It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”

The opening sentence from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities described my life in 1973…the best of times…the worst of times…the season of Light…the season of Darkness.

I was again reminded of this painfully glorious time recently when I bought a 4-LP boxed set on Ebay. For many years, the thought of the record set weaved its way in, out and through my mind like Hercules aimlessly wandering through the Maze of the Minotaur. I could only recall one song from the whole thing, Arlo Guthrie’s City of New Orleans.

The colors of the box had anchored themselves in my mind’s eye vividly; a burst of orange in the middle with the colors of the rainbow fanning outward. I don’t suppose I’d seen the boxed set in over three decades.

I remember buying the set of LPs just after I had gotten my first job at 16 years old. I was working at Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips in Lima, Ohio. I started my job in March of 1973 just after I’d turned 16; up to that point in my life my income stream had been limited to mowing a few lawns and working a Snow Cone booth at the Allen County Fair at 14.

Thanks to Arthur Treacher’s I was cashing a bi-weekly check of about $70, all derived from making an astounding $1.25 an hour as a cook. For the first time in my brief life I was able to buy pretty much anything I wanted, and it wasn’t too long before I picked up a fairly inexpensive stereo. I can’t remember where I bought it but it could have been at Rink’s Department Store on Elida Road or Grants 5 & 10 at Northland Plaza shopping center.

Within a few weeks I had gotten to a point where I couldn’t stomach eating fish; not only that but all my clothes smelled like stale cooking oil and fish; I once thought I saw a train of cats following me home from work around midnight on a Friday night.

I’d begun my illustrious career with Arthur Treacher’s at the Elida Road store across from The Lima Mall, but by the summer of 1973 I’d been transferred to the Bellefontaine Avenue store across from Robert Hall clothing store where I would buy some of my own clothes for the first time. I’ve recently come across this commercial for Robert Hall. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bOwuhAGpU Not only that, I came across this commercial for Arthur Treacher’s, both on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZJGoYT7FA

All of this was a part of that “best of times.” Unfortunately, I lacked real motivation in my life and kind of took life as it came to me. I was 16 but hadn’t gotten my driver’s license; as such I was hoofing it everywhere I went, including to work.

Most days that summer I trekked through downtown Lima; I would sometimes stop at Arch of Sweets to grab a ham salad sandwich and Coke, or I might check out the record department at Kresge’s Department Store at the corner of High and Main streets. The record department sat against the north wall and that’s where I discovered the 4-LP set. I couldn’t remember the name of the set until I discovered it on an internet search…Superstars of the 70’s put out by Warner Brothers Records.

I was in a whole different world; I had money to spend, had my own stereo, could buy records, dine out and almost no other responsibilities. During the afternoons I would go swimming with my friends at Schoonover Pool. That summer I learned to launch myself off the high dive like a Briton peasant being flung through the air by a Roman Trebuchet. I had no sense of knowing that I could spring so far off the board that I could splash down within three feet of the island in the center of the deep end of the pool.

By late afternoon I’d begin my walk to work sipping a can of Nestea Ice Tea along the way. On those hot summer afternoons I began to notice an ancient looking man with white hair standing near High and Main Streets along the southeast quadrant of the Square; he was passing out pieces of paper to people as they’d walk by. My curiosity got the best of me one day and I intentionally walked past him to see what he was giving away. I discovered he was handing out Christian literature. My curiosity was satisfied after one visit with the man.

Looking back on that Superstars of the 70’s LP I’m amazed at the diversity of songs and artists that were on it: Alice Cooper, The Grateful Dead, Yes, The Kinks, Deep Purple, The Guess Who, Black Sabbath, Roberta Flack, America, Otis Redding, The Bee Gee’s, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Doors, James Taylor, The Beach Boys, and of course, Arlo Guthrie.

I must’ve nearly wore out songs like School’s Out, Truckin, Marrakesh Express, Ventura Highway, Hush, Take It Easy, Big Yellow Taxi, Domino, Doctor My Eyes and of course City of New Orleans. It was “the best of times.”

An additional unfortunate circumstance happened just after school let out for the summer, and it would be my strongest argument for this also being “the worst of times.” A year or two earlier my dad had purchased several vacant lots that sat in an area of Bath Township known as Ridgewood; the place had been a dumping ground for the neighborhood for many years, it was also a place where a 16-year-old’s dreams go to die.

My dad had a crazy idea about building a new house on the lots. Unfortunately for me it happened this summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. It was “the worst of times.” We moved into our new house and all I remember seeing were rednecks and clodhoppers. My dad was born and raised in the hills of Kentucky in a small town called Middlesboro which sits in the middle of the state near the Tennessee border. He was one of those rednecks—I’d recognize them anywhere.

