Cru Jones Society

You know when you look through your CDs and you’re profoundly dissatisfied with every disc in your collection? You look at your tired collection of music and wonder how you’re ever going to fill all the slots in your 6-disc changer. You’ve listened to everything in your collection at least a dozen times and can’t fathom listening to any of them a 13^th.

When this happens to me I try to remember where I was when I bought the CD. I think about the circumstances that surround my understanding of that disc – memories, events, drunken good times, whatever. This usually propels me to pick up something I haven’t listened to in a while, or at least haven’t thought about in a different way.

Recently I took my Fenix TX self-titled album out of its dusty sleeve and popped it into my changer not thinking too much about it. As soon as the first notes of “Flight 601 (All I’ve Got Is Time)” crept into my ears and filled the air of my little car, I was no longer my 26 year-old self creeping along Speer Blvd. to get to work. I was back in my Volkswagen Jetta with its new after-market CD deck flashing it’s electric blue lights at me while I sat in the parking lot of Ulysses ball fields smoking a clove with my good friend Carson.

I was 18 again. The heat outside told me it was summer. I wasn’t driving to work to face another day of answering emails and trudging through endless meetings; I was an 18 year-old kid getting ready to ship off to college. I had just graduated high school. I was living large. I had a manual labor job at the baseball fields and got an astonishingly high $9/hr. Those first dulcet guitar notes paving the way to pop punk sweetness completely encapsulated my summer of 2000 and in the 3:28 of listening to “Flight 601,” I re-lived the entire thing. Does this ever happen to you? Here’s what happened to me…

I think about the places I have been
And what I’ve seen
And all the lessons I’ve learned in between
Twenty some odd years and nothing’s changed
I’m still the same
Still learning from this never ending dream

The summer right after high school is probably the weirdest one of your life. You’ve closed a chapter of your life and for the first time the future is truly unknown. You’re free but fearful. Gone is the perpetual safety net of high school routine and all that looms is a blank slate of opportunities. You understand college abstractly – it’s a place I’ll live away from my parents and study, but what else? You won’t know it until you do it, and until then, you’ve got a summer of freedom.

The City was awesome. We worked outside in our cutoff shirts, drove around in the City Truck (a.k.a. The Beast), and ate dinner out every night. When someone could score some beer or a fifth of SoCo, we’d go to someone’s house and get fucked up. Since our 18 year-old livers were made of iron, hangovers didn’t exist, and work the next morning was just something you did – not something you dreaded because of a pounding headache or the dreaded hangover black. We were unstoppable, invincible, indestructible. It was fabulous.

This life it teaches me of many things
Like disbelief
And trusting in dishonesty and love
It keeps me dragging on and on
But something’s wrong
And I just can’t seem to figure out the scheme

We should have been fired every day we worked there. We knew our boss couldn’t do it though, because he was a reformed field worker himself. He worked with one of our crew member’s brothers. We knew he used to go to the Wendy’s down the street, drink Frosties and fall asleep in the shade every afternoon. Even though he was the boss, if he attempted to fire us, we’d bust him for his hypocrisy and remind him of his former slacker ways. So we thought nothing of our adventures emptying the dirt from the back of the truck by going really fast in reverse toward the precipice of a large hill and slamming on the brakes.

We spent our mornings playing homerun derby on Field 5, and our afternoons climbing to the top of the backstop or racing around the field’s perimeter on our designated “race course.” We broke three (possibly four) chalkers that summer and dropped our 250 lb. beam out of the back of the truck because we were trying to beat a new VW Beetle off the line at a stoplight. Senor Limon almost impaled the back of one dude’s skull throwing a claw hammer at him (not maliciously).

This isn’t to say we didn’t do any work. We did. We got it all done, and the adult beer leagues and girls’ softball tournaments had impeccable fields to play on. We just spent the rest of the time screwing off. The morning began with a trip to 7-11 for Fierce Lime Gatorade (Memo to Gatorade: This is your best flavor of all-time. BRING IT THE FUCK BACK!) and Dunkin’ Sticks. Senor Limon and I invented an obstacle course near one of the baseball fields and played “Lava” on it for up to an hour a day.

