When I Get Home

Summer of 1974.

It was the middle of August and I was still free. I was in my garage, preparing my Honda "SL-70" mini-motorcycle, for yet another adventurous excursion. I was, even then, trying to exorcise the demons from my soul by escaping on a journey. This time it would be following the forested ridge that rose along my Hillview Drive neighborhood and continued east through Clarence, New York. I wanted to take it as far as I could, along the sometimes steep inclines that overlooked the, then, sparsely populated, rural pastures surrounding large patches of willows, oaks and pines...through the hidden subdivisions nestled in the forests, then onward to the school I just left forever in June, Clarence Junior High.

I was full of angst, as I always was in August before a new school year. Yet this time in my fourteenth year, I had even more trepidation. I was already threatened by older high school kids that my freshman year at Clarence Senior High would be hell on Earth. I was already marching to the beat of another drummer at that point. I just hated following norms and never understood why. I was told I was a "pretty smart kid" but the more I heard that, even from exasperated teachers...especially from teachers...let alone doting family members...I walked the other way, finishing homework assignments, looking at them as I knew they were correct, done perfectly...answers discovered, words put together nicely...only to throw them in the waste basket and show up for class feigning having forgotten to complete the assignments. It was enough for me to know I did the work and did it well. I hated having to prove...ANYTHING about myself, even then. I hated following paths, trails pounded by thousands of feet, already laid out for followers to follow. Yet, because I feared "the pack", I hid within my own shell. For some odd reason, these eccentricities attracted bullying, especially from those who rigidly followed the paths, the proper courses, the steadfast rules. Here I was in my unruly hair, keeping to myself with but a few well chosen friends, thumbing my nose at how I was supposed to act, supposed to be. So, come September, beginning at the bus stop on Thompson Road, my entry into Senior High School would be what appeared to be my "savage end" on this hot musty late summer day.

As I prepared my motorbike for its off-path excursion I had the radio on in my garage. I heard "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" for the very first time. The beginning vamp was so familiar and so soothing to me. I would later realize that it was "borrowed" from a jazz recording I heard when I was four or five years old in my father's extensive collection. Until the Beatles kidnapped me, I was weaned on hardcore, "bop" and beat jazz...and this vamp had hardwired itself into my being. But, at that moment it was fresh. It was something like the Beatles; a song that began as no other at that moment and carried on in another realm; off the beaten path, along secluded, ignored openings in a wilderness amongst the hordes of followers. Like all good music I admired, it had the courage I lacked, to walk boldly with a different stride, on a different path; a path rarely or ever explored before. All of this saturated my naive, subconsciousness as the melody and lyric embedded into my mind. I greased the chain and my mind wandered as the song haunted me, having me in the right spirit...the right place...for my ride.

I set off, illegally, down Thompson Road, toward "Ledgeview Elementary", the school that "welcomed" me into this new neighborhood just a few years earlier. That entry itself, an ostentatious introduction by a "tween-age" child ripped from his birthplace home, Harris Hill; an introverted "Eden" and placed, instead, into a suburbia that wreaked of intense marching to obligatory beats. I rebelled in incredibly weird and creative ways. It did nothing to make me fit into the "gears of this machine". This song continued to echo in my brain as the sound of the motorbike engine harmonized with the melody swimming in my ears. I crossed through the school and onto "Old Goodrich Road", turning right and following its meandering path up the ledge, turning into a field once I reached the top. I continued on as the tall grass, kissed and whipped my legs, looking downward for obstructions as the music in my head played. I was amazed that just one listening to a song can have it simmering within as if heard a thousand times before. I was at once inspired by what lay ahead and longing for getting back home, hoping to hear this song on the radio once again and have it confirm for me its brilliant and bizarre connection with my soul at this moment. My August angst has my senses ablaze.

I reached the end of the field and crossed over (New) "Goodrich Road" and noticed a large yet secluded Farm Home nestled in the woods on the cusp of the cliff. I followed a neglected path toward the back of the estate. I then entered the forest behind the home and the stable behind it. The sun broke through the tall trees in streams of light and in one stream I saw a blonde-haired girl standing next to a copper-colored tall and beautiful horse. She was bathing it, washing it's neck  and thankfully I was far enough away, and my small motorbike quiet enough that I was unnoticed. Suddenly I realized who it was! Her name was "Lisa", one of my very attractive schoolmates who I dared not even approach in school. There was only one girl, in fact, who I ever DID approach, another stunning beauty who made my burgeoning, romantic imagination explode in fairy-tale like happy endings,  and who at once, destroyed my soul. A "motorcycle" friend compelled me to call her one day and ask her out after I mistakenly revealed to him my secret passion for her. She literally told me she does not date boys who "aren't smart" or do well in school. Her honesty was both welcomed and devastating. That would be the end of ever pretending I fit in, let alone make my feelings known to a girl. So, instead, here I was watching Lisa from afar as I shut off my engine. This song now became a soundtrack...a narrative...should I ever be bold enough to give Lisa my number. That thought alone scared me enough to kick-start my bike and again, carry on my journey.

I continued on into the forest that hugged the ridge. The piano within my soul played through the exotic melody as the scent of wild flowers, mixed with the pungent aroma of wild ginger invaded my nostrils and took me as far away from the steps of the senior high school as I could possibly get. I was where I belonged now, nestled in nature, the irony of traveling on a motorized horse almost as completely vanished as was my coming terror in September.

As I hear this song now, forty-four years later, the experience of that hot August day is as clear and vivid as this moment I enjoy listening again.