4.14.20 Concerts, Favorites and The Tree: Hudson, Ohio

#memoriesat60 #missingcommunity #gratitude

One of my first friends, when my family moved to Hudson, Ohio in 1972, was Terry McNally. We pulled together our coins and purchased Record books in which we planned to record our twelve year old wisdom. It was my first journal and lasted through high school. Looking through it now, I see little in the way of original life hacks, but I do see I was heavily influenced by Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I included parenting advice for my future mothering (probably after a disagreement with my own mother), some of my melancholic teenage poetry, a list of boyfriends (real and desired), bullet-pointed memories (many of them encrypted in case my mother read my journal), and, the source of sweet flashbacks this cold, snowy Covid day - favorite songs and concerts I attended.

Northeast Ohio was blessed with Blossom Music Center (affordable tickets for enjoying performances under the stars), nearby Kent State, many other venues and was a destination for top bands. I could only get to a handful and remember almost losing my breath in the crush at the Coliseum during my unsuccessful effort to get tickets for, was it?, Led Zeppelin.
Most of my babysitting and other odd job money went to those concert tickets. Or... we created our own concert experiences by driving out across a hilly field to The Tree, hidden from the nearest road and passing cops, where we would share whatever alcohol we scavenged and turn up the radios on each of our cars. This was the location of many of the encrypted memories in my journal mentioned above. I remember a particularly loud playing of and singing to "Magic Man"...

I was at a loss to explain to my father the build up of mud and grass under the bumper of our low-slung Pacer after one of these nights, but I had heard of many of his own small-town high school exploits, so perhaps he figured he owed me a pass. 

[Yes, even though I am right-handed, I went through a few years of experimental penmanship, depending on my mood... vertical, leftward leaning...!]