Completely in the Dark

Someone slammed the back door shut—HARD.

Kind of like a 17-year-old boy would do when he’s told he can’t drive the family car to school after missing the bus.

At least that’s what this teenager did the morning of May 12, 1977.

Dad bitched at me for oversleeping, I snapped back at him, then left in a huff, walking the entire 3 ½ – 4 miles from Navarre to Mound, then north out to the high school just off County Road 110. I remember that walk now.

While I started out angry, I didn’t hurry. After a while it felt … cleansing. Got to school “just in time for Geometry.”

A lot of kids—certainly seniors, but also many juniors—had their own cars and drove them to school. So, I’m reminded of a long-forgotten shame: Only dweebs rode the bus.

I rode the bus.

If you had your own car, you were a High School God. I knew a few of those rarified individuals, but not many that junior year. Chad Moore often stopped over in his new Triumph TR6 (photo above, right). But in my caste, we had to beg our parents just to borrow a car. Skeeze finagled the family Caddy. Dan Rogers drove his dad’s station wagon everywhere. Steve even landed a gig to pick up his neighbor’s son John at Minnetonka Junior High School in the neighbor’s sporty Jeep. I rode along so we could check out the girls while waiting for John. And since Dad wouldn’t let me touch his newly purchased yellow International Scout, I was stuck with Mom’s Dodge Dart—the car my friends gleefully dubbed “The Dartillac.”

So that day, May 12, was girlfriend Kim’s red-letter day: she finally got her driver’s license permit and made the following year’s drill team.

For me, it was the same old stuff: Mr. King for Far East, German lessons, Creative Bullshitting, Art (dabbling away at a watercolor project), Chemistry confusion, and a final video project in Speech—a production of our own making. Had no idea where to go with that.

But the big ritual was “the Caddy tour” with Skeeze. He’d get it in his head to go for a cruise and pick me up on Casco Point. First stop: the Spring Park 7-Eleven for bottles of Coke and peanut M&Ms. Then usually we drove east, hitting the Hopkins main street, cruising “American Graffiti” style.

On Friday, April 8, I wrote in the diary that we went to the Soda Fountain and then “all around town (well, honestly, we got lost in Edina after he drove too far out of Hopkins).”

However, the big event was about a week before, on Friday, May 6, 1977.

I’d intended to take Mary Jassim to the Ted Nugent concert in mid-May. While it’s cheering to read in the diary that I boldly asked her out, I’m confused that it somehow fell through. And the diary doesn’t give a lot of details.

I have a theory.

After Kristi, Lisa, and now Mary, I was still conflicted over Kim. Everyone smelled that, especially Mary. And who wants to be somebody’s second choice?

While I prevaricated, all the other guys saw an opportunity and pounced on it. Everyone was going to the big Rush concert that Friday, a week before the Nugent show. Even Mary was going.

A flotilla of cars full of high-school kids headed east to the St. Paul Civic Center in four vehicles: Skeeze at the wheel of the Cadillac with me, a tall, blonde fellow junior Tasha Maertz, and the guy who sold me his other ticket at the last minute, a transplanted Texan kid named Vince Marshall. In Steve’s car was Mary Jassim and Linda Maxwell with Mike Fadell and Brian Sipprell; in a van driven by Pete Andreasen, Loren and Sara Berquist rode along; and Lynn Finifrock drove Jeff Taylor, Greg Eidem, John McDaniel and a friend of his to the concert.

It was a party on wheels, literally.

The diary details the whole night. I was concerned about Mary, but she was ostensibly with Mike F. that night. I rushed the stage with Greg, where we both marveled at Neil Peart’s drum solos. At one point I sat on the sidelines with Skeeze, Tasha, Lynn, and Pete.

After midnight, everyone (says the diary: “and I mean everyone”) met up at the 7-Eleven in Spring Park. I joined Steve, Lynn and Mary over at Tasha’s folks’ apartment, but it was Lynn who gave me a ride home after 1 a.m.

Later I learned Lynn had a crush on a certain someone.

Oh boy, here we go again.

~ by completelyinthedark on March 3, 2012.

Posted in 1977, Casco Point, High School, Minnesota
Tags: 1977, American Graffiti, Cadillac, cars, Hopkins, junior year, Nugent, Rush, teenagers