Where were you when...
Oh, yeah, I remember that virus/bug/whatever that settled in a couple of days after I saw the Cars at the Boston Garden on Monday, December 1, 1980. Maybe I was just burning out, or burning up, in my mad rush to finish up the fall semester. By Thursday night, I felt so lightheaded that I said something stupid in my final Daily Free Press column and nobody called me on it before it was printed. By Friday afternoon when the Freepers gathered at Father's Too for happy hour, I couldn't talk at all. It hurt even to whisper. So I just stood there and sipped a screwdriver and listened to other people talk. One of my friends, Don S., was earnestly trying to tell me that when he was in high school in the Pittsburgh area, he thought he was the only teenager in the world who liked to read serious poetry and literature, and how it was a revelation to him when he went to college and found that there really were other people like himself. I wanted to say, "Yeah!! I know what you mean!!" but I couldn't; all I could do was nod.
The day after that happy hour, the T was shut down for one full Saturday, so I had an excuse for moping around the apartment way out in Brighton. By Monday I could no longer avoid going to campus, as I had promised a couple of other friends named Robin and Susan that I would go to their SPJ student chapter meeting. So I had to hike down Egremont Road around the corner and wait for the stupid bus that replaced the trolley while major track repairs were being done.
It was cold and I was coughing at the meeting. Susan said, "Why don't you get yourself some Robitussin? My mother always gives me Robitussin when I'm sick."
I vaguely remember my mother saying once when I was a little girl that she wasn't going to give me Robitussin anymore, but I couldn't remember exactly why she had said that. So I bought myself a bottle, went home and dosed myself.
Well, I coughed, And coughed. And coughed. And coughed practically nonstop. I could hardly breathe between coughs. I flopped on the big round black swivel chair in the living room and wheezed and gasped and coughed some more. The room was spinning around me. Finally I fell into a fitful doze that ended with the jazzy "Ta da-da dum, dum" of the opening to "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." Somebody in the living room had put on the old B&W console TV (yes, folks, this was a student apartment furnished largely with castoffs). I slouched in the chair in a fog and I wasn't paying attention to the monologue and chatter.
Then I heard an "NBC News Special Report!" and an announcer said something about John Lennon being attacked on the street in New York City. I sat up in the chair, the blood rushed from my brain, and I started to prattle, something like, "Now how about THAT? A Beatle can get mugged on the streets of New York just like everybody else!" And Deb said "Shut up!" and turned on the TV. I totally did not realize that a gun had been involved. And then there was another "NBC News Special Report!" a few minutes later that said that John Lennon was dead.
That just didn't make any sense, and not because I was sick. Deb started crying and calling her friends on the phone. I couldn't register it in my brain at first.
For the next six days, then-cutting-edge rock station WBCN (don't laugh, folks, it *used* to be good) played nothing but Beatles and John Lennon, 24 hours a day. Including the unbleeped, uncensored "Working Class Hero":
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
Five days after that Monday, a group of skinny foreign teenagers played their first Boston gig as a warmup band at the Paradise Theater, right near West Campus and the football field. The Paradise was a small but reasonably prestigious place to perform, as the band's subsequent career attests.
The following Monday, a week after John Lennon's death, I was still pretty exhausted, but I managed to get up enough adrenaline to sit in the very back row of the topmost balcony of the Boston Garden and hear Springsteen for the first time. The next day, I had the last two final exams of my Boston University career (I was graduating in January).
To this day, one carol has the unique power to snap me back to that time and its sadness and regret and introspection....
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Of course I have had many more Christmases filled with loss since then. I didn't know at Christmas 1981 that it would be my Dad's last Christmas.
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
I remember how my Uncle Rene died shortly before Christmas in 1996, and how as I sat around my mother's house on Christmas Eve afternoon, I had some really bad feelings and started crying. Two weeks later, she was in the hospital for the last time, too.
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...
The day after that happy hour, the T was shut down for one full Saturday, so I had an excuse for moping around the apartment way out in Brighton. By Monday I could no longer avoid going to campus, as I had promised a couple of other friends named Robin and Susan that I would go to their SPJ student chapter meeting. So I had to hike down Egremont Road around the corner and wait for the stupid bus that replaced the trolley while major track repairs were being done.
It was cold and I was coughing at the meeting. Susan said, "Why don't you get yourself some Robitussin? My mother always gives me Robitussin when I'm sick."
I vaguely remember my mother saying once when I was a little girl that she wasn't going to give me Robitussin anymore, but I couldn't remember exactly why she had said that. So I bought myself a bottle, went home and dosed myself.
Well, I coughed, And coughed. And coughed. And coughed practically nonstop. I could hardly breathe between coughs. I flopped on the big round black swivel chair in the living room and wheezed and gasped and coughed some more. The room was spinning around me. Finally I fell into a fitful doze that ended with the jazzy "Ta da-da dum, dum" of the opening to "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." Somebody in the living room had put on the old B&W console TV (yes, folks, this was a student apartment furnished largely with castoffs). I slouched in the chair in a fog and I wasn't paying attention to the monologue and chatter.
Then I heard an "NBC News Special Report!" and an announcer said something about John Lennon being attacked on the street in New York City. I sat up in the chair, the blood rushed from my brain, and I started to prattle, something like, "Now how about THAT? A Beatle can get mugged on the streets of New York just like everybody else!" And Deb said "Shut up!" and turned on the TV. I totally did not realize that a gun had been involved. And then there was another "NBC News Special Report!" a few minutes later that said that John Lennon was dead.
That just didn't make any sense, and not because I was sick. Deb started crying and calling her friends on the phone. I couldn't register it in my brain at first.
For the next six days, then-cutting-edge rock station WBCN (don't laugh, folks, it *used* to be good) played nothing but Beatles and John Lennon, 24 hours a day. Including the unbleeped, uncensored "Working Class Hero":
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
Five days after that Monday, a group of skinny foreign teenagers played their first Boston gig as a warmup band at the Paradise Theater, right near West Campus and the football field. The Paradise was a small but reasonably prestigious place to perform, as the band's subsequent career attests.
The following Monday, a week after John Lennon's death, I was still pretty exhausted, but I managed to get up enough adrenaline to sit in the very back row of the topmost balcony of the Boston Garden and hear Springsteen for the first time. The next day, I had the last two final exams of my Boston University career (I was graduating in January).
To this day, one carol has the unique power to snap me back to that time and its sadness and regret and introspection....
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Of course I have had many more Christmases filled with loss since then. I didn't know at Christmas 1981 that it would be my Dad's last Christmas.
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
I remember how my Uncle Rene died shortly before Christmas in 1996, and how as I sat around my mother's house on Christmas Eve afternoon, I had some really bad feelings and started crying. Two weeks later, she was in the hospital for the last time, too.
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...