to depart. I give him profuse thanks for the tour, then head toward the gangway. As I leave the ship, I pat her on the side and tell her to keep her courage. I seriously want to go aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, moored across the pier, but time’s not on my side right now. I’ve got to get to the train station for the next leg of the journey, and after shotgunning a bag of M&Ms and a Coke Zero, I set off.

Back through the tunnel, toward the airport, to the train station from which I departed last June. I park the car, grab my messenger bag, and head trackside. I park myself on a bench and get caught up on messages. A little wren flits around near my feet, scavenging for little bits of stray food. I talk to the little one for a moment; it’s nice to have a friend while I’m so far from home. A northbound train pulls up, and most of the people waiting trackside board it. A few moments later comes my ride. When I booked this trip, I decided to live a little and try out the next-generation Acela, and here we are.

As it turns out, I don’t have a seatmate on this ride, and so I can sort of relax. We’re slow leaving Baltimore, but out on open stretches we get to going pretty fast, and between that and the pretty nice seats it’s a pleasant ride. There aren’t as many stops with the Acela, and between that and the faster speed you do notice it’s a shorter trip time-wise. Not mind-bendingly fast, of course, but the ride is less of a time sink.

Along the way I write in my travel journal and listen to some music. I hadn’t much been in the mood to listen to music on this trip, but now that some pressure was off, I felt like it. Since it’s a train trip, I had to start with “Driver 8,” and followed it with “Can’t Ignore The Train” – realizing that I’d heard the train and couldn’t resist its call to a wider world, and here I am speeding toward the big city. Then the recently-reissued 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged album took me the rest of the way, and not having listened to it in forever, I’d forgotten how good that record is. Natalie and the guys made my heart full, serenaded me the trip long, until we disappeared into the tunnel leading to Penn Station. From there, guided by muscle memory, I threaded my way to the subway station and a ride to my hotel downtown.

More to come….

Although there’s been some changes in recent years, you still don’t see as many gimmicks as you would in other golf broadcasts. It’s still kind of a throwback. In the opening montages, you don’t see these tough-guy hero shots of golfers backed by edgy music; you’re much more likely to see gauzy beauty shots of the tree-lined road to the clubhouse, of Amen Corner, of the stone bridge at 13 over the tributary of Rae’s Creek. Even the commercials are lower-voltage corporate image spots instead of attitude-driven, in-your-face hard sells. All in all, the final round is a soothing broadcast to have on in the background, and it’s also the last surviving example of a kind of broadcast I grew up with. It’s what sports broadcasting used to be, before we traded in our Vin Scullys and Jack Whitakers for sportscasters whose main selling points were attitude and volume. Yes, it could seem stodgy and stuffy, more than a whiff of “don’t upset Grandpa,” but there was a dignity to how they handled their duties, a dignity that’s missing in so much in modern media, let alone modern life.

This year, the tournament takes place against what’s been going on at CBS in general. As it’s been impossible to ignore, what’s left of CBS has been swallowed up by yet another conglomerate that’s making deep cuts. CBS Radio News will soon be no more. The Broadcast Center, I’ve heard from reliable sources, seems more and more like a ghost town. Television City and Black Rock were sold off a while back. As sad as it is to see play out, CBS has been little more than a brand in a portfolio for a long time. The network that Mr. Paley and Dr. Stanton brought to greatness really started to ebb in the mid-1980s, a victim of changing times and changing philosophies in the business and financial realms, and downhill has rolled the snowball since. It’s a longer story than I care to write here, and the story has been told many times over by now, anyway. 

Yet there are times, like this weekend, when I think about what’s now a lost world. Really, not just for CBS, but for the broadcast industry in general, and the audience as well. The changes in television, the booming music and flashy graphics, the explosion of options, shorter attention spans, the constant need to monetize everything…it’s rare when a broadcast is allowed to be the pleasant company you enjoy on a lazy weekend afternoon.

All of this came back to mind, not only because of today’s broadcast, but because I recently watched again this clip I first stumbled across about 15 years ago. It uncorked a lot of memories (and if you read the comments on the original YouTube page, you’ll see I’m not alone):

That’s the end of the 1983 Talladega 500, which CBS aired on July 31, 1983. So many things come back from my memories: Don Robertson’s voice announcing the billboards, the lengthy credit roll over still-store images, the peerless voice of Ken Squier, and the way CBS would end these kinds of big broadcasts with wistful music. (In this case, it was “Rising Star,” the love theme from the movie The Electric Horseman. CBS used cuts from that soundtrack for several years on its NASCAR broadcasts, including the main theme under the starting grid. CBS Sports liked using soundtrack cuts, such as Chuck Mangione’s “Children of Sanchez” for some big events, or Lalo Schifrin’s theme to St. Ives for golf tournaments. But, I digress.)

Now even that seems like a thousand years ago, even though it’s only been four decades. And so many of the people in that credit roll from Talladega are no longer with us. So many folks in that recruiting video are also gone now. But, really, all of it’s a lost world. The voice of Don Robertson speaking for Pontiac and Sears? Pontiac’s gone now, and the once-mighty Sears is all but dead, victim of modern corporate techniques. Don Robertson died a few years ago. So did Ken Squier. 

But there’s something else. That long closing credit roll gives what’s due to a lot of hard-working people who made possible that telecast you’d just watched. They were the people that made all that hard work and coordination happen, and made it look so effortless. Many of them had been at the network for decades, built lives and careers around CBS, and represented so much institutional and technical knowledge that would be impossible to replace. You can get an idea of what that world was like if you watch this video, which CBS produced in the 1980s while seeking the next generation of technicians and other broadcast specialists. (And happy coincidence: you can tell that much of the location footage was taken while CBS was setting up to cover a race at Talladega.)

For some people, that tape is an interesting artifact. For me, though, it has an emotional punch. Not just in what I remember from that era, and not just nostalgia for a time I missed. It’s because it makes me think of people I know. One of my friends is a CBS retiree; he worked there for more than 50 years. His wife also used to work at CBS. Last year I went up and spent the day with him. He told me stories, shared artifacts, showed me clips that he worked on and told me the stories behind them. Those stories told of teamwork, of craftsmanship, of a pride he still felt in the work he did. It was a privilege to hear those stories firsthand. And it made me a little sad that I missed it all. To this day I can hear the voices of CBS announcers that I remember, see little visual cues or characteristic qualities in a promo, and it takes me back, makes me smile…and makes me ache, even more so since some of the people who helped make that history are my friends. It makes me ache for an era that’s long gone, but it also makes me ache because the people who made all that happen are fewer with the years…and with them go so much history, so many memories, so many stories. And it makes me realize I need to get back and spend more time with my friend and his wife while I can, not just because I love the stories, but because they’re sweet people of whom I am very fond.

Progress is inevitable, I know. The strange new media landscape makes so much more possible. (Heck, I’m the beneficiary of that, since it means I’m now executive producer of a program we produce at work. And I assemble that program on a ridiculously small and ridiculously powerful laptop computer, running an editing package that cost me nothing to download, and yet can do in a second the kinds of effects my CBS retiree friend would spend untold hours doing in sessions at Broadway Video back in the day.) The networks that dominated television 50 years ago are now competing for eyeballs and clicks with hundreds of other outlets. It says everything when NBC’s centenary is coming up and it’s barely registering, let alone that its anniversary promo would make you think most of the network’s history took place after 1984 (blink and you’ll miss Dave Garroway). And I’ve found out the hard way that modern corporations really aren’t interested in legacy or tradition unless it can somehow be monetized. 

