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.

Sunday was deceptively calm. Old movies (including one with a hilarious supporting role played by my spiritual godmother Eve Arden), watching the football playoffs and the goofiness thereof. But it was all with two thoughts looming in the background: it all changes tomorrow, and it all changes next week.

The more immediate change happened Monday at noon, and that’s been the gigantic thing that has dominated the entire landscape before and since. Others have written volumes about it, and we’re not even through the first week. For my part, since I try to keep this place reasonably family-friendly and there’s no way I can discuss it without using language that’s not at all family-friendly, it’s best if I preserve silence. I didn’t have long to think about it, anyway, because an hour after it all began, I was in our front yard helping to free a delivery van whose driver got it stuck in our wet grass. (It’s a long story involving some poor assumptions on his part.)

The other change I had to cope with this week was more personal: the end of a lengthy winter break. A few years ago, the college went to an academic calendar that built a very brief January term into the schedule, which then bumped the start of the Spring semester by about two and a half weeks. For those of us who don’t teach in the January term, it effectively means half of December and almost all of January are out of the office and self-directed.

Those who don’t understand what we do in our trade (and it’s a lot of folks, including most people in my family) get the idea that we coddled professors use all this free time to lounge around eating bon-bons while regular folks work for a living. What many don’t know is that my work doesn’t stop. It’s just not in the office. We have to rewrite our syllabus documents, write and revise lesson plans, develop assignments, take care of requests from students (which continue regardless of what the calendar says), develop and submit course schedules for upcoming semesters, monitor e-mail…a ton of things. In my case, I’ve also had to continue producing episodes of the television program – which, even though most of it is assembling features and connecting segments we recorded in advance, still involves about a half-day to stitch everything together, round up the latest game information for the scoreboard segment, QC it, render the final version and deliver it, etc. And in between all that is when I see after the things that are hard to fit in my schedule during the school term: taking the car in for service, taking the cat in for her annual exam, meetings with colleagues at other institutions to share/steal ideas, etc.

And, sometimes, we have to attend things on campus. There were a couple during the break, but few are as sobering as the one I attended Thursday, which had to do with preparation in the event of something that’s happened with increasing frequency over the last many years (and, indeed, happened again this week). It was a presentation of about two and a half hours, and it forced me to think about things I really don’t want to think about – including, again, how vulnerable a campus is, and how easily some nutcase could shatter the peace and goodwill that we take as a given.

Now, none of this is that new. In 1988 it happened at an elementary school near my hometown. I was in high school at the time, only a few miles from that school, and I remember hearing about it when school dismissed that afternoon. Three years later, the semester after I graduated, an isolated incident happened at my high school (more disturbing is that my mother, who worked at the school, was just over in the next hallway when it happened). And over the years, these kinds of incidents have happened in all kinds of places; not just schools but just about anywhere groups of people can gather.

You would have hoped at some point enough would have been enough, but it keeps happening. At one point the presentation showed, on a map, the number and magnitude of these incidents over the last 24 years. The word “disturbing” isn’t enough to describe it. The incidents themselves are disturbing enough, but the lack of meaningful action by those who could do something about it is even more so, and on the notes I took, I wrote some rather pungent commentary about this sorry state of affairs.

Part of the presentation included a network interview with a teacher who was at the school that got attacked not long before Christmas 2012, and she talked (through tears) about what she did to protect her students. We were told about another teacher who got on top of her students to protect them, and then paid for their futures with her life.

I remember that day very vividly – or, more accurately, the following days. We were going to a Christmas party the next afternoon, but it was so difficult to feel any kind of joy after knowing what had happened. Even though it was hundreds of miles away, the horror of it all was overwhelming. On the way home, as we listened to a radio news story about it, I had the first genuine crisis of faith I can recall in my life. It frightened me. What kind of world could this happen in, that this could happen to these little kids and the adults who took care of them? And it was my hope that something would get done about it. But we know what happened: a whole lot of nothing. My faith in God survived, but my faith in a few other things has yet to recover, and my scorn for a few people in particular only deepened.

