Cain Park, the 60’s. It meant Tony Dow in “Bye Bye Birdie” or perhaps Bobby Vinton in “Music Man”. “Wholesome” (as they say), entertainment. Rock concerts, for me at least, were also tame. There was John Davidson at Vets Memorial, Columbus with Vicki, and even earlier, (TYMPANY), in one banner afternoon, Hal and I caught Tommy James and the Shondells, Keith, AND Sam The Sham and the Pharoahs—all on one bill at Detroit’s Upperdeck, second floor of the legendary Roostertail.
It was a simple world. We were pre-marriage, pre-divorce, and in so many ways, pre-life. Indeed, even my idols, predictable to the times, made innocent sense. They were, indisputably: Jack Nicklaus, Jimmy Brown, and Bobby Snyder.
Fast forward the torch—forty years and more. Wednesday, in an amphitheater once charmed by Wally Cleaver, it was the same faces (somewhat older) and the same music (somehow bolder). And for three hours plus, it morphed together.
Those forty-five years.
Could I sit through the Buckinghams, the Grass Roots—and even Gary Puckett— and not run my mind? On a night of nostalgia served full course, could I hear The Monkees (minus three) and the Turtles (standing tall), and not look back?
Programmers at Mapquest would be challenged to chart my route.
The Buckinghams played “Don’t You Care?” and instantly I saw the “Summer Of Love”, my eight weeks holed up at M.S.U. A wondrous mural, that mind of mine. There in living color flashed the Greyhound ride west, the no-AC dorm in East Lansing and…yes, draped in madras: Fenton and Snyder at East Wilson Hall.
The Grass Roots took stage. Smack dab in my Buckeye years, theirs was a heyday generating hit after hit heard endlessly in the car selling Highlights. Never, Wednesday night, were there less than six degrees separating my thoughts. I listened, Carrie to my left, (flanked by H in his glory), as the sound of “Temptation Eyes” took me to a 1970 blue and white Plymouth Duster…which took me to Kenton, Ohio (The Caboose capital of the world, mind you)…which took me down the road and backward in time to Belleville, Ohio…which took me to the only afternoon I would ever spend there. Not drinking, standing in a croweded tavern, I watched horrified, as the team up north stunned Woody’s dream team.
And then Gary Puckett. The experts, (Hal, Lady Leimsieder, and friends of Char’s), railed at his voice. Me? I heard “Woman, Woman” and before he could croon “Have you got cheating on your mind?” I’d retreated. Again. ’67 —the fall. Having left MSU, selling toys at Mays-On-The-Heights, I was counting days until winter quarter. Drackett Tower, palace that it was, lay still in my future.
If there was a tear in my eye it was gone by the break. Halftime meant handshakes. Many.
There was Stuart and the Mrs. Mickey Dolenz sang “That Was Then, This Is Now” and my mind wandered. An oft-forgotten song, when first recorded by The Monkees I was trying to date Marilyn’s sister. Now (I hear), she’s pushing 61.
There stood Diane—always smiling. “Can you tell me why Alan’s first wife hated me?” I asked yet again. She responded, as she has so many times before, with silence.
It was a wondrous night populated by gray-haired faces from a High Street long ago.
“Why is it,” I asked the group, “That only ugly people stand in aisles dancing?”
I clung there, that second act…thinking. It was not so much about the past by then, but something different. ‘Though my brother’d marveled at the instrumentation of the Buckingham’s pre-intermission, it was The Grass Roots that captured me. One song…one lyric in particular.
“…When I think of all the worries people seem to find
And how they’re in a hurry to complicate their mind
By chasing after money and dreams that can’t come true
I’m glad that we are different–we’ve better things to do…”
It was hard not to think, yet again, how precious time is…how valued life is…
Panning the crowd, seeing so many warm, familiar faces, I couldn’t not think of those not there: like David and Mark, two men of Iuka.
And…
It occurred to me, marching out at 10:30 , that a crowd of cliques was, en masse, one heart—that we’d gathered that night not with the illusion it was ’69, but with a healthy reality, indeed a mandate, to enjoy today.
We did.