Another time might make you crazy
But all I’ve got is time
Another time might make you crazy
But all I’ve got is time

Since we spent the majority of the day in the truck with no CD player, we listened to the radio all the time. Back when 96.5 The Peak used to be a good station, our dial was tuned to that most of the time. They had one DJ named Graeme who to this day is probably the funniest media personality I’ve ever been exposed to. Remember that awful Limp Bizkit/Method Man collaboration on “N 2 Gether Now“? After that song played Graeme came on and said, “That was some piece of crap by Method Man and Fred Durst. Everyone’s always all ‘Ahhh, ooooh, wheee Fred Durst!’ I hope he gets cancer.” Then he cut to commercial. I haven’t heard anything so unexpected and drop dead hilarious on the radio before or since.

Anyway, when The Peak was playing something shitty, we’d go to our three station rotation of The Peak, 93.3, and KBPI. It was a good summer for music and The Peak kicked unprecedented amounts of ass playing things like Pantera, Sublime, Eminem (unheard of for a rock station at the time), and Primus, so we could almost always find something to our liking.

However, there were three songs played way too fucking much that summer. We called it “The Trifecta” and it was “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down, “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit. You unavoidably heard one of these songs at least roughly once an hour. Our ultimate goal was to achieve the “Perfect Trifecta” which meant hearing one of the songs on each station at the same time, but it was never meant to be. One time I was planting second base and Senor Limon drove up to me excitedly. He said, “Check it out.” “Kryptonite” on 93.3, “Californication” on The Peak, and “Nookie” on KBPI. It wasn’t “Break Stuff” but it was damn close. I probably heard those songs more than 500 times that summer and subsequently OD’d on them.

I now have a love/hate relationship with those songs as their opening notes make me feel like Bruce Banner after someone has slashed my tires, while a part of me gets happy thinking about that summer. It’s as close to schizophrenia as I think I’ll ever feel. Nothing in this world makes me so simultaneously enraged and nostalgic. I’m confused now just thinking about it.

Satisfaction’s never guaranteed
I know you agree
It’s best to live inside our memories
And if I make it to the other side
I’ll be satisfied
I’m never coming back for anything

Beyond life at The City, everything else was aces. I had a girlfriend with whom I was still in the pleasant part of the relationship. I proudly lost my V-Card, and for those interested – Time #1 – 1.5 minutes. Time #2 - 13 minutes. Time #3 – 45 minutes. All of this happened within 2 hours. What a day… We took two group field trips to the 18+ Nudie Bar. I ate more Jose O’Shea’s than I can even remember. I started smoking that summer. I went camping for the first and only time in my life. I tried pot for the first time (and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th time). And I bought a new car stereo deck from Soundtrack. This was the first thing over $100 that I had ever bought completely by myself. Sure, I paid for about a third of my car, but I had been saving that money since I was 5 and my parents and our traded in Jeep paid for the other 2/3. This was the first time it was ALL me.

I chose one with nifty display lights and what I’d like to say is good sound quality. Honestly, I have no idea because I a) know jackshit about stereo equipment; b) didn’t bother to ask; and c) was too distracted by the nifty display lights to care one way or the other.

So I got it installed, drove to the fields, picked up Carson and made him look at my snazzy new deck. I didn’t think to buy a new CD as that might have enhanced the entire experience, so I feebly dug in my collection for what would look the coolest going into my new prized possession. I realize this is the equivalent of a woman choosing which man to have sex with based on who has the prettiest cock, but give me a break. I was excited and needed it to be special somehow.

Fenix TX immediately jumped out at me since they had a hot new poppy punk CD that summer that broke into the mainstream. Plus, the bright yellow disc with gorgeous royal blue lettering would look mighty fine gliding into the flashy, virginal slot.

In it went, and through the speakers came “Flight 601.” And there we sat, Carson and me, listening to a CD we’d been listening to for over a month watching my CD player flash its LED lights at us like a miniature Las Vegas Strip. I think Carson just wanted me to take him home already, but I needed my first experience with this to be for more than an audience of one. We smoked a delicious clove cigarette and let the music envelope us. It’s great being a guy and not having to fill the air with words. Sometimes you can just be with each other, and that’s what we did. It was a cool summer night with a light breeze, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Another time might make you crazy
But all I’ve got is time
Another time might make you crazy
But all I’ve got is time

As the summer wore on I became less enchanted with the job as I grew more and more nervous about college. I am as change-resistant as they come, so something of this magnitude shook me to my very core. I knew I was only an hour and a half up the road, but I knew things would never ever be the same. Senor Limon and I were going to the same place, but I was leaving behind a whole army of friends, a girlfriend I was still very much into, and a contented life I saw no reason in disturbing.