And that’s what accompanied me as I sat through this seminar on Thursday. Not only do I have to know my subject area, not only do I have to know about classroom management and assessment methods and all this other stuff, but I have to constantly keep one ear open. I have to know where the nearest exits are (or can be made). I have to keep a special app on my phone, just in case. I have to know how to use the things in my classroom to defend or fight. And I also know that, in the worst case, I have to make sure my students are safe before I can see after my own safety. I’m the last one out of the danger zone. And I also know in my heart that if I have to, I’m going to be the one on top of the pile, protecting them.

It’s a hell of a thing, but it’s what we have become, or what we have allowed to happen. I’m in this business to give these young people knowledge and experience. And yet I know there’s a very real possibility I could pay for that with my own life. I know if it came to it, I would, and without a moment’s hesitation. But it shouldn’t be that way. (And any time somebody suggests that the solution is for teachers to carry…well, please don’t go there with me. And I write this as someone with a small arsenal of my own.)

Over the years I’ve become more reclusive. Some of it is because some things I used to enjoy are no longer out there to be had. But, to be honest, some of it is because I’m turned off by the amount of rudeness and lack of consideration so many people display any more. It’s everywhere from the drive over (try going anywhere without somebody zooming up and tailgating you) to people plowing you over in store aisles, people using their phones in movie theaters…there’s so much that’s counter to how I was taught to behave. But on top of that, when you go anywhere, you also have in the back of your mind…what if somebody comes in to cause mayhem?

And with all that, being out here in the woods has an appeal that’s almost narcotic. We’re away from so much of that, and to an extent we can control how much of the outside world reaches us. We interact more with animals than with people, and they’re often much better company. It’s easy to get into a groove with all that and wish I could just work from home. But I also know how much I enjoy my work, and how much working with the kids does for me, even on days when they drive me crazy. I spent a year teaching over Zoom during the pandemic and, although it was the prudent thing to do given the circumstances, it was missing something. I didn’t think the students were getting everything they needed from me. And, for my part, it hurt my style. The way I work in a classroom is just this side of improv, and unless I have a live audience I can play off, it just doesn’t work.

It comes down to a calculation. Do I let the possibility that something horrible could happen cheat me out of the joy of doing my job? Do I let it cheat the students out of what I could give them?

Do I let the horror win? Or do I accept the risk, learn what I can about how to protect them if the worst happens, have a plan in the back of my mind, keep one ear open, and move forward?

I know what’ll happen Monday. I’ll go in and do my job, and make the most of it. But part of me will regret that I have to think about those other aspects.

This time of year is my least favorite. It’s the start of a new year; the days are still too short, the shadows are at weird angles, the weather is cold and sometimes fierce. My mood tends to sag, not only because of the environmental factors but also because it’s a new year, full of uncertainties. And within the span of this week, that was driven home anew.

I can’t let that keep me behind a moat, though. I’m cheating myself if I don’t keep my courage, and move toward better days. They are coming, even if I can’t yet know when.

By this point, it’s all become tiresome anyway, because the entire range of thought varies from wishful thinking to doomsaying to educated guesses. Few want to admit that we don’t know what’s to come, but that’s not the kind of thing that gets readers or prompts buzz on social media. We crave certainty and hard answers, but one of the scariest things about life is that there are times when we just don’t know, period. And that lack of knowledge about what’s ahead has prompted some people in my circles to be worried, angry or otherwise highly concerned. At least one person I know has moved overseas, and I’ve heard rumblings from others that they have considered it. And if I had a dollar for every comparison I’ve read or heard between this moment and (insert gloomy historical precedent here), well, I’d be leaving motor yachts as tips.

Now, honesty compels me to admit that I’m not thrilled about how things turned out, any more than I was the first time around. But I’m looking at things with some perspective. As a historian, I know that movements ebb and flow, and at some point this wave we’re in now is going to crest and break, and things will swing the other direction. It always does. We just don’t know when it will happen. (I remember thinking in 1993 that we were finally seeing a new generation, one closer to my own, finally getting an opportunity and that the future was limitless. My generation was about to get its chance and we were going to change the world. Well, we know how that turned out.)

I’m also conditioned by the fact that I grew up in, and still live in, a state whose government is in miniature what the new/returning administration would like to enact nationwide. Ours is a state in which, any time a law or a ruling comes down that’s the least bit progressive, our state’s attorney general (who wants to become governor so much it’s written all over him) is among those immediately filing a lawsuit to stop it. Very little of this is new to me, and I know how to adapt to what may be to come.