And yet, this one Sunday a year when, by decree of the venue, a sports broadcast is allowed to breathe…it makes me think of what we once had, what we once took for granted, and what’s vanished.

I didn’t wait for the obvious question. “We’ll take it,” I said. We needed a truck, having been without one since somebody in a minivan tried to create a middle lane during a traffic jam and totaled ours several years before. I hated having to rent a truck when I needed to haul something, and a truck was on my list of things to get.

Two days later we went back over, bringing lunch from a favorite drive-inn near my hometown. After we’d had a pleasant lunch with my parents, we went into the yard where my new old truck was waiting. Dad handed me the keys and an envelope full of paperwork, we took some photos to commemorate the moment, and then off we went. I’d barely made it out of the driveway before the tears I’d been holding back started to fall, and hard. I must have cried for the first three miles of the trip home.

For as long as I’d been around, squarebody Chevrolet trucks like this one had been a part of our family. To sit in one took me back to countless childhood memories of Saturday mornings, getting a biscuit and a big glass bottle of Dr. Pepper and riding around wherever the road took us, or going to work with Dad at the sawmill, the occasional Saturday I’d ride the mail route with him, or countless errands near and far. These trucks were as much a part of my childhood as the little church up the street or the Sears catalog. And now, the last of the family’s squarebodies was coming home with me.

Like all the family’s trucks, there was no mistaking it was a work truck. Dad’s trucks were always the lowest trim level (Custom Deluxe, which meant anything but), nothing power in the interior, no air conditioning, no fancy trim. This one was the same, the kind of truck that shaped my feelings about what pickup trucks should be. I know some folks like their big shiny trucks with the fancy trim and plush interiors and full-power everything, but I’d never want one like that. This one looks at you and says “Let’s go get a load of lumber or some concrete blocks and get to work on something, and I won’t care if I get a battle scar or two.” It’s a truck that cuts the crap, and that’s the kind of truck I love.

Although the 90-minute voyage to our homestead went without any drama, it was obvious the truck had some issues. Some I could smell (what’s with the smell of gasoline around the filler door?) and some I’d found out (no functioning horn). It also didn’t have a heater core, though Dad had one inbound through the local Carquest. There was surface rust on the top of the bed. The engine tended to flood out. A trailer neck had bashed into the tailgate a few months before, leaving a big dent. As they say, the bones were solid, but it was a fixer-upper.

Before I could do anything else, of course, I had to get square with the county and the state. The property taxes on a 33-year-old truck weren’t that much, which was good. Of course, I canceled out that luck by going to the DMV on the same day the statewide computer system decided to crash, and hard. After a long wait, I went home, new license plate in hand. But then Dad’s home county didn’t get a notification and kept sending him tax notices. It got resolved, but along the way it was every caricature of bureaucracy come to life.

Now with the official stuff done, it was time to start fixing what needed it. I’d done minor repairs before, but one major repair effort with my Cavalier that ended in disaster had left me gun-shy about trying anything new. On the other hand, it wasn’t easy to find people who could fix a vehicle whose technology was this old-school, and even that would cost more than I had. And, I mean, I had some tools – in fact, Mom had given me a huge tool kit she’d won in a local drawing she’d randomly entered, so I was set. Why not see what I could do? When the heater core came in, I looked up some instructions on how to do it, then screwed up my courage and dropped the heater box. Inside the box was a mouse nest (abandoned, thankfully). Everything got very thoroughly cleaned, the heater core got installed and connected, and with heart wedged between adenoids I started the truck to see if the repair took. Somehow, it had.

From there, the other little chores got done: fixing the horn, polishing the paint, then grinding the rust off the top of the bed and repainting it. Most of what I did in the first couple years was accessible stuff that didn’t require too much risk. I didn’t yet feel comfortable doing more intense projects, but I was also allergic to paying someone to do it. Not only am I not rich, but I just don’t like paying someone to do a job that I can do myself with a clear set of instructions.

The truck was going to force my hand, anyway. One summer day we went to get some building supplies and barely made it home. The engine was stumbling out, and a couple times the truck died on the highway. Somehow we made it home and got unloaded, and then the truck just sat for a while as I did some figuring. Bad sending unit? Bad gasoline? Dirty fuel tank? Carburetor problems? Fuel pump? Everything seemed questionable, and the more I looked, the more I figured a general overhaul was in order. So the whole fuel system got redone, from cleaning the fuel tank and changing the rubber lines to installing a new fuel pump and charcoal canister.

Then came the real fun: rebuilding the carburetor. I had visions of things going really wrong there, of a rookie mistake causing a stuck throttle. But, good student that I am, I did my homework and ordered the correct parts and supplies. After a couple evenings of work, the old Quadrajet was in better shape than it had been in years. Getting it dialed in once reinstalled was an adventure, but two years and several thousand miles later it’s proven reliable.

Since then I’ve done more projects. I replaced the water pump and flushed the cooling system. The transmission has a new gasket and filter. The rear differential, which was covered in gunk from a leak, got serviced (and few things are worse than the smelly glop that is aged, dirty gear oil). I rebuilt the power steering pump. The electrical circuit from the battery to the starter and alternator was rewired, and the alternator got overhauled, too. Last year I finally replaced the window rubber in the doors, and the cab is nicely weatherproof now.

Along the way I’ve found all kinds of surprises, such as the battery cable with a length of electrical tape covering a couple inches of missing insulation. When I replaced the shock absorbers, I compressed the old ones to see how shot they actually were. One of them was still compressed when I took it to the scrap metal bin a few weeks ago, so it’s no wonder why the poor truck rattled my fillings whenever we hit a bump. I’ve found things that made me wonder how the truck got this far, and yet we keep going.

I’ve kept a list of all the things I’ve done for the truck, and all the systems I’ve fixed, one at a time. Most all of it has been done with that set of tools Mom gave me the day I brought it home. It’s been an education, and mostly a fun one. Sometimes I’ve inflicted setbacks on myself (I learned the hard way the difference between inch-pounds and foot-pounds on a torque wrench) but I’ve always worked my way through it.

And that’s the thing: it’s only been me doing all these things. Call it a Generation X-er’s instinct that nobody’s going to help you, call it autodidactism, or call it whatever you may, but no one else’s hands have been doing the work. Thus far at least, it’s worked. Fortunately, a Squarebody with a small-block engine is not only easy to work on, but since they’re common as dirt just about anything you’d need is widely available.

Maybe if I were more enterprising and outgoing and visionary I’d have chronicled the adventure and turned it into something educational. I mean, I work around television in my day job, and I love Vivian Howard, so…maybe I could have my own series and everything, an automotive version of Kitchen Curious. (Imagine me, a purposeful smile on my face, one of the cats in my arm, as I stroll out of the house and head purposefully toward my workbench! Imagine the vigorous string music behind the gorgeous drone shots of the local Advance Auto Parts store! Imagine me strolling the aisles of the hometown Harbor Freight with a mechanic friend who’s telling me about the merits and demerits of floor jacks versus bottle jacks! Imagine me having interesting and informative and artistically-captured conversations with auto body repair instructors and junkyard owners! This concept sells itself! Somebody get the teevee people on the phone! Somebody round up some funding sources and let’s get this going! Y’all know where to find me.)