I managed to stifle this feeling with parties filled to the brim with shots of Southern Comfort and games of King’s Cup as well as assorted shenanigans at work. But really, there’s only so many times you can be amused by drawing the 4^th King (again) and giggle at busting a spray paint can on the side of a dumpster before you have to deal with what you’re afraid of. Plus, I was working on a set timetable. There were a finite number of days in the summer, and each day that passed meant I was one closer to experiencing change like I’d never knew. I always remembered that and it hung over me like the Sword of Damocles.

This life it teaches me of many things
Like disbelief
I’m never coming back for anything

I didn’t want to believe that things had to change, but inevitability has that funny way of being inevitable. Limon and I went to orientation (called “Preview” by Colorado State, which for some reason always annoyed the piss out of me), got our classes, saw the dorms for the first time and I knew there was no turning back.

With my clothes all packed up, a brand new mattress pad stuffed into the back of my mom’s car, a box full of pro wrestling video tapes secured safely in the trunk, and my first ever overwhelming desire to start chain-smoking running through my body, it was time to go to college. But not without a final party…

Our friend Brett’s basement was our second home. We crashed on his floor when we were too drunk to drive home. We’d stop by his house after dates. And we’d hang with him until all hours of the morning – sometimes without even being asked. So it was only natural that we have our last party there. We dressed up like G’s (the reason for doing so escapes me), filled the fridge with Rolling Rock, the freezer with Jagermeister and Permafrost, and our pockets with clove cigarettes.

And needless to say, we had ourselves one hell of a sausagefest. I did an impression of Mr. Buzzcut from “Beavis & Butthead” resulting in Sr. Limon kicking me in the nuts. He showed us how he can walk on his hands resulting in me backhanding him in the nuts from above. We put sandals on our hands and had a slapboxing battle royale. The night ended with Limon, Carson and myself sitting at the edge of the garage all sharing one clove discussing the summer. I couldn’t bring the other guys with me to college, but at least I had Limon. We grew close that summer at the City, and it’s stayed that way ever since.

As I drove North up I-25  two mornings later, I already missed the summer. It wasn’t that I was unexcited for college, I was just sort of sad that I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was turning 19 in a couple of weeks, entering college, and moving away from my parents. If it goes properly to plan, I’ve just permanently said goodbye to a large, and excellent phase of my life. I didn’t want to ever permanently move back home because that would have meant I failed, but I did in that moment just want to press pause on the life VCR. Just give me a little more time like this… We’ll have some fun, drink some beers, work in the sun…. just a little more. C’mon, what harm can that do?

But just like adult swim, when it’s time to get out, it’s time to get out. So that’s what I did. I unloaded the car, walked up the three flights of stairs and opened the door to my new life.

Another time might make you crazy
But all I’ve got is time
Another time might make you crazy
But all I’ve got is time
Another time might make you
Another time might make you
But all I’ve got is time

“Flight 601″ faded out to make way for the obnoxious and juvenile anthem “Minimum Wage.” I pulled the key from the ignition, opened the door, stood up, and began walking the two blocks to the office. There were important phone calls to be made; meetings to attend; media clips to send out. I’m now 26. A professional. A college graduate (twice). In a long-term and committed relationship. I’ve got bills. And a health plan. And a 401k. I go to bed at 10:30 most weeknights. I’m respected and well-liked in a professional, white-collar industry. I plan on buying a home soon. I’m an adult.

But when I need to get that old feeling again, I know exactly where to turn. For 3 minutes and 28 seconds during “Flight 601,” I’m 18 sitting in the car in the parking lot of that ballfield looking at my pretty new deck with the cool breeze coming in through the windows and the honey-like smell of clove cigarettes hanging in the air with the world at my fingertips and hardly a responsibility in the world.

When I listen to the song, all I’ve got is time. And that’s all I need. Thanks, Fenix TX.

Until next time…

edagger@crujonessociety.com