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.

The Eagles “Hotel California”

All Time Top Five Songs About Motel Rooms . . .

(I’ll just say up front: today’s entry gets graphic. So if you’re the kind of person that covers your eyes during horror movies and/or sex scenes, best skip today’s post)

I remember the disquiet I felt as a kid, hearing “Hotel California.” At 8 or 9 years old, I certainly could not have gleaned that the song was about the excess of the West Coast Music industry and the trap that the “Everything, all the time” (to quote a different Eagles song) could become.

Even at that tender age, I understood that The Hotel wasn’t a really place, but a spooky, spectral metaphoric location of the soul. The line, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” was like a line from a horror movie to my young self.

And the line “They stab it with their steely knives” was just more Slasher-movie imagery, for my early understanding of the song.

Much later, as I moved into my Song Nerd phase, I learned that “Stab it with their steely knives” was a playful reference to Steely Dan. The Dan had mentioned the Eagles in one of their songs (“Everything You Did”), so the Eagles returned the favor, by slipping in a sly reference.

My hazy 20s brought me to that part of your life where you discover Carlos Castaneda, Lester Bangs and Lenny Bruce, and William Burroughs. It was a Burroughs fan who filled me in to the fact that Steely Dan took its name from “Naked Lunch.”

In that book, the Steely Dan is a metal dildo. Which, in my 20s, was pretty funny, to think that this mainstream band was named after a self-pleasuring device.

But it wasn’t until many years later that I put all of this information all together, to form one, very disturbing image, that makes it hard for me to listen to “Hotel California” without feeling queasy.

“They stab it with their steely knives.”

If the steely knife is actually a metal dildo, and there is stabbing involved, then . . . well it’s just too graphic to describe any further. Sorry. Hope I didn’t permanently ruin the song for you.




Hear full live versions of "Hotel California" and "Everything You Did", here

From time to time on Every Day I Write The Blog, I do a week’s worth of my five favorite songs on theme. For the All Time Top Five rules, see this previous post.