I haven’t kept a spreadsheet on how much I’ve spent fixing up the truck. Maybe it would be fun to know, but I really haven’t minded any of the money I’ve spent on it. Some of it is an investment in my own education, in the skills I’ve picked up as I’ve done all this work. But the real value is in keeping this truck on the road, not only for its usefulness, but as a link to where I came from.

Sometimes I’ll have fun with the fact that I own it, calling it the Rolling Energy Crisis (I mean, it has the aerodynamics of a brick and it gets 11 miles per gallon with a tailwind) or the Herkimer Battle Jitney. But underneath it all, I know how much I love that big ol’ truck, that sometimes I can’t believe I actually own it, and how it’s a reminder of so much that I left behind in yesteryear, and of so much that will never leave me.

How I got here was an adventure in itself. My first two cars were hand-me-downs. When Dad bought a used Oldsmobile as the new family car, I got the slightly younger Chevrolet we’d had since I was 6. It was faded and getting a little wheezy, but it was plenty enough for my daily commutes to and from college. When I went off to graduate school, the Chevy was retired and I got the Oldsmobile, since Dad had bought a used Buick Park Avenue for him and Mom. That Oldsmobile and I went on many an adventure together. It was big and underpowered, its paint was cracking, and it bore suspicious welds that made me think it had been in a really bad wreck at some point before we bought it. That car had been around. But it rode like a cloud.

The Oldsmobile was what took me, and as many of my belongings as I could cram into it, to Florida when I moved there in mid-2000. Somewhere around Palm Beach, the alternator light flickered on. I managed to limp into Fort Lauderdale. A few days and a new alternator later, things were fine again. I saw a puddle of brake fluid under the car a few weeks later, and Midas got a good bit of money to make things right. Not fun when you don’t have a job.

A couple months into my stay, I did get a callback and ended up with decent employment. But the Oldsmobile was having none of it, and more little things continued to go wrong – nothing major, but just enough to tell me I’d best do something soon. I’d been raised in a GM family, and I wanted to stay loyal. So one day in September 2000, I took delivery of a new two-door Chevy Cavalier, a cute little silver job with a little bump on the trunk lid that was supposed to suggest a spoiler. I was so proud of that little car. At the end of the month, I drove the Oldsmobile back home for its formal retirement, and then flew back to Florida.

The Cavalier made the move back to South Carolina with me, and then over the summer of 2001 made a couple trips back and forth as I closed things out in Florida and set things up in my new old home. It wasn’t any great shakes as a car. Its inline-four engine had all the power of a washing machine motor, and the interior was full of plastic that didn’t take long to turn brittle. It was a product of peak turn-of-the-century GM mediocrity. I’d remained loyal to the Bowtie, only to find out that the Chevrolet of my youth had gone the way of the passenger pigeon. But that little Cavalier held together and we went everywhere, it seemed. And few things felt as happy as the day in 2005 that I made the last payment on that car. I was still kind of young, and there was a pride I took in that achievement. Every last cent I paid for that car had been my own, earned with my own work. Nothing about it had been given to me.

It felt good to not have a car payment, and I planned to drive that car forever. In it I drove to conferences in Georgia and Alabama, with a quick jaunt over the Mississippi border just to say I’d been there; several trips to Florida, including a crazy and enjoyable extended adventure on another conference trip in 2014 and a 2008 adventure to see a Shuttle launch; and our biggest adventure, to Indianapolis and then Evansville and back in 2015. There’s a memory I have from that trip, and I cherish it: driving along at speed, somewhere between Evansville and Bloomington on a deserted Interstate 69, on a picture-perfect afternoon in early June, and it seemed like things couldn’t get any better.

Of course, they didn’t. About a month and a half later, the air conditioning system quit working. It was going to be an expensive fix for a car with nearly 180,000 miles on the Hobbs. Before the summer was out, I signed a three-year lease on a shiny black Toyota Corolla sedan. Like the Cavalier, it was a smaller car for basic transportation, but “basic transportation” in 2015 was far better appointed than in 2000. The lease payments weren’t much, and I kept the Cavalier as a utility car until its cooling system finally let go rather spectacularly in 2017. I cried the day it was hauled off. It was like losing a member of the family.

The Corolla went on a lot of adventures with me, including a completely bonkers trip in the summer of 2017. The first stop was Indianapolis and the museum at the Speedway, and then it was on to Madison, Wisconsin to do some research for the book I was starting to write about Dave Garroway. Outside Rockford, Illinois there was a torrential Midwest storm I drove through, on a crowded Interstate highway. As I started down a cloverleaf, hail started pelting the car and visibility went zero-zero. Only through divine intervention did I not plow into the back of the semi in front of me.

In early 2018 it was clear I was going to run well past the mileage allotment on the Corolla’s lease. A smarter version of me would have just started planning to buy the little one when the lease was up. Instead, I got ambition. I wanted something that felt more like my station in life, a car that made me feel I’d achieved it. Never mind that the Corolla was doing just fine for everything I needed, of course. I got ambition, or maybe ambition got me. And, after serious flirtation with the Mazda 6 after a couple of test drives (and, man, did I love that thing), I swapped the Corolla for a Camry XSE, just off the assembly line. It didn’t have the elegance of the Mazda, but it had things all its own that I liked when I test-drove one. Plus, it was a Toyota, a known quantity with plenty of service opportunities nearby. I was so proud the day I took delivery. Finally, I had a big and sporty car of my own, one that was actually something I wanted instead of settling for.

The Camry started out as a lease. Over time, though, I realized I didn’t want to go through the agonies of buying a car for a long time. On January 6, 2021, I took the car back to the dealership. While it was up on the rack in the service department, I was in the front going through the agonies of paperwork and financing and everything else. When we were done, the Camry was out front, all nice and clean after service and a run through the car wash. It seemed like a great day, until I got home and learned what had happened at the Capitol.

Of course, a buyout meant I’d gotten myself into another installment contract for a few years – on top of my student loans and credit cards. At least with the car, it was going toward reliable transportation that I knew would see me through just about any trip I’d need to take. The many road trips we’ve been on together have borne this out: Maryland, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia are all in the Camry’s logbook. I’ve had family members, students, even two or three sorta well-known people as passengers. I’ve parked that car next to the greatest ship ever built. I’ve seen the Empire State Building through that car’s windows. Yes, we’ve got stories.

In all these adventures, the car’s mechanical soundness has never been a worry, and I’ve been religious about keeping up with service intervals. Of late, I’ve been doing it myself; not only oil and filter changes, but recently I redid the brakes and replaced the struts and shocks. It continues to be reliable and ride well. In fact, the only issue I’ve really had with the car has been with the huge wheels and rubber-band tires on the XSE model. They do not like potholes or road hazards, and I’ve lost count of how many tires I’ve replaced over the years. I finally installed 17″ wheels with more substantial tires, and although this configuration isn’t as sleek as the factory setup, it means a lot less worry. (I also replaced the doughnut spare with a matching wheel and tire, which means even less worry.)

Through all these years, I’ve continued to make that monthly payment, steadily paying it down, getting ever closer. Until that magic day this week when the payoff was close enough that I could goose my regular payment with some money from my savings, and the magic words PAID IN FULL appeared.

It reminded me of how I felt almost four years ago when I paid off my student loans. I’d dreamed of that day for more than 20 years, remembered how it felt when I got that first invoice. It was like telling me to climb Denali. But how do you climb a mountain? One step at a time. And, so I did. Came that glorious day in August 2022, when the last payment went in…and I remember wishing there were fireworks or flashing lights, like the pinball machine in “The Time Of Your Life” (or the scoreboard at Old Comiskey that it inspired). Instead, my great achievement was marked with a whisper.

