Sidetracked

Musical Memoirs Enters Suburbia With Stevie Wonder

I wasn’t around the day my friends were kidnapped.

If I had been, I probably would have been snatched up with them. Because when school was out in Elk Grove Village, IL, we spent much of our time riding bikes around the neighborhood. And it was while riding bikes that my friends Jeff, Jon and Mike were knocked down by a couple of creeps and pulled into a car.

Fortunately, there were four kids riding bikes that day. And the one that got away was able to give police a pretty good description of the vehicle. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened.

The 70’s were pretty crazy, man.

Maybe part of it was living in the Chicago suburbs, where weird things always seemed to happen. For instance, serial killer John Wayne Gacy was arrested not far from us. And a couple of years later, many of my neighbors could hear Flight191 crash at nearby O’Hare Airport. The disaster killed 273 people and was, for many years, the worst airline accident in America.

But the things I’ll remember most from that era are the bad clothes, disco, and drugs.

I was mostly a kid, but even in junior high, a couple of my friends smoked weed, which sort of blows my mind today. While I didn’t partake myself, I was familiar with pot from my brother, who was always trying to find new and creative places to hide his stash. (I, in turn, was always finding new and creative ways to blackmail him once I found his weed.)

For dads on our block, alcohol seemed to be the drug of choice. I’m not sure why – I guess they all had other plans in life. But my friends and I all had stories about the embarrassing things our dads had done.

Alas, the 70s weren’t all about plane crashes and drugs. For me, it was also a time of discovery. Because it was then that I “discovered” the Cubs and music. (A fascination with girls would come later, after seeing Bo Derek in Playboy.)

I’m not sure when I first heard Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke,” but even today, I think it’s an incredible song, an homage to the masters of jazz. Meanwhile, Stevie Wonder remains my favorite performer. In fact, I still have the “Sir Duke” single – the first record I ever owned – on my desk. It’s kind of scratched up, but it’ll still play on a turntable. (Not that I have one.)

When I listen to “Sir Duke” today, I occasionally think back to those hot summers watching the Cubs on WGN, the jumbo jets that used to fly so low over our house and the day I almost lost my friends.

Our stay in Elk Grove was relatively short (about five years). But, man, did it pack a wallop.

Posted on June 4th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Music, Songs in the Key of Life: My Musical Memoirs