To the Journey!

With an exciting weekend almost upon us, I feel I should introduce my readership to my two old chums on their way down from the frozen north of Minnesota. Their names are Sackson and Joe. Many of you have probably met these young upstarts in the past. For some of your their arrival will signal your first interaction with "the kingdom." Let's start with Joe.

Joe lived in Fargo for most of his life, but was born in the state capitol of Bismarck. I remeber my first interactions with Joe were on the grid iron of junior high football and the ballfield of gradeschool rivlarly. A natural athlete, Joe was a star quarterback on our "F-M (Fargo Moorhead) Atheletics" football team. As a skinny nobody who played tackle, I was responsible to keep Joe safe. We didn't talk much. On the ballfield, we were rivals. I was memeber of the Roosevelt Elementary School Hounds, Joe was on the Horace Man CircleJerks or something like that. Now Roosevelt and Horace Man were the two working class Elementary schools. We were the teams that were made up of guys whose dad's either never came to games or came drunk (I remeber once when Dallas was pitching his dad showed up so completely gone. He heckled Dallas for 3 innings before other parents finally got him under control.) Anyways, due to our economic and social standing, Horace Man and Roosevelt put much behind our success at summer baseball. In the much anticpated showdown between our two underfeated teams, the Hounds triumphed after a one Travis Dollinger was expelled from the game for lowering his shoulder when he plowed the catcher at home. Since, that left Horace Man with only 6 players, the Hounds were victorious by default. This game still causes some tension between us. The Hounds won, that's all the history books can say. What if's are looser talk, talked by loosers, who lost to the Hounds, who were the winners.

After those summers, Joe and I became summer associates through Babe Ruth baseball which allowed us to cross school boundaries. Though on good terms, I was not much for social activity and thought Joe "too cool." It was not until Junior year of high school that we realized we were kindred spirits. During a fourth hour study hall I sat next to him and his friends in the cafeteria. Within a day or two we had agreed to form a band and spent the next 2 years playing in Temple Baptist Church's sanctuary. I moved from the bass guitar, to the guitar, then to the keyboard, guitar, drum machine combo, and finally back to just guitar. Joe was a drummer, then bass players, then guitar playing drummer. I remember many winter nights with numb fingers bashing out swinging guitar riffs with Joe's outrageous drum fills. We played pretty much everyday for an hour or two. The church volunteer janitor, Einor (who was about 80 years old at the time and basically blind and deaf), loved to clean the sanctuary while we were playing beacuse he enjoyed feeling the music. Perhaps, those were the happiest days of my life.

Unfortunately, life goes one. Joe went to Mnpls for college while I went Wheaton. We have stayed close throughout these years but I imagine we both wish things had turned out differently. While we only played one song publically over that two years. That song garnered us instant status and hellos from girls who had never talked to us before. (It also lead to Joe's girlfriend of three years breaking up with him after she found out the song was about one Ms. Allison Hockenberry who was, at the time, Joe's one desire. This information however would never have came out if the song had remained "Untitled" as planned. Unfortunately, our singer at the time, my brother Danny, knew the songs actual title "316" (allison's locker number) and since he was the singer people asked him for information on the band for the program book. It was an honest mistake.)

Of course, there's more to our exciting and long lasting friendship, but those are just a few of the highlights. Next up, I will introduce you to Dan, perhaps the only person in the world who I can be completely honest with at all times.