There weren’t fireworks, but there was instead a feeling of quiet accomplishment. I did it. I didn’t begrudge the people whose student loans were being forgiven around that time; heck, if I’d had a higher balance at the time I’d have applied too. (In fact, I had seriously looked into the public service loan forgiveness program, only to learn that refinancing my loans through an eligible program would have taken as much time as just paying them off as they were.) I don’t wish student loan debt on anybody, and I don’t begrudge anybody who got forgiveness or other help, not at all. But there’s something I feel when I look at my payoff letters: the knowledge that this big thing I overcame was mine. It’s how I felt then, and it’s a feeling I had again this week when those three glorious words appeared on my computer screen.

It’s not like I can suddenly go nuts with all this money that will no longer go toward a car payment. There’s still a couple or three consumer accounts that need to be retired and a mortgage that’s creeping toward payoff. All the while, I need to build up my savings and get some other things going so I can prepare for my next act, once I’ve had enough of teaching. (Not retirement, mind you, because I’ve long known that if I don’t have something to do, I’ll go stark raving mad.)

But even with what’s ahead, this is a moment to enjoy. I did, the other day, as I walked out front and saw that sleek blue machine in the driveway, and thought to myself: “This is my car now.”

It took a long time, but it was worth it.

My parents implored Santa to do something about it, and the following Christmas I got a portable cassette recorder.

Over the years to come, I would make many tapes on that machine and the several that would follow when they inevitably broke. But the very first tape I made with that first tape recorder it is an interesting artifact. On Side A, there’s a few moments from Christmas morning: me goofing around and Dad’s voice commanding me to bring something to him; me giving a couple of inventories of my haul from Santa. Then there’s an extended cut from the next day, when Dad thought it would be hilarious if we secretly recorded Sunday dinner at my grandparents’ house, and so we conspired to hide the tape recorder on a nearby shelf. In the moment, it was funny, for we played it back about an hour later to our astonished family (at one point my grandmother, hearing herself say something kind of harsh, did a spit-take worthy of Danny Thomas). Now, with half the people at that table now dead, it’s a precious artifact. It’s the only recording I have of my great-grandfather’s voice.

Side B, though, has a time capsule of a different sort. After I got home from Sunday school, I turned on the hand-me-down cabinet-model stereo in my room (which didn’t have a cassette deck, alas), placed the tape recorder next to the speakers, and recorded the last 45 minutes or so of that week’s “American Country Countdown.” That’s interesting in a lot of ways. In the previous installment I talked about country music being what I grew up with, so the eleven songs that led the week’s chart are a good idea of what the typical week in my fourth-grade life would have sounded like.

For the uninitiated, “American Country Countdown” was the country music version of “American Top 40.” Like AT40, it most often aired on weekends. It was hosted by the super-cool Bob Kingsley, who had one of the best radio voices I’ve ever heard (seriously, listen to some of this for a little bit and I dare you to not keep listening), and who was so good at telling you the little stories that gave you a glimpse into the artists and their hit songs. As the best DJs could, back when radio was an art form, Bob had this way of making you feel like you were a couple friends spending a few hours together on a weekend morning. (I came to appreciate this even more about a decade later, for one of my responsibilities working Sunday mornings at the radio station was playing “American Country Countdown.” By then it arrived at the station as a package of four CDs. Each segment within an hour was a separate track, and I’d pause the CD player after each track to do our local breaks. At the start of 1993, our program director figured out how to integrate the “Countdown” discs into our automation, and that was the beginning of the end of my young radio career. But, I digress.)

I wish I could say my recording was perfect, but it’s far from it. (I keep hoping the complete show will surface someday, either through one of the video/audio sites or that I’ll happen across the LPs on an auction site; regardless, if anyone reading this has the whole program, please let me know, for I’m interested.) It’s straight off the speaker, and that means you get background noise. My folks were wanting me to get finished so we could go over to my grandparents’ house for lunch (where Dad and I pulled our prank). You can hear me opening and closing the door to my room, and my voice calling out to my folks, trying to buy time. (I was a completist, even then.) At one point you can hear me trying to sing along to the David Frizzell song. On the other hand, I had the foresight (or laziness?) to keep the commercials and IDs intact, and those speak not only of a bygone era in radio production but also of local businesses that are gone with the wind.

But, what are we waiting for, right? Let’s get into the songs that led Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart for the week of December 18, 1982. (The full rundown is visible here, if you like. There’s some stuff on there that’s pure gold, and some stuff that didn’t age well, but that’s the nature of time capsules, no?)

Up five notches (as Kingsley would say) to number 11 is Johnny Lee and Friends, with an enhanced version of “Cherokee Fiddle.” For some reason, I loved this song a lot as a kid, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the chance to capture it on tape was the reason I wanted to record this program. One of Johnny’s friends on this version is reportedly Charlie Daniels. Say what you will about Charlie (and I have about his later years), but the man was a musical genius, and without peer on the fiddle.

At number 10, up three notches this week, is Rosanne Cash with “I Wonder.” It’s…well, only vaguely country music (to borrow a line from William Poundstone, curved lines and considerable imagination must be used). It’s closer to “Linda Ronstadt with Nelson Riddle” than “Loretta Lynn with Conway Twitty.” On the other hand, it’s Rosanne freakin’ Cash, who is awesome and is welcome to do whatever she wants.

Number nine is one of the first George Strait songs I remember, that’s now a deep cut. “Marina Del Rey,” up two notches this week, has George pining over a beach weekend he’s just spent with a mysterious lady. It’s lovely, evocative, haunting. George Strait knows how to select good songs and interpret them just right; in this one, you feel both ecstasy and ache. I can’t think of a bad George Strait song, but without question this is one of his best.

Bob leads into this week’s number eight song (up one from last week) by mentioning that David Frizzell (brother of Lefty) plays a bit part in the new Clint Eastwood movie Honkytonk Man. (As did several other real-life country artists, including beloved Marty Robbins in a scene made even more poignant by the fact that Marty died one week before the movie’s release.) It wasn’t David Frizzell’s first go-around with Eastwood, for he had contributed to the soundtrack for Any Which Way You Can. Clint helped make Frizzell’s first solo album a reality, and it’s from that album that we get “Lost My Baby Blues.” Frizzell’s voice was perfect for songs about getting drunk after getting dumped. (The same album also gave us the immortal “I’m Gonna Hire A Wino To Decorate Our Home,” without question the greatest song title in history. Young me missed the point of the song, loved the over-the-top mental imagery, and bought the single.)

Continuing that theme is Merle Haggard, whose “Going Where The Lonely Go” advances five positions this week. It’s a typical solid song from Merle Haggard in the early ’80s. He was reliable, one of the human gods on the country music Olympus of my childhood. Like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and George Jones, Merle Haggard had just always been there, reliable as my dad’s Chevy truck.

Reba McEntire, some time before she became a Southern-fried queen of all media, is up four notches with “Can’t Even Get The Blues.” Even in this early track you get a glimpse of the exasperated Southern-fried sass that would become her trademark.

