I normally go right onto the freeway after I drop off Hazy, but I decided to go left today, which is the direction I used to go to drop Evs off at high school; the same road I took to drop Ziggy off at the groomers.
Maybe it was because I was digging the radio guy’s Irish accent.
It’s my last day here at the station folks, and I’m playing nothing but bangahs. Hits hits hits. Here’s another one…
He put on the Cure, who have basically cornered the market in Nostalgia. They make you want to have a broken heart, to walk through a storm, to miss your hometown.
The song was “Pictures of You,” which has an extended intro that allows you to really drop into your thoughts, to swim in the past and ready yourself for Robert Smith’s lonesome call.
I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you…
I got this song as a gift, recorded on a blank tape from a girl-crush in high school. She handed it to me through the car window in the rain. The ball-point pen title at the top was smudged. That girl, a year older, from the South, always seemed to be pulling away, an architect of longing for my high school heart.
Remembering you standing quietly in the rain…
It’s as if she gave me that tape just to be able to give someone a tape in the rain about giving someone a tape in the rain.
I let my mind float up from the past to the present, shifting from literal photos to mental photos, still shots of my life right here in Oakland. Images sprouted up as I drove by sections of the city that will forever hold memories.
Ziggy’s vet clinic, where a nice but distant vet told me Ziggy was in his twilight years.
During COVID, he forced me to sit in the car while they worked on Ziggy, which allowed for plenty of time to stir up guilt and concern.
Sitting there waiting for the verdict.
I pictured Ziggy behind me, even looked into the rear view for him, where he’d be standing up on the back seat, tongue hanging out. He’d tumble over on the seat as I stopped at the light. That made me laugh, thinking of good ol’ Zigs trying to regain his balance, getting all quiet as we entered the parking lot.
Bro, seriously? This place again.?
The Zig Man..
Not much further up on the right was Oakland Technical High School, with kids pouring out of cars, across the quad, and into the building, like a single apathetic organism of baggy clothes and mussed up hair. Evs was always easy to spot in that jumble of teens, with her rainbow socks and 6-foot frame.
Proud every day at drop off.
And what about over there, that deli on the corner, the park bench where Evs and I ate sandwiches and shared a bottle of red Vitamin Water. Or over there, that stretch of side street where Evs used my car to do college interviews between classes. And of course, right around that corner, the beloved backdoor to the school auditorium, where Evs would linger with the stragglers of her technical theater group while waiting for us perpetually late parents to show up…
The DJ came back on. It was a rough morning for him too.
Folks, it’s my last day here in the studio and I gotta say, I’m pretty bummed. Thanks for the journey, thanks for the call-ins. Thanks for everything. It’s been absolutely splendid delivering music to you all on CALX, Berkeley’s #1 station for independent radio. Okay, here we got; I’m leaving you with one last bangah. Here’s the Prince himself with Nothing Compares to You, because, well, nothing compares to you.
A bonus track. Thanks, Irish DJ dude.
I turned onto Linda Street, which would take me by the dog park. And the soccer field..
Prince gave it to me good.
The trees, bare in the cold against the morning sun, caused stripes of shadow to roll across my face and arms. I was smiling and hurting at the same time; it’s a beautiful thing you learn to love as you get older.
I drove slow.
Parents lined the sidewalks, fixing little backpacks, tugging on little arms to pull little bodies away from the big bad road.
New families — making memories — while me and the Radio DJ packed up our stuff, and looked up into the sun with all the feelings.
I was just coming to the hardware store when a new DJ came on.
She had a new voice and new energy. It was clear she wasn’t leaving the station. She was there to stay. Perhaps she had some songs for those new parents, but not for me.
I turned it off.
Once out of the shadows of the trees, I felt the good sun on my face. I pictured the DJ standing on the front stoop of the radio station, holding a cardboard box of things on his hip, quietly laughing at the people honking at each other in the road.
And as I pulled into the garage without a soundtrack, there in front of me on tall, metal shelves: our not-so-scary Halloween decorations, little, undecipherable wood sculptures, and an array of shiny bike helmets 2 sizes too small.
These things. This silly world.