Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(8)

Halfway through my seventh-grade year, my parents moved us to Glen Ellyn, a western suburb of Chicago. Dad’s business partner, Frank Romolo, and his family lived in Glen Ellyn, and Dad and Mom had fallen in love with the area. Dad’s business kept growing, and I was surprised to learn the big house we moved into was once owned by the Morton family, of Morton Salt fame. But the move felt rough to me. I was a lousy student in a new school where I didn’t know anyone, and I felt very out of place. I found some kids who played guitar, and we formed a band where I played bass, and music helped me make the adjustment. Music always helped me cope, and I played in a string of different bands: the Olde Molde, spelled in the Old English way; Uproot Confusion; and the Dirty Brain, named for a piece of brain coral I found while snorkeling on vacation with my family in the Virgin Islands. I brought it back home as a memento of the trip, and during our concerts we placed the spherically shaped coral on top of our rock organ and shined a spotlight on it. With its grooved surfaces, it looked just like a human’s brain, and after thousands of years in the ocean, it stunk like a dead fish.

My future lay in either music or sports. I could have tossed a coin. I loved sports. In Highland Park I played baseball each spring. Winters, they’d freeze over the parking lot at my school, and we all played hockey. I was a huge Blackhawks fan, and Bobby Hull was my favorite player. I also loved football and rooted for the Bears. We organized a local football league for kids and played each other on weekends. I was a fast runner, always the quarterback or one of the halfbacks, and I was usually the kickoff return guy, running for a touchdown every chance I got.

I played football through eighth grade in Glen Ellyn, but I was an undisciplined kid and never showed up for practice, so I never knew any of the plays. The coaches would just put me in to return the kickoff because of my speed—and nine times out of ten, I’d get a touchdown. When I reached high school at Glenbard West in 1969, I tried out for the team but realized every kid was twice as motivated as me—and twice as big, so that ended my football career.

I played baseball in school through eighth grade too. Ron Santo, the third baseman for the Cubs, was my favorite, and the Cubs were in the playoffs in 1969. Even though I was born on the South Side, I’ve been a Cub fan since I was five years old watching them on WGN on the little black-and-white television in our living room. I dreamed of being a Major League Baseball player someday and wanted to play second or third base. But all that changed during the summer of ’69 after my eighth-grade year when I blasted a double into the outfield and rounded first, heading for second. Sprinting hard, I slid headfirst, my arm stretched long. The second baseman saw me coming, and right when I dived into second, he caught the ball and came down hard on my back with his knee. Thud! When the dust cleared, I couldn’t get up. They carried me off the field, and my dad took me to the ER. I was bruised, not broken, but for weeks it was hard to walk, and I didn’t play baseball anymore after that.

That left music and my dreams of being a rock star. And I figured musicians all needed to be hard partiers—right? Woodstock! Rock and Roll! My parents liked to entertain and kept a bar stocked with various bottles of liquor. At the end of eighth grade, I decided to experiment. I had a metal box with a latch on it, so I gathered empty peanut butter jars with lids, cleaned them out, and stashed them in my box. When no one was looking, I sneaked small amounts of liquor out of my parents’ bar. Whiskey into one jar. Vodka into another. Vermouth into another. Wine into another. Always just a bit, so Mom and Dad didn’t notice.

One Saturday night I decided it was time. Randy and I shared a bedroom, but there was a small attic room connected to our room that was private where I kept some of my music gear. When Randy was asleep, I went into the attic room with my metal box full of jars, shut the door behind me, and tasted the vodka. The whiskey. The vermouth. The gin. The wine. Next thing I knew, I was plastered, sick as a dog, puking into my metal case everything I’d eaten for the past month. My head spun, and I wanted to lie down somewhere, but thought I’d better clean out the box so no one would find out what I’d been up to. I bobbed and weaved down the front stairs, heard the TV on in the other room, and figured the coast was clear. I crept into the kitchen and started dumping the vomit into the kitchen sink. I was dizzy and nauseous, and as I looked up, suddenly my mother was standing next to me, her arms folded. She looked puzzled and concerned and angry at the same time.

“Oh, hello, Mother,” I said, my voice sugary. “I’m just cleaning out my box. It was a little messy. How are you this fine evening?”

The room started to go dark, and I realized I was passing out. Next thing I knew, Mom and Dad were wiping off my mouth, putting me to bed. I was grounded for a week. And no more box.

You’d think I would have learned my lesson. But that was only the start for me. The times were changing, and the drug culture had begun its rise. America was exploding in a million different directions just as I entered my teen years, and it felt like the entire country couldn’t contain itself. We were at the peak of the Vietnam War, and it was going badly. We found ourselves in the age of revolution, the rise of the hippies. Everybody was anti-authority. Antiestablishment. I heard about Woodstock. The sexual revolution. Pot was everywhere, and by the end of eighth grade, although still on the football team, I felt caught between the athletes and the pot smokers.

At thirteen, fourteen, I went to parties where the drug scene was “happening.” Kids sprayed oven cleaner into plastic bags and sniffed it, so of course I figured I needed to try. It’s a wonder anyone survived. Kids dumped spot remover onto rags and walked around sniffing wet rags, so I tried that too. Snorting spot remover gave me a crazy buzz. And since older kids were at these parties too, beer flowed everywhere, and the air was thick with pot smoke. But at that time, I stuck to taking a few sniffs on my wet rag and that was it.