Hank Williams Jr. gets topical with this week’s fifth-place song, “The American Dream.” Bocephus takes on professional athletes signing million-dollar contracts (one wonders if Nolan Ryan’s ears were burning), well-dressed televangelists mooching for donations (“they want you to send your money to the Lord, but they give you their address”), and Democrats complaining about Reagan’s budget cuts, all while the rest of us are making hard choices about what we can afford. Hank was a few years away from fully embracing the outsized Bocephus character of “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight,” but for those who knew his albums’ deeper cuts, nothing to come stylistically or politically was really that much of a surprise. The post-chorus bridge incorporates the first line of “Hail to the Chief,” which is reprised at the end with Hank saying “Hail to the chief.” (The version we get here ends with that, but another version has Hank pausing for a moment before laughing and saying “Hail, yes. Heh-heh-heh!”)

My brother, then in his mid-teens, was becoming a full-blown Hank Jr. fan about this time; the macho Southern outdoorsman aesthetic of Hank’s music really resonated with him, and a few months later Mom took him to see Bocephus when he performed at the (now-demolished) Greenwood Civic Center. He also had all of Hank’s albums, and when he would do the driving he’d play Hank’s cassettes, and I thus got exposed to a lot of his late ’70s and early to mid-’80s work. Some of it is cartoonish, some of it has not aged well at all, some of it is outright gross (seriously, “Fat Friends” should never have existed), some of it goes places you wish it hadn’t, but if you know where to look there’s some really nice, sensitive and sometimes outright gorgeous stuff in there.

Kenny Rogers was white-hot in the early ’80s and it seemed like everything he touched turned into a best-seller. In his lead-in, Bob mentions that Rogers attributes much of his success to having an ear for good songs that he knows will become hits. That continues this week, as “A Love Song,” written by Lee Greenwood, is up four. Mom didn’t like Kenny Rogers and thought he acted like a conceited showboat, but even as a kid I could appreciate that he was a reliable hitmaker with mass appeal, and even if I wasn’t necessarily a fan I couldn’t deny that some of his stuff was just plain good. (“Love Will Turn You Around,” which he had taken to #1 earlier in the year and was used as the theme to Six Pack, may be slickly-produced, but…my word, that groove. It’s a particular favorite.)

Number three this week is John Anderson, up three on the charts with “Wild and Blue.” Lots of fiddle, lots of steel guitar, lots of John’s twangy, yodeling voice encompassing the ache and frustration at the song’s heart. It’s a great version of a great song, but within about three months it’s going to be lost in the super-colossal shadow of a breakout hit from the same album.

Aw, son. Jerry Reed’s up two this week as “The Bird,” one of his reliable comedic turns, moves into second place. Reed leaned so much into his goofy comic persona with his songs and on-screen appearances, but, my word, the man was an outright genius with a guitar.

Bob leads in to this week’s number one song by telling us that for his hit songs, Earl Thomas Conley – who, from Bob’s description, sounds like kind of an introvert – gets inspiration from things that he’s learned in his life. Each song is, in a way, Conley saying “Well, if you liked that, here’s another side of me.” It’s something that Conley expects will be happening the rest of his life. With that, up one notch to take this week’s title is “Somewhere Between Right and Wrong.” And wherever that may be, this song makes it sound like a rockin’ good time.

And after the fade-out and Bob’s closing remarks, my efforts to stall for time with my parents gave out and the recording abruptly ends.

Many more tapes were to come in the months and years ahead. I have many of them, and sometimes I’ll listen to them. The sound isn’t the greatest, but the memories are vivid. I’d never dare let anyone else listen to them, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. It doesn’t seem like it really was that long ago, and it’s strange how these sounds can bridge the decades I’ve lived, and yet some of the things I captured – like these eleven songs – make me glad I got to experience the times I’ve lived.

I also grew up in a tiny, cloistered rural town, raised by a conservative family. The music our parents listened to was always country music. Which was fine, and there’s so much of it I love deeply, but it also meant I missed a lot that was happening in other genres because I never really got to explore. My first exposure to a lot of hit songs was through Weird Al Yankovic’s parodies. I missed a lot of what my peers were experiencing. I didn’t discover R.E.M., for instance, until I was in my first year in college and Out Of Time had been out for a while. We also didn’t have cable, so “music television” to me was whatever was on that week’s Hee Haw. I didn’t have MTV until my first apartment in graduate school, and by then MTV wasn’t MTV any more. To this day, if somebody is watching videos from yesteryear, there’s this aching sadness, the feeling that I missed out on an entire era.

It also meant I discovered some acts just a little too late. In 1993, the group 10,000 Maniacs had a huge hit with its version of “Because The Night,” recorded during the MTV Unplugged special. It was played to the point of becoming audio wallpaper. I didn’t really know anything about the group, aside from when David Letterman would ask Paul Shaffer if all 10,000 of the Maniacs would be there. Lack of familiarity meant I didn’t pay attention to musical guests, which meant I missed out on these four guys performing upbeat rock music while their frontwoman, who twirled a lot, sang bookish lyrics about Very Serious Topics in an accent and cadence that defied description. But when I got interested, I got interested, and then captivated.

The joke was on me, though, for the band and the singer had gone their separate ways. That didn’t stop me from making up for lost time. I bought all the CDs, which prompted lights to go on in my head (“Oh! That’s who did that song about the days you’ll remember!” And yet when you hear it a year and a half after it was a thing, there’s that ache again, the ache of the thing you missed out on). I even went to independent music stores (remember those?) to hunt down bootleg CDs of live performances and demos and expanded singles and anything else I could find. The day Natalie Merchant’s first solo album hit the stores, I went to the Musicland (remember those?) at our little local mall and gladly paid the list price for the CD. After all the anticipation, I found it…well, different. Beautiful, yes, but it’s sorta difficult to dance to songs about earthquakes and deceased wives and a seven-year relationship that ended in betrayal and that sort of thing. (Although “Jealousy” is a lot of fun, especially the single version.) But even if it wasn’t what I expected or exactly my cup of tea, I seethed at the snide review in Rolling Stone. How dare they!

Be that as it may, Natalie intrigued and influenced me. Along with early R.E.M., her music has been the soundtrack of my life, providing joy when things were good and solace when life was difficult. Her off-stage work, including volunteering her time and resources for educating young people, nudged me into volunteer work and very likely toward my own career in education. In many ways, her example made me want to heed my better angels. She has shown how to accept advancing age with wisdom, and her example is why I don’t dread the silver I’m starting to see in the mirror; if she can do this, so can I. And I remain captivated by her art. To this day, if one of her songs comes on while I’m in the car, I’ll sing along. (Dick Smothers once told an interviewer, “In my head, I sing like Sinatra. The problem is, nobody can hear it.” Replace Sinatra with Natalie Merchant and you have what I’m up against, and it’s why I don’t sing unless I’m alone.) And knowledgeable readers have no doubt noticed my habit of working her lyrics or phrasings into my writing. For so many reasons, I remain loyal to her.

What of the Maniacs, though? Well, when the record label opted to go with Natalie and not the band, they had to find their own way, and I lost track. But they kept going. Sometimes they’d release some new stuff; sometimes they’d play some gigs or go on tour. Over the years, as with any family, changes have happened: comings and goings, things that did and didn’t work, the whole thing. The band has had different lead vocalists, different guitarists…over four and a half decades, stuff will happen. Saddest of all was the death of lead guitarist Robert Buck in 2000; his distinctive guitar work added so much to their music’s character. But despite the challenges, the band’s still with us. They’re not selling out arenas or appearing on the big-name talk shows, but they are still playing, still touring when they can, and have a devoted fan base that will buy the tickets and fill the house and sing along and dance and have a wonderful time. And in return, the audience will get a couple hours of music performed by artists who are playing their hearts out and sure do look like they’re having fun doing it. Their fans love them, and they love us, and…well, ’tis sweet to be remembered.

