TERRY MOSHER
If you have read me for any length of time you know I get inspiration from music, which is constantly playing in the background as I write, which I have done for every day for as long as I can remember.
That inspiration often comes suddenly, sparked by the music on my mood on that particular day. Not too many days ago I got an email from a friend insisting I listen to American Pie sung by Don McLean because supposedly he was inspired to write and sing it by the death on Feb. 3, 1959 of Buddy Holly in a plane crash in an Iowa cornfield.
There is some debate on or why McLean wrote that song, but for me it brings heartache. As I told my friend, the first time I head American Pie I was driving my family in our car in Ferndale, WA. When the song came on the radio, I was just a 100 feet or so from the entrance to Pioneer Park in Ferndale and as soon as I heard it I stopped the car in the middle of the road and my wife (Mary) wanted to know what I was doing. She insisted I keep going, but I couldn’t.
So the family sat there anxiously wondering what was going on, but I was frozen, frozen in time and could not move. Memories flooded over me making me incapable of anything except allow tears to flow down my cheek.
I was in my last teen year when Holly, the Big Bopper (his big song was Chantilly Lace) and Ritchie Valens (La Bama) were killed along with the pilot that day. It was a crushing loss to the music world, especially my music world because I couldn’t get enough of Holly’s songs and I and several friends used to listen to them all the time and that experience came roaring back to me as I sat frozen emotionally in the car.
Today, as I’m writing I suddenly hear another song that freezes me. It’s California Stars and now I’m being transported back to 1960. This is an old Woody Guthrie song that was recorded in 1998 by British singer Billy Bragg and the band Wilco and it torches my heart, setting me on fire and bringing back memories when four young guys (and I put the emphasis on young) were searching for their niche in the bigger world and were sitting around a table in an old tavern (the Old Rose Inn, which no longer exists but at the time was the center of much activity in my old hometown of Portville, N.Y.) playing a card game called Euchre, which is played a lot back east but not so much out here, while the juke box several feet away was playing (drum roll) Buddy Holly.
I have written about this before so I won’t go into much detail about it here, but suffice to say that we four suddenly got the itch to leave cold-cold Portville (it was in December and the ground was covered in snow packed hard by freezing weather) and head to California.
We left in January of 1960 and two of us stayed for just five months (Dick and I) while the other two remained. I left in June of 1960 and returned to Ferndale where for the next five years I chewed up over 200 credits while going to school at Western Washington (frankly, I loved college and wished I could have gone on forever, but real life interfered).
We four guys loved California because it was so much the opposite of Portville. It was warm and sunny and exciting. We had never seen so many people and never knew there was so much you could do other than playing Euchre.
As I sit here, Wilco plays its edition of California Stars:
“I‘d like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed
Of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight on a bed
Of California stars
I’d love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I’d give my life to lay my head tonight on a bed
Of California stars”
Yeah, that is what we four did. Essentially, Dick and I were beach bums in Hermosa Beach living the life most teens back then only dreamed about. The other two guys stayed up in Los Angeles and worked their way into San Fernando Valley over time and then one of them wound up down south in Orange County.
When I think of Dick, and I did again last night, I do so with extreme sadness. Dick left in June of 1960 with his family and was headed to Benghazi, Libya (sounds familiar now, doesn’t it; think Hillary Clinton) for work. He went back to Portville after nearly two years and was killed in an auto accident that I had predicted for him because of the way he drove. I take no solace knowing in advance how he would die because he was a great and giving soul who I miss every single day.
“I‘d like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed
Of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight on a bed
Of California stars
I’d love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I’d give my life to lay my head tonight on a bed
Of California stars”
Also gone are the other two guys – Amos and Dave. They both died way too young and it hurts me that I’m still around to remember the fun we four had leaving our small town for the big lights and the big stars of La-LA Land.
“I’d like to dream my troubles all away on a bed
Of California stars
Jump up from my star bed and make another day underneath
My California stars
They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers glass like friendly wine
So I’d give this world just to dream, a dream with you on our bed
Of California stars”
The years since California have taken their tolls on my family. A granddaughter was killed, my sister, who was my anchor in my dark years, died five years ago and we remaining four – Ray, Ron, Dave and me – all have our aging challenges. Ray, I discovered yesterday, has colon cancer to go with his recent open-heart surgery and today I am told that he now also has pneumonia while visiting in Georgia where a grandson is getting married Saturday.
I don’t know what Dick, Amos or Dave would think of all of this and the way the world is today. My best guess is that if we were reunited, it would be around a Tavern table in a small town in New York State with Buddy Holly playing on the nearby Juke Box, one of us dealing out a hand of Euchre while we sipped our drinks and dreamed:
“I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed
Of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight on a bed
Of California stars”
Rest in peace you guys, we had a ball when we could and did what many only dream about. We were risk takers who weren’t afraid to leave our comfort zone and head into the unknown. For that, I thank you. We may not have made a difference, but we were different when others were afraid to be.
We were California dreamers.
“I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed
Of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight on a bed
Of California stars”
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.