Don Henley "Boys Of Summer"

In high school, I worked my summers in the the Ice Cream business.

If you were ever to travel old Route One, and you ventured through Newburyport, well, I may just have served you a double scoop.

I started at Haley's Ice Cream the summer after my Sophomore year and worked there up until the week I left for college, making sundaes and splits and frappes and soft serve with chocolate dip.

There were sooo many life lessons gleaned in those years, starting on Day One.

I'd never worked a cash register before, and no one had ever taught me to count back change. After giving back a customer too much change, Mr. Haley took me aside and said gently, but firmly, "I'll tell you what the Old Man who was my boss, told me on the first day I went to work as a kid, 'Do everything fast. Count money slow.'" And then he patiently taught me how to give correct change.

I also learned just how damn heavy 5 Gallons of ice cream can be. I dropped one of those old metal dairy canisters full of coffee ice cream on my foot. I spent the next several weeks on crutches, and even today my big toe is still noticeably deformed.

The best part of working at Haley's was the discovery of how a social scene develops around a workplace. It's obvious now, but it had never occurred to me that this loose connection of people in different grades, from different schools would form summer-long, and in some cases, life-long friendships.

When I hear "Boys Of Summer" I think of Stephanie. I also laugh a little bit at myself.

Stephanie and I went to high school together, started at Haley's at the same time, and wound through a path over the next couple of years that culminated in us being dates to the Senior Prom.

This song makes me think of her, and that time in my life.

At 18, I was wise enough to understand that this was a song about the end of something, and about the wistfulness left in its wake.

And as the summer of 1987 came to a close, it also meant the end of a huge chapter. We'd be leaving Haley's, leaving Newburyport and our families, going off to college, turning the page to adulthood.

End of summer as a metaphor for the end of high school.

Nearly 25 years later, I smile at what was my limited worldview. 25 years later, I hear that song, and understand it as a loss of so much more than losing a prom date to the upcoming Fall semester.

25 years later, Steph and I and all of the Class of 1987 are at a very different place in our lives, where there are bigger losses, harder truths, and where the innocence of a limited worldview isn't something that may be slipping away, it's something that is far in the rearview mirror.


See the video on Youtube.