And In The Background "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" Was Playing

Much of our lives these days is spent in a car traveling to and from various places. Sometimes it is the three of us but most often it is me and Hannah.

I kind of like my way of traveling. I have it down to a science, perhaps imperfect but one that fits my needs. Sunglasses, check. Seat just so, check. Steering wheel, check. In the summer, air conditioner blasting, check. In the winter, the heat barely on but blowing on my feet, check. Music turned to just the hearing level that it crowds out my ability to realize I may be talking to myself, check.

With Hannah, some of my travel routine has changed. Sometimes, the air conditioner doesn’t blow as cool or as fast as I would prefer. Sometimes, the heat makes the car resemble a moving desert. And the music, yes, the music, well, there is that. Should you get in my car we may be listening to a local radio station. I tend to listen to them in spite of the often inane announcing for the traffic reports, and, of course, for just the right tune. With Hannah aboard though the music from the radio is sometimes replaced by a CD of some of her favorite music. It would not be uncommon to get in my car in the middle of July and the song that would fill the interior of the automobile would be “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. As she has grown older though, any music filters to the background so we can talk, or more directly, so she can talk.

One recent evening, Hannah and I were on our way home. As the daylight dwindled, I put my sunglasses aside for the ride, positioned myself just so in the driver’s seat, grasped the steering wheel with both hands, kicked on the A/C and left the radio playing quietly in the background. This trip would take about twenty minutes from one location to our house. True to form, Hannah talked most of the way.

As we neared our house though she grew quiet for a moment. It was quiet enough that I recognized the song playing on the radio as Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 hit “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”. Suddenly from the back seat, Hannah blurted out that she knew this song. I turned the music up a bit so we could hear it better.

Hannah then began explaining how we heard this song about a month earlier when we visited a local amusement park. I then remembered hearing the song that day through the heat and humidity while we were there as the loudspeaker system there blasted hit after hit from the 1980s.

Hannah brought to light more details about that song and that day to my attention. She remembered hearing the song as she and I were riding the park’s log flume, the ride that slowly pulls you up an incline until the top is reached and then releases you down a hill into a pool of water. The ride can be exhilarating, and, on a really hot day, refreshing, as each rider stands a pretty good chance of getting soaked.

I recalled that ride that day. Hannah had expressed interest in that specific ride but other rides seemed more interesting to her. Late in the day though, Hannah wanted to try the log flume. Jennifer declined to ride this one ride. I can’t blame her since no one really knows what lives in that water. To her credit, she does ride many of the rides with Hannah that toss and turn a body around. I knew this one ride was one I would enjoy although as we started the ride I began to have my doubts.

Darkness was gathering by the time we got on this ride. As it started, we were funneled into a tunnel that turned everything pitch black. When this happened, Hannah began to panic. She grew afraid of being in the dark. I held her hand. I tried to allay her fears. I told her the darkness was only temporary. The weird creaking noises she somehow heard above the loudspeaker would be gone soon. We kept moving although the pace at which we proceeded seemed to be an eternity. Frankly, I felt a bit closed in myself as I inhaled and exhaled the

stale summer air. Then, just ahead of us, we saw light. We emerged from the tunnel into the outside starting our real ascent up the hill. As we reached the very top we could see Jennifer waiting for us up ahead to our left. We could only look for a split second though as once we topped the peak we dropped down the hill into the water as the two of us let out screams of excitement mixed with a giant splash of water into our faces.

Later, I reflected on our conversation and her memory of that day at the amusement park. It’s easy to see how the parent-child relationship is a reflection of that log flume ride. A child wants to be adventurous. Parents want to foster curiosity. A child can grow scared. Parents provide encouragement. Then, it happens, and ready or not the parents and the child find themselves being pulled up the hill, then topping the hill, then dropping off that hill, screaming and landing and getting immersed in what it all brings together.

And, now, I know during that log flume ride, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was the soundtrack. Somehow, as the dad of a little girl I think that may become the soundtrack to the rest of my life. 

Oh, daddy, dear.