I’d watch a carload of my peers troll the neighborhood on a Saturday night, smoking dope and dodging Sheriff’s cars. They’d stop at the intersection where our house was and put on a great display of their manhood by burning rubber; smoked rolled from the tires as well as from the windows that had been cracked enough to give them a bit of ventilation and allow the billowing smoke from the weed to escape in order to not completely obscure their view and ability to drive.

I met one of my soon-to-be classmates working at Arthur Treacher’s, her name was Cheryl. She was a plain looking girl about my height, sandy brown hair that was often caked with the same cooking oil that caked my clothes and hair. Cheryl had glasses, was a goody-two-shoes, went to church and studied hard in school. She was the anti-me. We did have one thing in common—we both loved to listen to the radio at work.

I recall those sultry Saturday nights when the air was so still a dandelion skeleton wouldn’t dance even if a lightning bug landed on it. We had the radio at work tuned in to one of three stations; WCIT in Lima, CKLW in Detroit or a FM album rock station out of Findlay that had a deejay by the name of Red Beard.

Many of those same songs on the Superstars of the 70’s LP would be played on the radio stations we listened to. “It was the best of times.” Seals & Croft, Jimi Hendrix, Carly Simon, Led Zepplin, The Doobie Brothers, The Allman Brothers Band and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. We had a ton of fun working those late nights and having the place to ourselves. Cheryl and I had conversations about God and Jesus; too many times I ridiculed her, and even once I blew the smoke from a joint I’d been smoking into her face to make fun of her. “It was the worst of times.”

I regularly made my way to The Lima Mall and Camelot Music to buy 45s of songs I’d heard on the radio. I was also buying clothes from Chess King, shoes from Thom Mcan—I’d discovered that I liked clothes as well as music. I think it was about this time my hormones kicked in and I became acutely interested in the opposite sex.

I was going to dances with my friends at St. Gerard School and one of the best bands played a bunch of Deep Purple songs; Woman from Tokyo, Smoke on the Water and Space Truckin.

For some reason I gravitated toward heavy metal that year; I loved Deep Purple’s song Hush, but when I first heard Smoke On The Water it took me into a new music dimension. I remember playing Black Sabbath’s song Paranoid on the nickel table top jukebox at Spyker’s Drive-in while eating there with some of my buddies. Then, one day I heard Pink Floyd’s song Money; I loved it instantly.

My first three albums ever purchased were Superstars of the 70’s, Deep Purple’s Machine Head and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. My friend, Frank and I used to sit in one of the recording studios of The Drum Pad on West Wayne Street and listen to Dark Side of the Moon as loud as we could possibly stand it. Our ears didn’t bleed, but I’m sure the blood pooled somewhere in our brain just the other side of our ears. “It was the best of times.”

Since I didn’t have a driver’s license yet I had to find some creative ways to walk home late at night from Arthur Treacher’s Bellefontaine Avenue store. The near east side of Lima wasn’t a place for a 95 pound white boy to be walking at midnight on Friday or Saturday. Sometimes I’d go a mile or two out of my way just to make it home safely. Some nights the cashier, Cheryl would give me a ride home.

Sometime in early August Cheryl and her family went on vacation; I was left to work with my boss, which wasn’t so much fun and practically always serious business.

By August I had begun to lose touch with friends I’d grown up with all my life; Frank, Jeff, Marty, Morris, Noble, Mike the Hilgert brothers and everybody who’d lived within a few blocks of our house on Washington Street. “It was the worst of times.” Our house sat a few dozen feet away from the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks; if a train would have derailed we wouldn’t have had a prayer. Washington Street was all the home I’d ever known. Lima public schools were all I’d ever known too; Franklin Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary, Faurot Elementary, Central Junior High, North Junior High and Lima Senior.

I was now living in hillbilly heaven. I’m sure Ridgewood made my dad feel right at home. I was sick though. I was dreading the start of a new school year in a school where I didn’t know anybody other than my co-worker, Cheryl. I don’t think “hate” is too strong of a word to describe how I felt about living in Ridgewood.

So, all these years later I’m sitting here thinking about this 4-LP set called Superstars of the 70’s; I can’t wait to play it again sometime soon. I discovered it during what was “the season of Light” and “the season of Darkness” in my life. It was Light because some light was being shown into my life. It was Darkness because much of what I did and experienced was a reflection of Darkness.

Later that summer after my co-worker, Cheryl came back from vacation I discovered that she looked much different; her hair had been lightened, the glasses were gone and she had contacts. I suddenly had an attraction to her—this Jesus preaching 16-year-old.

We dated the rest of 1973 and into the spring of 1974. I became a Christian in January of 1974—the season of Light had dawned to push back the season of Darkness.