1995
My friend Brad works at Putt-a-Round. Now that baseball season is over, some nights I just come out here and kill time and keep him company. He lets me drink free pop and eat free popcorn and we sit around and bullshit. Brad is a preacher's kid and he fits the stereotype. He smokes and drinks and swears and womanizes and he's pretty good at it, better at it than I am, which is part of the reason I like hanging out here. We've also got almost identical tastes in music and we're both sick of being in this small, super-religious fucking town. He's going to college in a month and I'll be a senior in high school. Upon such things high school friendships are easily made.
"How much longer 'till you close?" I ask Brad.
"Prob'ly twenty minutes," he says. "It's fucking dead again."
It's true, Putt-a-Round is dead, and it's dead most nights, particularly weeknights like tonight, but even on the weekends too. Right now there's just two kids, junior high age maybe, out on the course. They're on hole 14, and their ride is already in the lot. When they leave Brad will close up shop.
"I'm gonna play a quick round," I say, grabbing my preferred putter off the rack and a red ball. I always use a red ball.
"Word," Brad replies. "I'll be here."
I can play the course almost blindfolded, but it isn't a bad way to kill time. It's almost soothing. You let your mind go and hit your ball around, the trees high above you, the setting sun to the west, the light July breeze relieving the daytime heat. Each hole takes me about a minute. I know the minutia of each one, which way the floor tilts, how to time the ball past the windmill.
I'm on hole 10 when the junior high kids finish up. They give their putters back to Brad and get into their car and drive off and Brad starts packing up the ticket booth.
"Give me ten minutes?" I yell over.
"No worries," he says.
My mind wanders as I roll through the back nine. Whatever happened to Putt-a-Round? It used to be so busy all the time. I remember coming out here for my thirteenth birthday with a couple friends and it was packed. That was almost five years ago now. I suppose the shine has faded a little bit since then. And really, would I pay to play here anymore? You can only play a course so many times and it's not really fun anymore. And the people who would play, like those junior high kids, they'd have to get a ride out here, it's so far from town. Plus, when Putt-a-Round came to Sheldon, Nintendos we're just catching on. Now it seems like everyone has a Nintendo or a Sega and it's probably just as fun--and cheaper--to stay in and play video games as it is to hassle your parents for a ride out to Putt-a-Round.
My concentration only returns on the 19th hole. I measure carefully, then give my ball a solid whack. It flies up the ramp and into the clown's nose. I hand my putter to Brad, who is watching.
"You owe me a free round," I say. We laugh as he puts my putter away and locks up the shed. All my rounds are free when Brad is working.
We get in Brad's car 'cause he has a CD player. He has a 1990 black Ford Mustang. I didn't know preachers made that kind of money, to buy their kids a Mustangs. But whatever. I sit in the passenger seat and start looking through his CD case. "What are we feeling like tonight?" I ask him as he lights a cigarette.
"Pearl Jam," he says. "Feels like a Pearl Jam night."
"New or old?"
"You decide. Goddamn, I needed a cigarette."
.
I think about it a moment. "Let's go old," I say as I pull out Ten, Pearl Jam's debut CD from 1991. As we pull out onto Highway 18 I hit shuffle on the player. "Garden" pops up and Brad's and I's heads begin to bob up and down in rhythm simultaneously. For a while we don't say anything, letting the slashing guitars and pounding drums course through us as we drive aimlessly around Sheldon. "Alive", "Deep", "Black". Then Brad says:
"I could go for some ice cream. You?"
"Sure. Dairy Dandy?"
"Drunken Dan's Diner. Where else?"
Brad pulls a right onto Highway 60, passes Neal Chase Lumber Company, Security State Bank, the Iron Horse Inn and Lounge, and pulls into the Dairy Dandy. It's a warm evening and with softball games going at the City Park, lots of people are stopping by afterwards for ice cream or fried food. We end up waiting fifteen or twenty minutes for our chocolate shakes, and then we're back in Brad's Mustang. We do a couple of laps around the downtown loop and then drive east on 9th Street. Near Washington Avenue, a half-mile east, bright lights flash several times in Brad's rear view mirror.
"What the fuck?" Brad says and pulls over. The car behind us pulls in as well. "Oh, it's Andrea. I told you, man. She wants me. Big time." He starts to get out of the car to go talk to her.
"Good luck," I say.
I sit in the passenger seat of the Mustang as Brad leans into Andrea's window. I'm not really thinking about anything in particular, when the CD player flips to Track 8, "Porch", Eddie Vedder's voice and Stone Gossard's guitar, and my mind instantly locks in:
"What the fuck is this world running to?
You didn't leave a message,
At least I could have...heard your voice one last time."
And then the drums and bass kick in and I can't help it, my body starts pumping with the music....
"All the bills go by and...
Initiatives are taken up...