Cyndi Lauper: Girls Just Want To Have Fun

30513 Memories: Friday Nights

The distance from end to end hasn’t changed. It's still about a mile and a half from one to the other. Someone or some official governmental body from the city, county or state put up red lights now that slow things some. Businesses have come and gone over time with maybe a few remaining to this day. Despite any changes, that short stretch of road has seen a lot of traffic over time and back in my day was the place to be on a Friday night.

We always called the southern end the Plaza because that was the name of the shopping center there, anchored then by Johnny’s Food City. Across the street was The Trailer, a pretty good place to eat a chicken basket. It sat beside Wilson's Used Cars and the Plaza Barber Shop where fish and deer hung on the wall and hunting and fishing magazines were your reading option while you waited your turn between the tall tales exchanged between scissor snips. You could hop on the street then drive northeast passing by a residential area and the old city hall and the telephone company and then further down past Sue's Burgers, best in town always, eventually ending at Sky City, the closest thing we had to Wal-Mart in those parts in those days.

Driving that endless loop, largely one long straightaway, was what we did when the school week ended kicking off each weekend. We drove from one end of town to the other on the road the state called Highway 76. I guess officially at some point it is known as 1st Street. Some of us called it Top Street since it sat at the top of the hill where the older main part of town rested below. Others called that certain strip of asphalt the Main Drag. When we got to the other end, then we drove back. We might stop to talk with other friends we saw out that night. We might even stop to talk to a carload of girls we knew. Sometimes a car full of folks from Gilmer County or Union County had wandered into our county no doubt we felt from hearing about the crazy Friday night cruise scene but more than likely trying to spy out a potential love interest or maybe just to stir up trouble with someone.

We might stop in at the Get n Go to pick up a Coke then play a video game or to add two dollars of gas to the car. Some went to the Swan Drive-In where the movie started at dark. Others found the bowling alley their speed. The fall of the year saw the high school football team playing under the lights down the hill from the Plaza and then to the left down the street near the Levi's plant and the offices of the Georgia State Patrol in a valley just down the hill on the south side from the buildings that made up the high school many of us attended.

Admittedly, looking back, there wasn’t that much to it all. You hoped you had a full tank of gas at the start of the evening, and depending on when you had to be back home and how many stops you made in the evening, you hoped you had enough to make it back home and then through the rest of the weekend when it was all over. The mountain towns where we grew up offered little but empty streets when darkness gathered on Friday nights especially if you had some wheels and time on your hands so this ritual became part of our generation.

When you’re in those later teen years, those few hours of freedom with the friends you just know will be around forever, are plenty enough to make memories that last a lifetime. There was nothing to compare with driving into town with your car or truck, still wet from a quick rinse with the water hose from your backyard topped off with a 96Rock tag on the front of your vehicle and wheels slicked shiny with Armor-All. A slow drive from one end of town to the other with an eight track of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band or Lynyrd Skynyrd blasting out the rolled-down windows just waiting to see what the night would bring was the ideal way to end a week and start the weekend. If the tunes weren't available then a lot of vehicles probably had glass-pack mufflers so everyone else in town would know someone wanted to be noticed this particular evening.

Depending on how slowly you drove the ride would only take five or so minutes. If you ended up at the Sky City end, you could decide to travel in between the parking rows which could take longer than the drive back to the plaza as the vehicles congregated making the traffic there almost always bumper-to-bumper. For some the parking lot here, in the shadow of Pizza Hut, was the place to hang out making it the pinnacle of teenage Southern Friday night freedom, at least until everybody had to go home.

If you felt adventurous, driving out Aska Road to hang out with friends whose parents were out for the night might be in store every once in awhile. Maybe a short drive to the dock down at the lake's edge or across the lake to Morganton Point could be in the plans.

Those were the days.

