Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Feb. 7, 2011

Those were the days ... weren't they?

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I recently contacted an old college chum. I’ll call him Hal, because that is his name. Of course just knowing his first name will do you no good, since there are millions of Hals out there, and it would be impossible for anyone to track him down without more information. Besides which, I believe the statute of limitations has run out on most of the harmless minor infractions we committed back then. When I say “back then” I mean the mid-1960s, just a few short years after those large sheets of glacial ice from the last great global warming period known as the Eisenhower Era had receded, leaving herds of scruffy-haired youngsters foraging for beer and something to smoke on college campuses across the Midwestern plains. Hal and I have exchanged a couple of emails, and it is interesting just how unreliable our memories seem to be.

I reminded Hal of a night in 1966 when he and I and two other serious scholars (I think it was two) took a trip across Michigan to another university campus which will remain nameless, but which for various reasons had incurred our ire. Hal’s reason involved a girl he’d once dated who attended that university, and mine had something to do with a former hometown girlfriend whose new boyfriend attended the same institution. Our companions were in full support of our crusade, although I’m sure that given the amount of Budweiser we’d consumed that night, they’d have supported parachuting naked off the Mackinac Bridge.

I don’t think that we had much of a plan when we left our campus, but after midnight when we arrived at our destination, it seemed that the mature, adult way of redressing our grievances would be to take an axe which somebody had accidentally left in the trunk and chop down all or at least part of a large, hard plastic sign in front of a nameless residence hall on that nameless campus. Regardless of who did or didn’t reside there, it would make an important metaphorical statement.

So we made our metaphorical statement, and then made our escape. We admired those pieces of the Nameless Hall sign and celebrated our moral victory all the way back to our own dormitory on the other side of the state. That would show those cretins that we were not the kind of guys to be trifled with.

When Hal emailed me back and asked if I remembered who was with us on our noble crusade, I told him that I was absolutely sure that our friends Ron and Larry accompanied us. In fact, it was Larry’s old Plymouth Valiant that got us across the state and back. I was certain of that. Hal replied that no, it wasn’t Larry’s Valiant, but an entirely different vehicle driven by an entirely different person named Bob. Or he may have meant that the Valiant belonged to Bob, I’m not sure. Either way, when he told me Bob’s last name I couldn’t for the life of me remember Bob at all. Hal said he’d kept in touch with Larry over the years, and when he’d talked to Larry about that night, Larry’s memory was “fuzzy.” I guess mine was, too. I wondered if maybe the vehicle had been a Rambler station wagon rather than a Plymouth Valiant, and if perhaps our weapon of choice had been a claw hammer, not an axe at all. For that matter, we may have been four other guys altogether.

Hal joined the Army in 1967. I married that same year, and one of the major differences between Hal and me is that I still have the very same commanding officer. Her name is Marilyn. Hal commented on how memories fade over the years, and I certainly agree.

I can remember distinctly, for example, how I met Marilyn in June of 1967. I was working at a seat belt company for the summer, and as I walked into the shop one evening I noticed that three or four of the guys I worked with were staring at a new girl–an extremely attractive one–a few yards away. I rode a motorcycle back then, so I tucked my helmet under my arm, strolled over to her and intoned:

“I’m a rebel.”

“What are you rebelling against?” she asked.

“What’ya got?” I replied, in my very best Marlon Brando voice.

Then–and I remember this very clearly–she put her hand to her forehead and said she had to sit down for a moment. The excitement had gotten to her. She was putty in my hands. After she composed herself, she asked if I’d like to take her on a date, and I agreed.

At least that was my recollection. Marilyn claims that when I first noticed her I became distracted and walked into a vending machine, dropping my helmet. She said that when I reached down to pick it up my glasses fell off and my pen and note pad fell out of my shirt pocket. She agreed to go out with me because I had a bad case of helmet head and looked pitiful. She said she felt sorry for me.

She points out that my bike wasn’t a Brando-type Triumph, after all, but only a Japanese two-stroke model that emitted huge clouds of gray smoke. What she will neglect to tell you, though, is that it was a very cool-looking 250cc Kawasaki Samurai, and that it had a state-of-the-art oil injection system and would do an honest 90 mph.

And when it comes to that first date, I remember an invigorating 20-mile motorcycle ride across the Michigan countryside, with a stop at a scenic cider mill for a snack. I remember very clearly that we got that little bike up to 75 mph with two aboard and no tailwind.

Marilyn has no recollection of that. She will never forget, however, that when we sat at that picnic table drinking our cider, a robin on an oak limb above the table pooped on my arm. And while that may well be true, I distinctly remember that I remained calm, quietly took a napkin, cleaned myself off, and did NOT jump around and curse and shake my fist at the bird.

No matter what she says.