By Blake Donley
For all of the connection my father and I didn't have, he accidentally connected me with the most potent source of magic there is: music.
Back in the late '70s, just before my parents divorced, my father had been given the record collection of a close friend who died tragically. It turned out Peter killed himself. I was seven years old at the time. My entire understanding of death had been gleaned from pet gerbils. Suicide was not a topic my father and I could discuss. It was one of countless topics we’d never discuss.
Although I had precious few memories of Peter, he always seemed larger than life. He was tall, muscular, and manly. I assumed anyone with a mustache was manly, and Peter sported a prodigious caterpillar atop his upper lip. He often wore his army pilot’s jacket, but always donned cowboy boots and cool aviator shades. He spoke in a booming baritone voice. But under his sturdy physical exterior and just beneath his gregarious persona, he was as fragile as a secret.
Decades later, I’d learn from my mother that when Peter committed suicide, my father had all the usual regrets. He felt he should’ve been there more often. He felt he should’ve known something was wrong. Like most who experience the loss of a close friend in this manner, my father felt he could’ve stopped it.
After Peter's funeral, his widow told my father that Peter had often reminisced about buying records with him. Peter cherished the 45s he picked up when he and my father would hit the five-and-dime on their way home from tennis practice. Those were the halcyon days before the war eroded Peter's zest for living. The records represented a last gasp of sanity, of beauty, of joy before the ugliness of war battered his mind and tortured his soul. Because those records were the real trophies of the glory days my father and Peter shared, his widow wanted my father to have them.
My old man had his own paltry music collection, but this infusion of new tunes more than doubled his music library. I didn't fully comprehend how honored he was to have been trusted with these treasures. Music is personal, often the amber that forever preserves memories. My dad was now the curator of Peter’s memories—a dauting responsibility.
Today, I understand that all the knowledge you'd every need to acquire about another person can be gleaned from the dust jackets, gate folds, and grooves of their record collection. To inherit a person's record collection is to know their joy, their pain, and their spirit. A person's music collection tells their story. Peter’s records were priceless relics, and my father knew it. When the day finally came to look at those records again for the first time, he made me know it as well.
On a Saturday afternoon months after the funeral, my father finally mustered the will to explore his buddy's sacred stash of sounds. I stood like a statue as he hauled a large wooden crate of LPs and a couple of boxes filled with 45s into the family room. I watched with much interest as he arranged everything on the floor across from the shiny silver Pioneer stereo component stack which sat atop a zombified Zenith HiFi console.
The Zenith had expired long before I was born. I loved opening the sliding doors on the top to reveal the myriad dials, knobs, and switches. I’d pretend it was the control panel on a rocket ship that would take me anywhere in the universe. I simply had to twist the AM/FM tuning dial to the appropriate coordinates, flip a few switches, and depress the large brown spring-loaded on/off button to explore a new galaxy far, far away. The imagination of a young kid was a different kind of magic.
My father had deposited the records along the back side of the davenport that faced the stereo. As he eased himself onto the ground with a large crate between his legs, I sat next to him eager to watch the show that was about to unfold.
He flipped past dozens of record jackets and froze at one with a man sticking his thumb up. The man's thumb was painted like an American flag. My father uttered some profane exclamation of glee and deftly unsleeved the record. After a minute of rotating it at various angles and blowing on it a few times put it on the turntable. A calm voice pierced the silence.
"A long, long time ago..."
As my dad leaned against the back of the davenport, he closed his eyes and began to whisper along to Don McClean’s lyrics. I quickly scooted closer and gazed up at him. This moment seemed to last forever. As an eight-year-old, nine minutes and twenty-four seconds was forever.
That song that ended my innocent enthusiasm for nursery rhymes and Sesame Street anthems was Don McLean's magnum opus: "American Pie". It would eventually be the song that altered the course of my life.
But for me, sitting next to my father and hearing it for the first time, it would not be the day the music died. Paradoxically, it would be the day I set sail on my melodic odyssey. From this day forward, songs would become an acoustic chronicle of my earthly adventure. A deeper appreciation of music would save my mortal soul. Throughout the remainder of my days, music would be that one true friend—proving its fidelity time after time.
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