I could lament how kids these days don’t do this anymore. I won’t. That they don't do what we did might not be such a bad thing in this regard. There were a few things that went on that folks our age probably shouldn’t have done even after being warned by our parents or wiser friends to not do. Still, today, the world is a bit more off it’s rocker than back then, less understanding, less forgiving, less tolerant and more judgemental than it thinks it is. You could get away with more back then but you were also more likely to be called on and held responsible for your own actions, stupid or otherwise, than you would be now. Maybe it all trades off one for the other in some weird way that I am not sure I can grasp. It's not going to happen these days anyway since so many kids don’t seem to want to drive now until they are old enough to vote. Back then, we not only couldn’t wait to drive, some of us had been driving before we ever became licensed by the state to do so.

Still, each generation creates it’s own traditions and memories. Some of these shared here are mine. I know it was a tradition my brother to some extent also experienced. I know family members and friends younger than me experienced the same type Friday nights that I did.

Would I do it again? With my friends from then and knowing what we knew then and in that certain time and place, yeah, I probably would, at least one last time. It was a time and a circumstance, unique to a random few in the grand scale of life, where it was just what we all did, a part of who we were then individually and collectively and a part of our past we recall more with a grin because we experienced it than with a twinge of sadness because it's gone never to come back. Some then called it all a waste of time. Maybe it was. Some now can come to the same conclusion, all the while clutching their phone while playing Candy Crush or changing the world through a tweet and a hashtag. I just know when I look back now to remember those good times they hardly seem like a waste of time at all.

Nice and Full

Some time back I relayed the story how my Dad built a birdhouse for Hannah. Hannah then painted it. At her direction, I then placed it in our yard where no birds moved in. Later, I moved the birdhouse to a different location and we waited. If you wish, you can read the details of that story here.

I spent much of this past spring and into the summer concerned that the location we moved the birdhouse to was not the most ideal place. It was in our front yard placed between two tall oak trees that stand beside each other separated by about four feet. Hannah liked the idea of the birdhouse standing between the two trees so I planted the house there even though I was a bit wary of the constant squirrel traffic and the close proximity of our house and the street. Once the house was settled, we would check it every few days. We would unhook the lock then open the lid so we could peer down into an empty home. The only thing the house seemed to attract was a place where wasps wanted to live as I swatted away at least three separate small nests from the inside of the lid.

One day I had worked in the yard. By this time, it was summer so the heat had drained me on this day. I rested on our porch cooling off before going inside our house. I watched a few cars drive up and down our street. I soaked in a breeze or two that drifted by through the muggy air. Mostly, I studied that birdhouse. I was fairly confident that the time for any bird to make the birdhouse it’s own for the season had passed. I told myself I should move it to a location less busy. For some reason though I did not follow through that day or in the days that followed.

A couple of days later though I looked into the yard thinking I had seen an optical illusion. It appeared to me that a bird had stuck it’s head out from the hole in the house. I watched for a short time before noticing a blue bird darting around the front yard trees. I made my way outside where I cautiously approached the birdhouse to peek inside. There, I found a small empty nest.

I rushed into the house to find Hannah then I brought her outside. I held her so she could peer inside as she was amazed and excited at the new find. Jennifer joined us as well. A new excitement surrounded the three of us as we had new feathered neighbors.

Hannah wanted to look into the birdhouse often. I told her though that we needed to not check every day. We didn’t want to be those neighbors who were always in somebody’s business. She accepted this although we would sneak a peek more often than we should have.

One day I realized I hadn’t checked the birdhouse in a few days. I made my way to the house and opened the lid. When I looked inside I discovered five small blue eggs. I closed and latched the lid then went to locate Hannah.

We approached the birdhouse. I told her I wanted her to see something but I did not give her any further details. I unlatched the lid, lifted her high and tried to watch her face as she discovered the eggs inside. She counted them and commented on their color. She then ran to tell her mom. A few days later, we visited her grandparents where she was able to tell the grandfather who built her birdhouse about the nest now built there in our yard. He tipped off Hannah that his birdhouse, sitting on a small rise where a walnut tree once stood, had eggs in it at that moment, so we took a gander at that as well.