Even beyond this, it’s that I’m long past weary of the burlesque that so much of life has become, and how the burlesque of popular culture has infected our governance. This has bothered me for a long time: that part of the process of choosing our leaders, the people who would have to answer that phone call at 3 a.m., involves how willing you are to dance on camera with a talk show host, or the quality of your campaign’s memes, or any of that business. But now it’s gone beyond even that: that you must out-patriotic the other guy, must out-respect-the-military the other guy, must out-religious the other guy, must deliver the coldest put-downs, and now you have to be willing to deploy four-letter words in public…it goes on and on. I’ll write more about this someday, when I can organize my thoughts about it, but it’s been exhausting seeing things that I have quietly revered all my life be hijacked in the name of financial or political profit, or otherwise fall victim to this societal burlesque. And once that burlesque pays off, the culture coarsens that much more, and good luck moving whatever it was back to what it was before.

More than that, though, it’s that I’m a pragmatist. Even if I don’t care for what’s about to happen, I have responsibilities here. In a week or so, I will have classes to teach and television programs to produce and students to look after. I have responsibilities to my family. And I also have responsibilities here. After all the years and all the money we’ve plowed into our little homestead out in the woods, we can’t afford to just up and walk away from all that. We wouldn’t want to, anyway. Too much of our lives are invested here. Moreover, I have as much of a stake in this state and this country as anybody else.

Maybe some folks would say I’m giving up. To me, it’s embracing reality. It’s the Stockdale Paradox in action. It’s accepting the realities, being clear-eyed about them, and finding the best way to move ahead. And it’s also knowing that even with the stuff going on at levels far beyond my own, there’s an awful lot of things that need my attention closer to home. I’m no good to my students and colleagues unless I do my job there, and that’s a ton of work in itself. I’m no good to my family unless I do my part for them. And I’m also no good as a citizen unless I participate as I can, vote when the elections come around, make my voice heard when it needs to be heard, help those in my community who need it. All the platitudes and good intentions in the world won’t matter if I don’t back those good intentions with the work of my own hands and heart. In sum, I have plenty with which to keep my hands full, and to be part of that fifth column of decency I mentioned some time ago.

And, even beyond that, it’s the long view. I know that no matter what happens in the public sphere, it’s not going to change how the birds land in our back yard and search for the seed we’ve scattered for them. It’s not going to keep my cat from demanding to sit in my lap any time I’m in my recliner. It’s not going to repeal gravity or change the laws of aerodynamics. It’s not going to change how gorgeous Rita Hayworth was in three-strip Technicolor.

Even more, I think about how the last four years seems to have passed in a blur, about how life seems simultaneously so long and so short, especially the older I get. It becomes a blur. Something I remember feels like only yesterday, but on cross-checking it I realize it was three years ago. The days pass into weeks, the weeks into months, and the next thing you know another year has passed. It’s sobering. And you realize, especially as you begin to lose those closest to you, that life is too short to spend it with a cloud over your head.

Moments like the one we’re in now, when the long view is so necessary, and when life will go on regardless of what happens at the macro level, make me think of what the eminent historian Will Durant wrote:

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts — between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks.

Life will go on. So will we.

As I write this, I’m in a hotel room in Athens, Georgia, a stone’s throw from the University of Georgia’s main campus. Tomorrow morning, I’m meeting with an archivist who works with the huge media library over here, hoping to get guidance on some projects that some associates and I have in the works.

The fact I’m over here on business makes this visit an exception. Most of the time, I’m over here for my own purposes. Many times it’s been to visit my friend Bobby, who now lives just a short drive from downtown. Other times, though, I’m over here to chase some ghosts. And every time I come over here, there are that many more ghosts to chase.

Once upon a time I wanted to live here. For some reason, I decided during the first half of my junior year that I wanted to go on to graduate school. I’m not sure I knew why. I think a friend and I had talked about it, and I wanted in, especially since it would give me a chance to get out of the nest. I still remember the night I told my mother, as we browsed in the housewares section of a massive hardware store during a particularly enjoyable shopping trip a couple weekends before Christmas. I started planning from there.