By the middle...there ain't gonna any middle anymore"
I have no idea what bills or initiatives are, or who or what the middle is, but I don't care. I love how the third word of the song is "fuck" and how the music, angry and intense and driven, courses through me. I begin air drumming and air guitarring as the song builds in intensity.
"Hear my name...take a good look...
This could be the day...
Hold my hand...walk beside me...
I just need to say..."
And then all of a sudden the driver's side door opens. Brad laughs. "You like that song, Plum?" he says.
I feel myself blushing like crazy but manage to recover. "It's Pearl Jam, man. You know I do."
"True that," he replies. "Andrea's gonna join us for a while."
"Sweet."
Brad peels out onto 9th Street, hooks a right onto Washington Avenue, and then another right onto 16th Street, where he really opens up the Mustang. It's fun, but now the music is turned down. Also, Andrea is Brad's age, a year older than me, and I don't really know her. Plus, I have no desire to play third wheel, and anyway, my curfew time is coming up, although I would never admit this to Brad and Andrea. Cool kids don't have curfews.
"Hey Brad, do you think you can get me back to my car? I have to get up early tomorrow."
He shoots me a questioning look but says, "Yeah, no problem."
He takes a right onto Highway 18 and we head east, past the City Park, past the stoplight on Washington Avenue and past Pamida. We leave Sheldon and a minute later pull into Putt-a-Round. I open up the door and hold open the door so Andrea can climb out of the back and into the passenger seat.
"I hope you're not leaving just because I'm here," she says, sincerely enough. She seems nice enough.
"No, no. Not at all. Like I said, I have to get up kinda early tomorrow. My dad wants me to do some shit around the house and I like to avoid the heat." Partially true--my dad does want me to do some shit around the house, but in no way do I plan on getting up early to do it.
"Well, okay," she says. "See ya."
"Yeah, see ya," I say. I walk around the car and give Brad a fist bump through the window. "Thanks for the mini-golf, man. And the popcorn. And the pop."
He laughs. "No worries. I work again on Thursday. Come on out--it'll be fucking dead again."
"I might do that," I say.
I walk over to my car, a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass, and start the car. As I follow Brad and Andrea, taking a right onto Highway 18 West back into Sheldon, I can't get Pearl Jam out of my head. Specifically, number 8, "Porch". I don't have a CD player or even a tape deck in my car. When I get home I'll listen.
I drink the last of my chocolate shake. Say what you will about Dan Patterson and his drinking habits, the man makes some mean ice cream.
Sheldon is falling asleep as I drive back into town. I get a green light at the Washington Avenue stoplight and drive on to 6th Avenue, where I turn left. I drive past the City Park; one of the softball fields still has a game going and is brightly lit, the other field bathed in darkness. A group of men stand around the bed of a truck, talking shit and drinking beer.
I cross over 6th Street and pull into the alley that goes into our driveway. I don't lock the car doors--Dad hates it when I lock the doors. I go in through the kitchen door and then knock on Mom and Dad's bedroom door. Mom's asleep--she gets up super early to work at Hy-Vee--but Dad is awake reading a magazine. He's a night owl, a lot like me.
"I'm home," I say.
"All right," he says, and goes back to his magazine.
Curfew was 11:00, and it's 11:15, but they're pretty easygoing as long as I'm close. I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich to take with me up to my room--I swear, I'm always fucking hungry. I head upstairs. Tracy's light is off. Teresa's is on--she's probably reading some Sweet Valley High book. Marty is living in Sioux City this summer.
The first thing I do when I get into my room and the door is shut is find my walkman. I dig through my cassette tapes and find the copy of Pearl Jam's Ten I made from my brother's CD. I check where I'm at on the tape and then fast forward until I get to "Porch". I lay back on my pillow and let the music flow through me.
I'm using my headphones because I want the music loud. There's a long instrumental in the middle of the song that I didn't get to hear in Brad's car. Here in my bed, I can air drum and air guitar as much as I want, and I do. Then, the instrumental ends and the song rolls into it's frantic finale:
"Hear my name...take a good look...
This could be the place...
Hold my hand...walk beside me...
I just need to say...
'What can I do? What can I say?'
I knew that I would not ever touch you
See you
Hold you
Feel you
Again...
Ever again...
Ever again..."
I rewind and listen again. Then I rewind the tape back to the beginning, to the song "Once", and listen to the whole album straight through. Then I listen to Pearl Jam's second disc, Versus, and their third, Vitalogy. It's close to 2:00 by then, so I turn the lights out and try go to sleep, but I can't. After tossing and turning for 30 minutes, I get up and, searching for something lighter, put on Jar of Flies by Alice in Chains. I lay on my side and begin to write a story about an nice but average high school kid that loves a girl that has a boyfriend he can't stand. I'm not sure what time it is when I fall asleep with the lamp on, notebook crunched under my arm.
To be continued...