Back home, Hannah wanted to look at the nest every day. I told her we should probably not check it every day. I reasoned that the mother bird needed time to hatch the eggs without interference from us. Still, we looked in on them from time to time just to check their progress. In some way, it made me recall my favorite episode of The Andy Griffith Show ever. It’s called “Opie the Birdman”. In the episode, Opie kills a mother bird with his slingshot leaving baby birds without their mother. When Andy discovers what Opie has done he makes him take care of the baby birds which Opie does capably. Later, Andy leads Opie to consider what should happen with the baby birds helping Opie to think about what the mother bird would do as the baby birds grew. Opie realizes the mother would want the baby birds to fly free, so he takes each bird from the cage where he cared for them, holds open his hand allowing each bird to fly away. Opie comes to understand those moments with those baby birds were over because once they knew they could fly they would not return to a cage. So, while I enjoyed the excitement Hannah felt from this new experience I also realized another day would come soon where those eggs would hatch and eventually baby birds would grow and fly away.

We watched the birdhouse every other day or so. One day I looked inside. I immediately left looking for Hannah. Without telling her anything, I held her up where she looked inside. Her eyes saw what my eyes had seen earlier, three baby birds with their mouths wide open. We would peer inside from time to time watching the baby birds grow. I watched the yard a bit more intently to make sure neighborhood cats and those pesky squirrels weren’t sniffing around the yard too much. Once I watched the mother bird dive bomb a squirrel as it tried to climb up one of the oak trees near the birdhouse. I knew then the baby birds, and their mother, would be okay.

Life gets busy and time moves on quicker than we often recognize. One evening, I realized I hadn’t checked on the birdhouse in a few days. I walked to the spot between the two oaks where it rests. I unlatched the hook, opened the lid and looked inside. The baby birds were gone.

On The Andy Griffith Show when Opie releases the birds, they fly into the trees. Opie looks at the cage then mentions how empty it looks. Andy, who has watched his son release each bird, agrees with Opie then as he looks up at a nearby tree comments how nice and full the trees seem as the birds sing. Yes, this scene ran through my head as I made my way to locate Hannah after my discovery. Real life though is seldom scripted like a TV show, no matter how hard TV producers and executives try.

Again, without telling her anything, Hannah and I made our way to the birdhouse. I unlatched the lock then held her up to look inside. She was silent for a few seconds before she said, “They’re gone.”

“Yes, they’ve grown up and flown away.”

I sat Hannah down on her feet then latched the house lock. We started to walk away. For some reason, Hannah took my hand, not unusual but something I was not expecting, she then said, “I wasn’t ready for them to go.”

Even though we kept walking I knew deep, deep inside I had been knocked for a loop by her admission. I did not anticipate her response which by this time included a few tears.

Struggling for what to say I asked Hannah to consider how crowded that birdhouse would become as the birds grew bigger and how they would look silly sitting on top of each other. She faintly laughed at my feeble answer leaving room for more questions.

“Why did they leave? Will they be okay? Can they fly?”

“They grew up. When they get big enough they fly away and go out on their own. You know, one day you’ll grow up and you’ll leave me and Mom here.”

This wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. “I don’t want to leave you and Mommie,” she said between sobs.

“Baby, that’s a long, long time from now. Don’t worry about that, ok? Just always know Mom and I love you.”

She and I sat on our front steps in the approaching dusk of a July evening. My little girl, six summers old at that moment, tanned by the sun with a heart tendered by God, sat in my lap. I brushed her blonde hair back from her face, wondering how she would digest learning about this part of the cycle of life. What would she take from these moments? I held her close, disappointed that I fumbled through finding the just-right answer to soothe her concerns yet knowing one day it will be me saying to her, “I’m not ready for you to go.” We sat in the silence a little longer. I considered how life with the ones you love is often messy, uneven, and, sometimes, difficult, but how even those times are still special in their own way.

Eventually, we would go back into the house so we could tell Mom how the baby birds had left the birdhouse. Until then, we sat on the steps in the quiet. Finally, that silence lifted when I heard baby blue birds, new to flight, fluttering their wings around the trees making me consider how life, this life, sure is nice and full.