Altmodish Star

        There was an art to chewing on the bus.  You had to be inconspicuous.  Gary sat in the middle of the seat so his legs would fit down the center walkway.  Carl sat next to him. On the other side of Gary was another kid I can’t remember then me next to the other window.  Carl would grab the can from underneath and put it at his feet.  The can was then passed by foot to each of the guys in turn.  This looked pretty easy until the can started getting full.  Am I grossing you out yet?  This system worked pretty well until one day when the spitting was furious.  The can was already full and things were moving right along.  For some reason, Carl was hogging the can.  Gary needed the can in the worst way and proceeded to let Gary know by punching him.  You can’t talk when your chewing you see.  Well, Carl pushed the can to Gary and in his excitement, caught the can on the corner of the rubber mat that runs down the center aisle.  It tipped in slow motion.

        Chew has an odor all of its own.  It’s bad enough when contained, but when it’s on the move, watch out.  What could the guys do?  The damage had begun.  I took advantage of the situation and before you could say Big Leaf, I had jumped up and ran to the nearest open seat...like any good friend.  Carl followed suit and bolted over Gary to an empty spot.  In minutes, Gary was sitting alone in the center of the seat looking straight down the rubber-matted aisle at the steady flow of 2 pounds of goo.  As it traveled past other kids, the chuckles, gasps for air, and comments could be heard.  Unfortunately, the rubber mat was a good vehicle for the goo to travel on and it made its way to the front.  Each time the bus would come to a stop, the goo shot forward a little more.  It became worse when the goo jumped the rubber mat and started flowing under occupied seats.  By the time we reached school, the bus driver was also seeing and smelling the concoction moving up to the base of the stick shift lever.

        The ride home that day after school was very pleasant.  The bus was clean, comfortable, and smelled great.  Of course this wasn't our usual bus.  Our bus could be seen at the end of the school parking lot, by the fairgrounds.  A green garden hose was sticking through one of the side windows and water was running out of the front exit door.  You could see Gary ever so often, as his head came up for air while scrubbing the floors.  The principle and the bus driver were standing outside having a cup of coffee.  Ah yes, memories. 

         It was also in this year, my sophomore year that I decided to do something out of the ordinary and try out for a musical play.  I was taking fine arts for one of my classes anyway and Mrs. V told me I should try out (Mrs. Vandergrift).  In order to try out for a musical, you had to sing a song in front of Mrs. V and some students on the student council.  I ended up playing “Lady” by John Denver and got the part as “Christmas Morgan” who was the bartender in the story.  The play by the way was “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”.

        After my audition was done, one of the girls came up to me and asked my name.  Unfortunately I can’t remember her name anymore but I know that all the guys in school called her “Packed Tuna”.  Why you ask? well for one thing she was a “hottie” with rather developed upper body areas.  The only way we figured she could fit into the tight clothes she wore was to not drink water all day and night to dehydrate, then in the morning put her clothes on and drink a big glass of water to make her body swell into the clothes...they were tight!

        Anyway, she told me that her boyfriend at the time was a drummer who was starting a rock band up but needed a lead singer.  She liked the way I sounded and wanted to know if I wanted the part.  Dumb question!  That night I went over and met the rest of the guys.  Greg Squires was the

boyfriend and played the drums.  Brett Graham was the lead guitarist who was really good.  Dean Bynum was the Bass guitarist, and Steve Reinhart was on keyboards.

        The idea was to get something going for the Christmas contest that year.  We ended up doing “Freebird”.  Greg’s mom was cool about the whole practice thing and even made dinners for the guys when we practiced.  I think she was in to it more than we were.  She even made flyers later on for when we played different places and T-shirts for us to wear.  Our name however was not that good.  Greg’s mom liked it though. “Altmodish Star” was the name.  I guess it means Old Fashioned Star in German. Uh huh, OK.  If I find a picture of us I will put it in here.  If you don’t see one I didn’t find one...Duh

 Upper Left – Brett Graham / Upper Right – Dean Bynum

Lower Left – Greg Squires / Lower Right – Steve Reinhart

1978

 Me and my guitar mom and dad got me for my 16^th birthday

Notice the ugly T-shirt and I still have the guitar

This is in 1978 – senior year – 18 years old

Well, We ended up winning the talent contest and brought the house down.  We only had so much time left since the contest was held at the last hour of school.  The principle told everyone that when 3:30 came, the contest was over.  Well, 3:30 came and Brett decided to lengthen his solo riff on the guitar.  Everyone in school knew the song by heart so when he broke out into this new riff everybody exploded.  The crowd went nuts.  The principle was helpless.  Ah that 15 minutes of fame bit.  Nobody cared if we went on for another 5 minutes.  After that, we ended up practicing a large quantity of songs and started playing gigs in town and even in Cortez about 30 miles away.

        You have to understand though, although we thought we were good, and might have been, Durango was a small town and it didn’t take much to be known.  I mean, what did we have to compare it with?