There were several universities on my mind. The most obvious was the University of South Carolina. I mean, it was right there in the middle of my home state. However, my mentor and unofficial adviser at Lander told me that going to my home state’s university for graduate work could confine my prospects. He said I should expand my horizons, and suggested Vanderbilt and Wright State, among others. Intrigued, I sent away for information and added those to the roster.

But somehow my heart got set on the University of Georgia. Location had a lot to do with it. I knew of Athens, and my dad often listened to a country station from there (WNGC, which provided us with our weekly dose of “Leonard’s Losers” – get me outta here, Percy!), but had never been there. It was far enough away for me to have independence (important, given that I was spending my college years still living at home, with most every move benevolently but still carefully watched by my parents, if not the whole tiny town) and yet not too far away. And, to be honest, the town’s reputation as a haven for independent types, artists and oddballs appealed to me. Now, granted, the Athens of the mid-’90s was nothing like the Athens of those not-so-long-ago days that spawned R.E.M. and any number of others, but it still appealed to me.

So, plans got made. I started getting things lined up, taking the Graduate Record Exam and having my scores sent to the appropriate places, getting applications in before deadline. And in the summer of 1995, not long after I graduated, my mother and I drove over to Athens for the day, just to look around town. It was a long drive through rolling hills and beautiful countrysides before we got to this odd city that seemed to be on top of a hill. We parked and wandered around, going into quirky little shops, stopping in an art gallery where several photographers (including Michael Stipe) had their works on display, having lunch at a neat sandwich shop across from the university campus. We went over to campus and I spent an hour or so in the massive stacks of the library, making photocopies (remember those?) of sections of books that I never knew existed, on topics that fascinated me. I couldn’t put my finger on why Athens held me in thrall, at least not in a way I could express that others would understand, and at one point my emotions boiled over into a flash of impatience toward my mother that, though I will always regret it, is typical for someone who’s in their early 20s and feeling frustrated. I was caught, I suppose, between being in a place that represented possibility and being in the company of someone who represented the world I was trying to escape.

The year after I finished college turned out to be what we’d now call a “gap year.” It wasn’t planned that way, but that’s what happened. I didn’t have any job prospects or anything lined up. (It turned out to be a good thing, for I spent much of that time off fighting a case of depression that, now that I look back, I’m amazed I made it through with my mind intact.) But one day the phone rang. It was a professor in the history department at UGA. They were looking at applications. Was I interested in starting in January? Oh, was I ever. But I knew so much would have to happen in a big hurry. The finances would have to get squared. I’d have to find a place to live. I’d have to move a couple of mountains. I had to conclude that although I would love to, I wasn’t in a position where I was honestly prepared to do it, and I declined with regret. So, on I went, with Georgia as my primary focus and South Carolina as my safety school, with visions in my head of moving off to Athens the next August to start my new life.

Well, not so fast. In the mail one Saturday arrives a letter from Athens: thanks, but no thanks on admission for Fall. I was heartbroken. I’d just been offered a slot a few months before, and now I’m chopped liver. What gives? My mother took me to lunch, and in our booth at the Huddle House the next town over, I stewed and considered next steps. The next week, I wrote back (by postal mail – remember, this was the mid-1990s, and e-mail had yet to make it to our tiny town) and expressed my displeasure over this perceived inconsistency. Why was I okay for January but suddenly no good? In full early-20s righteous indignance, certain that I was getting the shaft (and blissfully unaware of how admission processes actually work in high-demand programs), I demanded an investigation. Which, obviously, did not turn out in my favor, as a very polite letter a few weeks later explained.

South Carolina did want me, though, and I made my peace with that. In August I moved to Columbia and started graduate work at the big university. And it’s funny how life works: you don’t get what you want, but you end up finding what you really needed. That first semester, I met people I’d never have met otherwise. I built some friendships that last to this day. I had faculty members whose example showed me how to do the job I have now (and at least one faculty member whose example showed me what to never let myself become). This was doubly so when, after a year in the graduate history program, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in journalism instead. As I quickly found out, it wasn’t as easy as changing majors as an undergraduate, and I’m still boggled by how naive I was to think it could be. Be that as it may, the folks in the J-school were kind enough to help, and the basement of the Carolina Coliseum, with its windowless offices and classrooms, became my new home. I’ve often felt those were some of the best days of my life, and some part of me will always yearn for those times. Those were days when I was with classmates with whom I seemed to click, when I had professors who really saw something in me that I had yet to see myself, and when things just felt happy. And to think: had I gotten in at UGA, I’d have never had that. (Heck, I might not have survived it.)