I’ve never been much of a concert-goer. Some of it is that music is a very personal thing to me, and I still bear scars from when people have ridiculed my musical preferences. That’s exacerbated by the logistical hassles of getting to and from the show, the antics of other concertgoers, and all the other things that could go sideways and ruin the experience. And growing up cloistered meant I just never got in the habit of going to things. Even when I moved away to graduate school, and there were at least three venues in town that routinely brought world-class entertainment, I couldn’t break the habit. (And it cost me. Not going to see Tori Amos at the Township in 1997…oh, that remains a regret.) At some point, it became kind of a stupid point of pride. The closer I got to my 50th birthday, the more stupid it seemed.

In late 2022 I found out that Natalie Merchant would perform in Greenville. She’d not had much cooking the last few years (and there were reasons), but she had a new record coming along. With what she’d meant to me for so long, and with her being so close to home, it would be ridiculous not to go. In a way, it would be a way for the me of nearly three decades before to have a moment, to thank her for what she’d meant to me. On the day tickets went on sale I splurged and got the best seat I could, which was pretty close to the stage. I thought, “Okay, I’ll do this, close that chapter and move on with my life.”

Oh, boy, was I mistaken. If anything, that night in April 2023 reminded me of so much that the years had let me forget. It was a sweet, profound evening. (And although she has an image as a very serious person – and yes, she can be – she was not only very charming, but at several points was a hoot. Hearing her imitate The Count from Sesame Street was not on my bingo card, but it happened.) It was one of the best things I’d done for myself in a long time, and it made me glad I heeded the voice that said “this is ridiculous. Go.” And happily I re-upped in the Natalie Merchant Marines, this time for the duration.

A year or so later, while goofing around the social media feeds, I came across a group dedicated to the Maniacs. When I saw a couple of the band members commenting from time to time, I had to join. There was a radio documentary series that told the story of the band’s formative years, and I devoured each new installment. There was talk of new touring dates. I was hoping that maybe they’d come to Athens for a show at the 40 Watt, a trip I’d gladly make. But imagine my surprise when the August 2025 swing included the Newberry Opera House. Yep, a venue about a mile from where I work. The day tickets went on sale, I leapt. Front-row center? Sold American.

Throughout the summer the little envelope with my ticket sat on the counter, a bittersweet reminder since the show would be on the last day before I had to go back to work. Life went on, though, and soon that day was here. From my collection I got out a T-shirt from the “Our Time in Eden” days, one I’d found in a record store in the mid-’90s. I never imagined wearing it to a Maniacs performance, but…30 years on, here we go.

I was at the Opera House early enough. It was a reasonably pleasant evening, and I sat outside with some of my fellow patrons who were waiting. Out the corner of my eye I saw my colleague Warren driving past and figured he must be here for the show, too. Sure enough, he was, and I walked up to meet him. With him was his longtime friend Will, who was wearing a Maniacs T-shirt, and I knew I was among friends. (Since this post went live, Warren has written his own account of the evening, and I’m very happy to recommend it. You can also visit Will’s most enjoyable blog here.) The three of us talked for a couple minutes and then headed on in. While Warren and Will went to the will-call window, I walked over to the merch table for the obligatory souvenir. Instantly I fell in love with a T-shirt based on the Maddox Table trademark, and closed the deal on one in no time.

There was some kind of delay in starting the show, but in time the band members took the stage. Having known them mostly from pictures taken in the ’80s and early ’90s, it took a moment to place them. (The guitar player in the back took me a minute before I happily realized, “Holy crap! John Lombardo!”) But the moment the show started, age vanished. They played with a vigor and joy that was timeless. So many of the little things I remembered from countless playings of their first five CDs were there, as emotionally powerful as the original. If I’d closed my eyes, I’d be back in the early ’90s.

Of course, there had been two key personnel changes since 1993. Mary Ramsey has been the most enduring lead vocalist. She has made the lead role her own, and you fall in love not only with her vocals and her stage presence, but with her charming, down-to-earth, funny vibe. She is also an amazing violinist, which not only adds to the songs but gave us an extended solo at one point that was electrifying.

Ben Medina was playing lead guitar tonight, and although his guitar work sounds so much like Robert Buck’s, it’s still his own. He’s a true craftsman. What’s more, it’s fun watching him play, as this peaceful look comes across his face and he is one with the music. It added to the joy of the evening.

And what an evening, with songs spanning the band’s career. Most of the selections were from the band’s catalog up to 1993, along with a couple newer songs and some covers. “Because the Night” also made an appearance, of course, and Mary invited us to join in the chorus (and added a sweet “Because the night…belongs to you!” before the instrumental interlude).

Some of the songs were surprises, and I wasn’t expecting “You Happy Puppet” to be in the set, especially in this neck of our deep-red woods. It was a wonderful tour of the band’s catalog, and as Dave Letterman would say, they tore the roof off the place. There were people dancing in the aisles and at their seats. It was pure joy. Later in the show, bassist Steven Gustafson drifted from the stage to one of the wings, playing and swaying along with folks dancing nearby. The energy and love in the house was going both ways, and it turned into a big party. So many people were so happy. It was so beautiful to see.

As it happened, keyboardist Dennis Drew was celebrating his birthday that day. Steven had us all join in a chorus of “Happy Birthday,” and then said it was a tradition that if a band member had a birthday, they got to sing. So Dennis sang a song that’s been written for next year’s album, a really neat song about life in a small town. It fit so well with our own small town, and given that the band’s hometown is a good bit like our town and a few others nearby, smaller working-class cities that have had to adapt to changing times, it was especially apt.

For me, the evening was one song after another that I knew by heart, that I’d sung along with countless times over the decades, and it was so much like being in the car with my iTunes playlist going that it was oddly comforting. I happily sang along, although with the sound system in front of me I was mercifully inaudible. But I was caught up short during a break between songs when I heard several people in the audience start to sing lyrics that were strange to me, but somehow hauntingly, vaguely familiar. I felt once again like that kid who missed out on something. Mary picked up the lyric, then the band launched into an otherworldly cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” And once again, as I watched the band perform this song I didn’t know as if it was one of their own, and as I heard the others in the audience sing along, I was simultaneously mesmerized by the glory of the moment and saddened anew by what I’d missed back in the day, this great secret I’d missed, and it ached.

All too soon it was over. The band left the stage, and Steven said they’d see us in the lobby. I met up with Warren and Will, and on the way out we compared notes about what we’d seen. In the lobby we chatted for a little while longer, talking about the Maniacs and other topics, and then the guys set out to find something to eat. I was thankful I had bumped into them, for it made me so happy to share this evening with friends who got it, to whom I didn’t have to explain it.

By that time some of the band members were in the lobby. Now, I have a “don’t bother people unless there’s a need” policy, especially when it comes to well-known people. Some of it is upbringing, some of it is respect, and some of it is shyness. (You can understand why I didn’t last that long as a reporter.) In my mind, I’d wrestled with what to do if I bumped into any of the band members. I finally decided to just see what happens.

