Category Archives: nostalgia

Lost Cross 25th Year Reunion

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We have known each other for 25 years. I was one of the young ones of the group. I was 14 when I met Steve and Levi, 15 when I really started to hang out with them and Malcolm and Groble and Joy and James and a whole slew of others. Except for one or two other kids my age, everyone else was in college. (Now that 4 year age different means little, but then…it was huge.)

I grew up with these people. We grew up together. I had trouble at home, and this group became my family. They still are. After all these years. We are lucky. Not everyone gets to have such a close-ness with a group people they knew for those few tumultuous years of the late-teens and early twenties. It is a uniquely kind-hearted, giving, bunch. And most of them would just as soon punch you as hug you for saying such a thing. My good nights at basement shows at Lost Cross were measured by how many bruises I ended up with. It was hardcore and I was an angry teen.

Holy shit am I tired. It is 3:30am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I didn’t want the evening to end. I still don’t. I hang on to a thread of consciousness in order to write this.

I didn’t know what to expect. I reconciled with my past many years ago and had trepidations to revisit it. I was worried that it would be too surreal, too awkward, too weird.  I thought it would be difficult to see people, that I would be surrounded by familiar strangers and a room full of nostalgia.

Instead, I found my family waiting for me.

We are punk rock.
To me this has always meant hard, fast music, drinking and smoking, and a tight-knit bond of intelligent, thoughtful people.

These are my people.

….

I wrote that last night, but wanted to include photos but was too tired. This morning I thought “maybe I’ll edit it first.” But I’ve decided to leave it be.

It is almost 12 hours later – 2:30pm on Sunday – and my head hurts. I met more friends for breakfast/lunch today and now I’m ready for a nap.

So, that said, ya’ll are on your own for photo-viewing this time. I haven’t the energy to chose and embed. Here are pics I took yesterday and last night. (I did motivate enough to put some captions on these photos.)

 

memories of texas

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We were in a 1971 Volkswagen Squareback heading west through the hot, dry Texas panhandle. There was no air conditioning in that old car and it had a tendency to overheat, so every so often we’d find some roadside diner in which we refreshed our bedraggled bodies and let the motor cool down.

We would sit in a booth located near the window so had visual on our car that contained all our worldly goods. We were only nineteen and twenty-two, so all our worldly goods still fit into the back of a hatchback car.

The temperature outside was more intense than either of us had ever experienced. We looked out the large glass windows to a barren bending and shape-shifting feverish landscape. We spent our time in the diner drinking iced teas and writing post cards. Since neither of us wanted to venture outside, we took turns running to the blue mailbox that inevitably perched at least fifty feet from the diner’s front door.

It was getting towards dusk and we were approaching Amarillo. The VW was not happy and needed a break. It told us by shutting down. We pushed it into the parking lot of a sad little diner just off the highway. I tried to offer a suggestion as to how we could fix the problem. He got mad at me, at the situation, at the whole damn thing and stomped across the street to a small honky-tonk bar. Since I wasn’t of legal drinking age yet, I couldn’t go. And he took our money with him.

I sat on a concrete parking curb next to our little blue car. We were both in poor shape. The sunset was beautiful over the outline of a distant Amarillo. By the time he returned it was long dark and he was happy on whiskey sours and cheap beer. The car started and we limped to a close-by motel. He fell asleep right away. I lit my ‘nth cigarette in the dark room and wondered why I was still there.

summer storms

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We had a huge dust storm yesterday here in Phoenix-land. It was phenomenal. I took my dog out for a walk and it was light, with a wall of dark in the distance. There was an eerie stillness, like what I remember tornado-weather was in my childhood. My dog and I went inside, I got his leash off and went to the window. In those few minutes it took me to do those simple tasks, the sky had gone black with storm and the wind was whipping through the trees. As I sat in my apartment with a candle lit and flashlight next to me, I learned from local friends that this natural chaos is a “haboob” (which is not only an intense storm, but also a fun word to say!)

Yesterday’s haboob was a wall of dust, 5000 feet tall and 50 miles wide.

I love big, passionate weather. We have some intense weather here, but it happens so infrequently, we mostly forget about the storms.

In the Midwest there are storms aplenty. Tornado weather with the ominous calm-before-the-storm asparagus green skies always frightened me. I loved the fall rains and the winter ice storms that left glittering layers of ice encasing every leafless tree branch. But my favorites were the hot summer night thunder and lightning storms.

My grandparent’s house, where I grew up, had a large back porch with the roof overhanging almost the whole thing. We would sit up there in lounge chairs during thunderstorms and watch the lightning show, count the thunderclaps to figure out how far away the storm was, and listen to the rain cascade off the roof. It was wonderful sitting outside smelling the sweet summer storm, and at the same time be mostly protected from the elements.