None of that stopped me from driving over to Athens every now and then, though. Maybe I couldn’t get in as a student, but it was a nifty day trip and I could visit favorite haunts: not only could I spend hours in the library, but I could browse at Wuxtry Records and Jackson Street Books, enjoy a sandwich at Yudy’s, visit any number of the interesting little shops along the streets, and generally indulge the latent bohemian inside me for a little while. It was all of the pleasure of living the daydream without the reality of actually living there, and it was fun. You get to know the landmarks, and you love it while you have it, and you hope it can stay that way forever – for the heart is sentimental, sometimes foolishly so.

At the turn of the century, life took me to another part of the country. I was back a year later, to take up the job I now have, but it took four more years for me to get back to the little town with the big university. AEJMC was having its regional conference in Athens, I needed to attend conferences to build up my tenure and promotion portfolio, and so it all came together. In early March of 2005 I drove into town for the first time in nearly six years. Athens had been fixed in my mind as it was the last time I saw it. But as I drove along Broad Street, things…well, they didn’t look right. Yudy’s was gone; on its exterior was now the logo of a nationwide coffee chain. So too were gone a number of the quirky little taverns and shops I remembered. Slowly, the eccentricity was giving way to the chains. At least the Holiday Inn, which was hosting the conference, was still on that weird split-level lot. I pulled in, got my room, and then hiked up the hill to a pizza joint on Broad Street. After that, I walked over to Jackson Street Books, where I happily prowled the shelves and brought back a couple of treasures, and I spent the evening reading away, happy as could be.

If being away for five years was a shock, it was far more so when I came back nine years later. Bobby had invited me over for a visit to his home, back when he lived a few miles over, and then to dinner in Athens with a friend of his, a former network correspondent who now taught at the university. So much more had changed, so much more had become streamlined and franchised. There were signs, still, of the old Athens – Wuxtry Records remained, proud and unbowed, exactly as I remembered – but the town I had known was slipping away, ever more.

Every time I’ve been back, something else has been missing. Jackson Street Books closed in the middle of the last decade, as the realities of the weird new world of commerce proved too much for an independent bookstore to overcome. The Holiday Inn that I stayed at two decades ago is now an empty lot, soon to host yet another of the gigantic construction projects taking place around town. (I’m writing this from the Holiday Inn Express a couple blocks west, which replaced it.) Tall hotels and apartment complexes now flank the uphill approach to Broad Street. The Varsity, which used to be just outside town, is closed. The university itself, as all large universities seem to these days, has expanded its footprint and huge new buildings have appeared in places I remember as sleepy blocks of town. (Although Wuxtry Records remains – bless them – and it’s become a ritual for me to buy another t-shirt when I’m in the store. I can never have enough Wuxtry t-shirts.)

I know it’s progress. I know that you can’t want a place to remain the same forever. I also know that a place rightfully belongs not to the sentiments of those who cast their hopes elsewhere, but to the people who live there now. It belongs to them, and not to the “remember when” types.

It all comes back to that line about “I’m going over there to chase some ghosts.” I think I mean it not just because I miss Yudy’s or Jackson Street Books or any of the other places that amazed and amused back then. I think I also do it because, inside, I miss the times that those places represent. I miss the optimism of the kid who loved visiting those places, and a time in my life when it seemed all things were possible. Or maybe I over-romanticize those times because, when you know how the story turns out, memory becomes a luxury. Time and sentiment can sand the rough edges off the past’s realities and uncertainties. Plus, when your present reality has its own uncertainties and scary moments, it provides a distraction. (Memory is both blessing and curse, isn’t it?)