As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The band members I saw were happy to sign autographs, pose for pictures, and mingle. Steven Gustafson was nearby when I was talking with Warren and his friend. He was signing a record for someone, and chuckling a bit about the aches and pains of being in a band while you’re getting older. I waited my turn, then gathered up my courage and thanked him for coming. He shook my hand and thanked me when I thanked him for all the joy he had brought me the last few decades. It was a very sweet moment. Dennis Drew was nearby. “You were sitting in the front row!” he said with a big smile. “How did we sound?” (“You were great!” I fan-girled in response.) We shook hands and I thanked him, too. John Lombardo was on a bench, and I went over to thank him. He shook my hand and was very touched when I shared what their music meant to me, and we had a brief but very warm visit. It made a beautiful evening more so.

I didn’t see the others, and although I’d have liked to have spoken with them, I figured it was a good enough evening. I needed to get home anyway. I kind of floated back to my car, still quite unable to believe I’d actually met three members of this band I’d loved so long…and glad to find out they were just a group of folks who love to make music and have fun doing it, were fortunate enough to make it this big of a thing, and the fun is what keeps them doing it. After this night, I hope they keep having fun for a long, long time.

For about three hours I’d laid all the problems and perils of my life, not to mention the world at large, aside. But now it was all waiting: the headlines, the chores, the meetings waiting for me next week. And against it, I would have to process this fantastic experience I’d just enjoyed, and since nature afflicted me with the power and pain of experiencing things very deeply, that kind of decompression can be an ordeal. But it was a bargain I’d gladly make again.

I hope the Maniacs will come back to town, and I hope I get to meet them all again, but I have no way of knowing if that’ll happen. I may never get to see Natalie Merchant again, and I doubt I’ll ever meet her (and I’m sure if I did, I would get out maybe three words of gibberish before hilariously fainting dead away). But, if nothing else, I can go the rest of my life knowing I’d had a moment to thank three of the folks whose artistry added joy to my happy moments and soothed me when times were hard, who have provided so much of my life’s soundtrack.

Others I’ve said have said it more eloquently, but I’ll say it again, and from my own experience: when the performers who mean something to you come around, give yourself the gift of going to see them. Buy the best tickets you can. Buy the T-shirt. Enjoy the show. And if you get the chance to thank them in person, do it. Let them know what their work has meant to you, while you have the chance. Don’t be one of the “well, I coulda” types. If you don’t…well, you’ll regret it.

The first of my many adventures came the day after graduation. A friend of mine who spent a half-century at one of the big television networks has an amazing collection of rare materials that he collected throughout his career. He’s now at the point where he has to figure out what to do with it, and I agreed to come up and have a look.

But there’s a catch: he lives near New York City. And right now, I don’t feel like flying anywhere. To make a long story short, I drove to his home not far from Manhattan. It was a long drive, yes, but the drive through the New Jersey suburbs wasn’t anywhere as bad as I thought it would be, and the time I spent with my friend and his wife, and lunch at a local diner with one of his lifelong friends (another network veteran) was most enjoyable. When it was time to leave, I could not believe it when I looked out the window of my car and saw the Manhattan skyline off to my left. It was surreal, but it was really happening.

One of the better parts of driving versus flying is that it let me do things my own way, not tied to any schedule but my own. This gave me a chance to spend the night in Camden, where I could wander around the refurbished RCA factory that evening, and spend part of the next morning wandering around the battleship New Jersey, now very nicely preserved as a museum ship.

Across the Delaware were some stunning views of Philadelphia. It’s a city I love, for a lot of reasons. But a couple times I looked down the waterfront and thought of a landmark that’s no longer there, and my heart ached just a bit. Afterwards, it was over to Bala Cynwyd and a quick visit with an old friend, and then back home, with one more night en route to give my aging carcass some rest.

I didn’t have that long to be idle, for late the next week I was off to Huntsville for further business: a meeting with a former student who’s now one of the senior folks at a television station there, and a visit to the Space and Rocket Center the next morning with a couple friends. It was my first visit to Huntsville since 1988, and a lot has changed at the Space and Rocket Center since then. As long as I could stop thinking about how long it had been, it was an enjoyable visit.

A couple of weeks, themselves full, passed before it was time to set out yet again. My friend who works at ABC in New York invited me up to spend another morning with him as he worked on Good Morning America. As if that wasn’t enough, ABC has decamped from its longtime West Side campus to a new facility at Hudson Square, and my friend offered to show me around the place. How could I say no?

This time, I wasn’t doing all the driving. I’d only have to take myself as far as Baltimore, and Amtrak would do much of the rest. So last Friday, bright and early, I made the I-77 to I-81 trip for the third time in 11 months, and it never gets any shorter. Happily, I was spared lengthy delays en route and made much better time than I anticipated. The next morning, I packed a smaller bag for an overnight trip, drove to the train station next to the Baltimore airport, and prepared to ride the rails.

I’ve traveled by rail a few times before – the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to Anchorage, and New Jersey Transit from Port Jervis to Penn Station on my first trip to New York a long time ago – but it’s the first time I’d traveled by Amtrak. On a whim I bid on an upgrade and, for a few dollars more, ended up in a Business Class car that was less than half full. The trip was about three hours and went without incident. Had I not been kind of keyed up, it would have been a good chance to take a nap. Instead, I listened to some music and wrote a little in my journal, looked out the window and occasionally took some video footage of the passing landscape, footage that I may edit into a little film if I can get myself to follow through.

The scenes outside got busier, the skyline I’d seen from my car last month came into view, and before long we disappeared into darkness and emerged into the station. Up an escalator and into Moynihan Train Hall, a lovely adaptation of an old building for a new use. I’ll never know what it was like to emerge into the old Penn Station (although I do know what it’s like to emerge into the depressing current one), but what I saw as I came up the escalator gave me an idea of what the old one was like. I got a quick bite to eat, and then realized I had to kill a couple hours before my hotel was ready for check-in.

You would think I’d be resourceful enough to figure that out. Unfortunately, it’s mid-June. Prime tourist season. On a Saturday. The sun is out. And it’s hot out. Hot. We were in the throes of the heat dome, in a concrete and asphalt canyon. I tried to figure out where to go and what to do, and decided to default to what I knew. Thus began an ill-advised hike the 15 blocks to Rockefeller Center, where I knew I could fritter away the time before my 4 p.m. check-in. At 42nd Street, I took a side trip to pay my regards to Patience and Fortitude.

This was made all the more interesting by a very large tour group of teenagers from another country, and I had to weave my way past and through them to get to my next stops. Seven blocks later, the Channel Gardens beckoned, and ahead of me the familiar monolith of 30 Rock.

I wheezed through the revolving doors into that dark, glorious lobby with all its glorious air conditioning. Down into the concourse, I hoped to find a place to sit and rest…only to find there were none, except for the patrons of various eateries. After a while I gave up, figured I could catch the subway downtown, and vamp there until 4 p.m. But the subway entrance I was promised on the map wasn’t there; construction on that corner blocked off the entrance. After running myself ragged, I took shelter in a building’s public concourse, and then bought a bottle of water in the building’s coffee shop. A cheery barista rang the sale up for me, and we traded lighthearted comments about the hellish conditions outside. It didn’t take me long to drain the bottle, and I soon yielded my seat to a family and headed onward.

Finally, a subway station! Unfortunately, the entry area was cramped, with few turnstiles, and some of the folks exiting the line weren’t exactly using situational awareness. I didn’t realize I was standing in the path of the cashier’s window, and a guard instructed me to move away. By this point, tired and fed up, I semi-hollered that I was waiting for the people leaving the turnstiles to figure out what they were going to do. I paid my fare and went onward. It was the first time I’d lost my temper with anyone while visiting Manhattan, and I felt kind of badly about it. On the other hand, it’s Manhattan, the place where the F-word is used the way most people use “and.” In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor sin.