But I have to remember, always, that what didn’t go my way three decades ago made possible all the wonders my life has now. Change one thing – no matter how insignificant you think it was – and it doesn’t play out the same. It’s possible that if UGA had let me in three decades ago, I’d be a best-selling historian or some media darling, dividing my time between my homes in various parts of the world. Or it’s just as likely that it could have gone the other way and I’d be working in a box factory somewhere. And yet I wouldn’t want to trade that coin flip for what I have now: a life that, for all its weird angles and worries and things yet to be fulfilled, still provides a lot of contentment and contains an awful lot of love. It feels the way an honestly good life should, and it all happened because things didn’t go my way.

The rest? It’s a nice place to visit, and in my reveries I often do.

But I’m not sure I would live there.

And really, it’s silly. It’s not like there’s some kind of physical, perceptible transition; it’s not like a car crossing over a set of tracks. While we humans make much ado about it, the creatures of nature will carry on with no regard for this human-created milestone. I can’t help thinking this dread is silly, but it’s the same dread I feel about being given a blank piece of paper and being told to create something; instead of thinking about all the possibilities, I feel the empty space and think not only about the vastness of the journey, but of all the ways things could go wrong.

Which is funny, given that 2024 was a wringer of a year for me. I’ve not been fond of the word “bittersweet” but I can’t think of a word to better describe 2024. I’ve had some really peak experiences, done some things I never thought I’d get to do, and had some good times with some really good people. I’ve gone to new places. I had to push myself to take on new challenges and ended up learning new things about myself, and what had scared me turned out to be exhilarating.

But I’ve also suffered losses in 2024. Some of them are the kinds of losses you’re likely to suffer the older you get, but it doesn’t make them hurt less. My mother was in the emergency room the very first day of the year, and the first 13 days of January were a series of ups and downs, until the biggest heart I’ve ever known in my life finally gave out. For years I had known it was going to happen at some point, but no matter how much you intellectually prepare, you can’t foretell the emotional hit. Thankfully, our family came together, did the hard stuff we had to do, made sure Dad didn’t fall into an emotional hole, and we survived.

In my own mind, it’s been an odyssey. The first two weeks of the year were off-and-on feelings of dread, preparing for what could happen. On that last day, as my feelings sank, I began to brace. When the word finally came…well, my grief let go in a very quick burst. And then I focused on what needed doing. It’s how I work through what distresses me. I adapted better than I imagined, although there have been some moments.

That said, that opening led to others. So much of 2024 has been about re-evaluating what I thought I knew. It’s involved the kind of hard work that doesn’t allow for shortcuts. I’ve had to realize a lot of things I thought I knew weren’t really so, and that a lot of assumptions I’d made were faulty. To get into the weeds on this would not only go more deeply personal than I care to in a public forum, but would bore you to tears, so I’ll only say that this year and this journey led me to take lessons from James Stockdale, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius; led me to realize the truth that while I cannot control events, I can control how I react to them; and if I focus on what I can control, that will keep me busy enough.

If I could say 2024 was uniformly sad, it would be useful for sorting purposes, but it would be inaccurate. I’d have to leave out the weirdness of a trip I made in February with a lift-gate truck, during which I took custody of four priceless pieces of broadcast history. I’d have to leave out the surprise invitation to media day at Dollywood in early March, which not only let me drive through gorgeous scenery on the trip up, but provided the priceless opportunity to be a few rows away from the Queen herself as she addressed all we media types in attendance. I’d have to leave out that strange, hurried but exhilarating trip to Philadelphia to visit the flagship. I’d have to leave out a surprise weekend trip to New York, sitting at an edit station inside ABC as that morning’s Good Morning America was underway. I’d have to leave out helping a colleague get a book published. I’d have to leave out a lot of moments that brought me happiness.

Some years, you look back on as halcyon days. Other years, you look back on and think “however bad things are now, at least they’re not as bad as they were then.” I don’t know if I’ll look at 2024 that way, but I am reasonably confident I’ll look back and think of this year as a stern teacher – the kind of teacher who made your life difficult, but over time you realize the value of what you learned.

And yes, 2024 taught me some lessons. Valuable lessons.

But I sure am hoping that 2025 will be more gentle.