The E Train took me south, and after my stop, I emerged at a place I’ve known about all my life, but whose meaning forever changed one awful morning.

My hotel was right next to the World Trade Center site. Professor Mondo had mentioned it after his visit a few months back, and when I saw some surprisingly good rates I booked my stay there. After a little homework, I realized it was a hotel that’s etched into my memory for another reason: on the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2001, CBS aired some footage from inside its ruined, dust-covered lobby, showing the abandoned computer screens still going, and the flashing warnings at the control consoles near the check-in desk. That scene, its own version of Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” has haunted me ever since. (You can see that footage at approximately 15 minutes into this link. It’s not in the original context in which I saw it, but it’s the same images.) And now, here I was, in the very building where it happened.

As it happens, the hotel is being renovated. The lobby was closed, and we were shunted to a side entrance. The check-in desk was now on the fourth floor, in what looked like a repurposed meeting room. And there was a line out in the hallway. The two clerks on duty were obviously swamped, and not all the rooms were ready; the two men in front of me were very unhappy about this, and were trying to demand some kind of compensation. I braced for similar news and was already trying to figure out how I would handle it, but my room was ready to go. Back around to the elevators I went, and I punched the button for my floor…only to realize it was an elevator where you have to present your keycard to select your floor. I realized this just as the other passenger in the elevator was about to help me. We kind of chuckled about it, and I used my standard line about “they do that just to cross up those of us who are up here from the country.”

Once inside my room, I collapsed on the bed. I was soaking wet, sore, tired. But the view out my window was not what I expected. Directly ahead of me was the Oculus, One World Trade Center…and the first of two giant square holes, their outlines ringed in black. There weren’t any words for it, and throughout the evening I’d keep coming back to that view.

After cooling down for a while, I changed shirts and set out again. The memorial was my first stop…all the names along the outlines. It really reminded me of my first visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, and how nothing about the scope of the lives lost had ever really got to me until I saw the size of the Wall and how small the names were. That’s all I can compare this to. You have to see it to really get it.

Down into the Oculus I went, both to look around and to find a bottle of water, which I finally found at a Hudson News store. There wasn’t much time to drink it, or much of a place to relax with it. (Tourist season, remember?) Instead, I hoofed it back up and out. I’d wanted to visit the Brooklyn Bridge, since a very dear friend of mine grew up in Brooklyn, and…well, I was nearby. Unfortunately, everybody else in the entire world had the same idea that afternoon, and the pedestrian lane of the bridge was solid humanity. I noped out and headed for a Duane Reade store, where I bought provisions for the evening.

Then it was back to my room for a much-needed shower that almost made me feel like a human again. I spent the evening looking out the window at that unforgettable view, doing a lot of thinking about what happened there, and how everything forever changed that day. I was simultaneously amazed by what was before me, and haunted by the horrors that had played out here nearly a quarter-century ago. And since Fate has a wicked sense of humor, just before bedtime I learned that we’d bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. Tomorrow was going to be interesting. But I got out a book I’d brought and did some reading, hoping to get my mind off things. It worked well enough.

I had a decent, if truncated, night’s rest, beating my alarm by about an hour, and was up and out by 5:30. My friend was expecting me at 6:30, and I wanted to give myself some extra time in case anything happened en route. I left the hotel, wandered through the World Trade Center site and took some photos, and then started walking north. Even in the early morning hours, it was getting hot and sticky, and by the time I got to Hudson Square I was spent. The front desk checked me in, my friend came down and greeted me, and up we went to start the day’s fun.

For the next three hours I got to see professionals at work, and there’s kind of a vicarious thrill that comes with it. You’re watching this stuff happen in real time, and yet the people you’re with have done this so much and for so long. It makes me think of really good doctors performing surgery, responding to the unexpected with calm wit and trained hands. The breaking news from the night before threw a curveball into the proceedings, and it was interesting to be there when the network went to a special report. But it got done.

After the morning’s duties were done, my friend and I went just about everywhere we could inside ABC’s new facility. To say it’s impressive is an understatement, and in some places I felt I’d stepped ten years into the future. It made me wish we had something similar where I work, but since I don’t have anywhere near the resources Disney could pour into this facility, it ain’t happenin’ soon. Oh, well. But as much fun as the tour was, it was as much fun to spend time with some of the folks my friend works with. I learned long ago that the people who like what they do are eager to share what they know with you, if you’re genuinely interested in it. It’s opened many a door, and many a friendship, for me, and this trip reminded me of how valuable that is. Now, when I come to New York, it’s not for a tour so much as it is to be with friends again, friends who happen to work in the teevee business.

Noon came and went, and we had to part ways. For me, it was one more ride on the E back to Moynihan Train Hall, and then the train to Baltimore. I had a quick bite, spent some time writing in my journal, and then off to the very full Amtrak 87. It was scorching hot outside, and our take-no-crap conductor reminded us all at every stop to be safe and stay hydrated if we were getting off. The heat also messed with our progress, and outside Aberdeen, Maryland we were stopped for about 20 minutes due to heat issues. In due course, though, we were on our way, and I was back at BWI soon enough. From there, it was a not-too-lengthy drive to my hotel for the night.

The final morning of this trip, I was up in plenty of time to get ready, and then I headed east to Norfolk and a visit to the battleship Wisconsin, now moored as a museum ship at Nauticus.

There’s not as much to see on the self-guided tour as there is aboard New Jersey, but I also got to see some areas aboard Wisconsin that I couldn’t see aboard New Jersey, either. It was already getting really hot, and less than an hour later I was headed back across the river for Newport News and The Mariners’ Museum.

This was kind of a sentimental journey. The last time I was at The Mariners’ Museum was August 1991, when my family took a vacation to Newport News so I could do some research about s/s United States. As will tend to happen, a place gets frozen in your mind as it was the last time you saw it. Since then, the museum has changed a lot, and it’s going through some renovation now. It’s not a bad thing, and indeed there were a good many things I remember from back then that I was happy to see again. Maybe, though, it isn’t the changes that sadden you as much as the realization of how much time has passed. What seems like yesterday was nearly 34 years ago.

Driving through Newport News itself reminded me of this. I remember when we crossed the James River Bridge that first day back in 1991, and how I looked down the river at Newport News Shipbuilding and then down the waterfront, to the Big U languishing down at the CSX coal pier. USS Enterprise was in the shipyard, in the midst of an overhaul, and that I wasn’t expecting to see. Now Enterprise is at that yard again – that huge cube of an island can’t be mistaken for anything else – but this time, it’s the long goodbye. A few hundred yards away, though, a new Enterprise is under construction in a graving dock.

It wasn’t the ships that I was really thinking about. It was the time that had passed, how 34 years is the blink of an eye, and how no one knows where the time goes. That’s what was really in my head as I took one last look behind, then set a course for Emporia and then the long drive back to home, and the future. I got home later that night, much to the gratitude of two cats, one of whom was relieved to finally have his Emotional Support Human back home.

And after a month or so of travel, I’m thankful for all I’ve been able to do and see, but I need the rest. There may be short trips here and there over the next month, but none of the multi-state extravaganzas for a while, although I am hoping there will be a conference in the cards for me come September. For now, though, I need a break, and there’s plenty for me to see after here.