Each year the familiar Christmas specials would run, and we knew it was the season when Charlie Brown and Rudolph would make their annual appearance, when Santa would ride through town in a Norelco shaver head and the Hershey’s Kisses would ring out “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” (To this day, those commercials – and the Corona ad with the whistled “O Christmas Tree” – are the only Christmas ads I genuinely love.)

Our church would host various things. We’d usually stage a Christmas pageant of some sort. For many years it was a retelling of the Christmas story, with most of the labor coming from our Methodist Youth Fellowship group. A couple of older kids playing Mary and Joseph, three adult men portraying the three kings (and singing “We Three Kings” as they processed down the aisle toward the manger), and the rest of us in MYF would get the usual bit non-speaking parts as angels or shepherds.

Each year our family gathered for a Christmas dinner, often at my grandparents’ tiny house. We’d have drawn names a few weeks before for a gift exchange, and after dinner we’d swap gifts. It could be a handful but it was good to see everyone, and seldom did it lack for entertainment, especially as the number of cousins increased and the younger ones got into mischief.

My parents would often go Christmas shopping. One of my mother’s love languages was giving, and she was always looking for one more neat thing to put under the tree for somebody. Often my brother and I would go with them, although we’d be in another department of the store (or another store in the mall) while they looked for gifts. When my brother got old enough and set out on his own, I’d often go along on these trips. All the stores would be festive and the local mall would be all decorated. It was exciting. There was anticipation. Sometimes on Christmas Eve I’d stay up late and watch NBC’s feed of the Christmas Mass from the Vatican, and even this small-town Methodist could feel the power and importance of that moment each year.

And when Christmas Day got here, it was the payoff. All of a sudden, so many wishes had come true, and there were so many goodies to compete for my attention. It was complete overload. My mother would spend much of the morning in the kitchen making all kinds of food: sausage pinwheels, ham biscuits, all sorts of stuff for the family and for visitors to graze on throughout the day. In the evening my grandparents would stop by for a visit, having spent the day visiting all the rest of the family, and they’d unwind with us for a couple hours before heading home for the night. When the last festivities were done, I’d collect my goodies and head to my room and enjoy them, trying not to get sad about this happy day coming to an end. Sometimes there would be a little sadness the next day or so, with all the excitement gone and now life was getting back to normal.

I have so many vivid memories of Christmas past. There was the year my brother was so ill with a cold/throat thing, coughing so hard that he stayed up sick all night; I was too keyed-up to get back to sleep, and so I stayed up all night and played with what Santa had left for me, which meant I spent most of the next day tired and grouchy. The next year, I got my very first computer (a Commodore VIC-20, which I still have), along with a whole bunch of old-time radio cassettes, and I remember so many happy days of coding programs into the computer (which would be wiped the moment I turned the machine off, since I had no storage device) while listening to radio programs from yesteryear. One year in the run-up to Christmas, we went on a shopping trip where the city’s shopping mall had a temporary shop set up selling old magazines, and I went positively crazy buying old copies of Life Magazine. I can’t think of a Christmas season from way back when that doesn’t have happiness associated with it.

But something happened. And, as with all things, it wasn’t abrupt. Some of it had to have come with growing up and growing older, with taking on the responsibilities of adulthood, the difference between being a passenger and actually having to do the driving, and Christmas becomes one more thing you have to manage in between all the others. (I can’t imagine what it would be like if we had kids.) And over the years, of course, you lose people. Some move away. Some pass away. This year will be the first Christmas without my mom, and I’ll only say the sense of reality will be heightened as a result.

It’s beyond just that. Every year, I’ve watched Christmas turn that much more into an industry, and with it the lines of demarcation have eroded. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas used to be this special zone, and Thanksgiving was a distinct holiday, enjoyed in its own right. Now Thanksgiving is more like a speedbump, and in my mind it’s the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. It’s this pro forma prelude to the hyper-intense, mandatory-fun portion of the already months-long Christmas season that now seems to crank up even before Halloween.

The buildup is made even more unbearable by how aggressive it’s become. Radio stations that switch to an all-Christmas format six weeks before the day itself, for instance (and if I can barely make it through one rendition of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” without screaming, hearing it several times a day is going to drive me straight to a mental institution). The people popping up on television with ugly sweaters and aggressive smiles and over-cheery holiday greetings. (Don’t even get me started on the ads for matching pajamas for the whole family.) The aggressive trend-chasing. It’s to the point where the sound of jingle bells in the background is like nails on a chalkboard.

My issue isn’t with Christmas itself. That, itself, I love. What I can’t take is what it’s been turned into. I know why it’s happened; some of it is cold profit, while some of it’s just been the kind of creep that happens in cultural phenomena. But the outcome of it has been this increasingly aggressive “it’s the Christmas season and we will remind you of it every few minutes! And we will aggressively show you HOW it should be done! And in case you don’t get the point, we will pipe in the sounds of jingle bells!” (I’m not even going to get into how Christmas has been twisted into yet another front in the increasingly all-encompassing culture wars, as our national dialogue – and, for that matter, seemingly everything about public life – continues to get contorted into an increasingly grotesque form of burlesque.) The more aggressive you are about something that you want me to enjoy, the more I retreat from it – and past a certain point, it approaches hostility.

(Side note: It’s much the same reason I avoided the “Must See TV” programs from NBC in the 1990s: the more aggressively you market it, the more it dominates the sphere, the more self-satisfied you present yourself as being, the less I am likely to want it. Friends was 30 years ago and I’ve never watched an episode, and have no plans to. I’m sure it’s a fine program, and I appreciate what it means to a lot of people. In my case, though, it was just so aggressively marketed and so culturally dominant back then that it turned me completely off. And maybe I’m still miffed because My So-Called Life was up against it and therefore never stood a chance.)

No, what I miss is the kind of Christmas that had some room to breathe. I miss Christmas as this quiet feeling of something wonderful to come, and you weren’t quite sure what it would be, but in your heart you had this warmth that assured you that whatever happened, it would be good. I miss the kind of Christmas season that found its own satisfaction in crisp December evenings, when the long shadows of mid-afternoon gave way to the darkness of early evening, when the company of a beloved friend or a family member by the fireplace was more than sufficient warmth for both body and spirit. Christmas meant the little lump in your throat when Linus recited the story of the first Christmas, or when Charlie Brown’s sad little tree was redeemed into something beautiful. And as I get older, Christmas brings back memories of people now gone from my life, from this world, and of what their presence meant, how I could never fully appreciate that until it was gone.

I miss the kind of mature Christmas that wasn’t about the material stuff. Oh, sure, you’d give some kind of little present to the people who meant something to you, but the gift was really kind of a MacGuffin. It was a token to remind people that the real gift was having them in your life, a gift you’re not going to find at any Black Friday sale or on the shelves at any big-box craft store. I miss the kind of Christmas that wasn’t about the Next Big Thing. I miss the kind of Christmas that gave you credit for being able to listen and let your own heart figure it out. (Then again, I am someone who is constantly looking for nuance and subtlety in a world where it seems everything comes drenched in Ranch dressing.) Christmas is a season of searching, of yearning. As my pal Emily once wrote, so many of the great Christmas hymns are written in minor keys and symbolize that yearning for something better.

That’s why, this time of year, the manufactured jollity and the relentless marketing and the fads and the memes only drive me away. I didn’t abandon Christmas; there’s a little porcelain tree on a table in our den (and it’s there because with two mischievous cats who get into everything, that’s all the risk we dare take). Or maybe it’s like Saturday Night Live or MAD Magazine: it was at its best when you were a kid, and all the seasons since are a disappointment. I can’t say.

All I know is, this time of year I’m looking for the simple things about the season, the things that matter most. Or maybe I’m just a distaff live-action Charlie Brown lamenting that it’s all become too commercial*, and throughout this rant I’ve been fooling myself into thinking the good old days were that good, when underneath there was as much profiteering and venality back then, and the only difference is that there’s a thousand more outlets for it now, and it’s more open, the more that public life transforms itself into a corrupt comedy. It’s probably all of that, and then some. Or maybe I’m a phony who wants it both ways.

(*Which is funny, considering that a television special that lamented how commercial Christmas has become ended up spawning no end of Christmas merchandise.)

But, still, I tune out as I can, and I search. The magic of the season is out there, somewhere, if I can drown out the din in a world that’s anything but subtle.