Day 63, Tuesday April 30, 2024: Hastings, Nebraska to Fairbury, Nebraska

Carnegie libraries visited: Clay Center, Fairfield, Geneva, Fairbury, Nebraska

Correction: the beer at the hotel’s happy hour last night was not free. I saw this morning that you had to get a key card from the desk, and you would be charged for every beer you bought. I might have to treat myself today, because I saved probably $20 or so last night.

I was late for work today, and my boss was not amused:

Mark: You were late for work today.

Mark: Sorry; I had a hard time getting out of bed this morning.

Mark: That’s no excuse.

Mark: Sorry, I’ll try to be better.

Mark: Don’t let it happen again.

Remember the film The 13th Step? I watched it last night; more on that later. I could feel my blood pressure rising, and so watched a few YouTube clips of SNL. You know how it goes when you watch stuff on the Tube. One thing leads to another. The next thing you know, I’m watching the infamous performance of the band The Replacements (nicknamed, by those in the know, the Mats – a shortened form of The Placemats). 

My grad school buddy Andy was my dealer. Of music, that is. He was the one who turned me on to the Athens, Georgia jangle pop and Minnesota’s Twin Cities punk/pop scenes before they became big, loaning his mixtapes to me. My two favorite bands were REM (Athens) and The Replacements (Minneapolis). At the time (circa 1984) both bands had local followings and had not yet hit it big.

Then, the bands diverged. The Mats had the chance to break through when they were invited to perform on SNL in 1985. It was disastrous. Band members had smuggled booze and drugs into 30 Rock and consumed heavily before the show. Their guitarist Bob Stinson was so drunk he tripped on his guitar, breaking it, so he had to borrow one from the house band. They went on stage blitzed, and played their first song “Bastards of the Young” completely out of tune, with their lead singer Paul Westerburg shouting “come on, fucker”. Lorne Michaels, SNL’s producer, banned them for life (this was not the first time they had been banned by a venue). Having blown their big chance, the band never reached stardom. Their fans may have loved the Mats' chaotic shows, but the broader public wasn’t buying it.

It’s not as if the Mats didn’t have warnings. In 1983 they had a gig at the famed CDBG club in New York: Bob Stinson was thrown out as he walked in the door. Their performance at the Folk City club was a nightmare: “The Replacements were so loud and obnoxious that the people just cleared right out," their manager (their manager!) explained. This didn’t seem to bother them. Westerburg said “We'd much rather play for fifty people who know us than a thousand who don't care.” Stinson was finally thrown out of the band in 1986; in 1995, at the age of 35, he died from alcohol and drug abuse. 

The Replacements were hardly oblivious of their behavior. Their Hootenanny album features the song “Treatment Bound”:

First thing we do when we finally pull up

Get shitfaced drunk, try to sober up…

Label wants a hit

And we don't give a shit…

We're gettin' nowhere

Quick as we know how

We whirl from town to town

Treatment bound.

REM chose a different path. They toured constantly, were never thrown out of a night club, and released a steady stream of albums. Before breaking up they had sold 80 million records. They were inducted into the Rock of Roll Hall of Fame the year they became eligible. All of their members are still alive. 

“He was teaching you a lesson you’d be wise to learn: you can’t save them that won’t save themselves.”

Bob, Bob, put down the bottle. Watching you on the SNL video, thrashing your guitar, bopping across the stage, so young and so drunk, makes me want to reach out and grab you. I know that putting pressure on alcoholics is more likely to produce rejection rather than acceptance. Each of us has had to decide for ourselves when, and if, we were ready.

Bob, put down the bottle. If you don’t, you’ll end up in jail, an institution, or dead.

Bob Wilson, AA’s founder, had a critically important insight on this. Rather than telling an alcoholic that they must stop, those in recovery should instead relate their own stories, and then listen empathetically to what the drinker has to say. In this way, the drinker’s feelings of resistance and shame might – might – melt away. Maybe, just maybe, the heavy drinker will see their story in the stories that are shared, and the germ of “I see what I am, and I see what they have done with their lives” will be planted.

Indulge me for a comment on rock and roll and self-awareness. Jann Wenner, who created the seminal magazine Rolling Stone and ran it for decades, put out the book The Masters which was based on his lengthy interviews with seven rock legends (Springsteen, Jagger, Lennon – you get the picture): all white males. Fine; it’s his book, and he can include whom he wants. When he was asked about these choices in an interview (Why no women? Why no persons of color?) he missed giving one of the easiest answers in the history of easy answers. “What I really mean to say is that these singers were the most influential to me.” Instead, he doubled-down on his choices and, to make matters worse, denigrated the talents of those he omitted (e.g., "they are not articulate enough.”). Later on, I saw a listing of the best college rock bands of the 1980s (Whaddya know, it was in the Rolling Stone magazine). I knew, and loved, them all: REM and the Replacements both were on it. All the bands were white guy bands and were played on college radio stations mainly run by white guys. I know that there are million “best of” lists out there, and all such lists are subjective but, come on, dude, maybe you should have turned your dial – back when radios had dials – to radio stations at HBCUs or one of the Seven Sisters. I’m not sure what was played on the Smith University station (they might also have been listening to Whitney Houston, Annie Lennox, Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Cyndi Lauper….) but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the listeners of Howard University’s 96.3 WHUR probably weren’t rocking primarily to Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Smiths.

The Hastings Y, where I exercised after the AA meeting, shares space with the Grace Life church. My spiritual trajectory might have been changed if I knew that, after repenting for my sins, I could attend a spin class. 

Did I mention that I am a certified spin instructor? Well, I am. I regularly attended spin classes at the Bethesda Chevy-Chase YMCA during Covid, and loved them. I also had a crush, in the innocent way a student can have a crush on a teacher, with the spin instructor Andy, even though I didn’t see her whole face for the two years she led the class while wearing a pandemic mask. She inspired me to become an instructor. How could I not become one? I love spinning, I love music, and I love being in front of a class. So, at age 65, I got my certification and began teaching once or twice a week. 

I did have another, less admirable, reason for becoming a spin instructor. Hey! I can’t be a real alcoholic if I am able to ride hard while guiding my class, headset on, music loud, too. Right? Right? It’s hard to admit this: by the end, I often would have a couple of glasses (not actually glasses, as I would drink straight from the bottle) of wine before class, during the break between classes, and afterwards too. I didn’t deny that I had a drinking problem. Anybody who feels the need to slug wine from the bottle, even before a morning class…well, that person is an alcoholic.

When I showed my YMCA ID card at the front desk and asked for directions, Susie asked me if I was looking for the weight room or the cardio room. I told her that I wanted to ride a stationary bike. After I mentioned that I was an instructor, she said we don’t normally allow patrons to use the good bikes in the spin room, but she would let me. I have the room to myself, and cranked up one of my playlists (it begins with Mo Money, Mo Problems followed by Miley Cyrus’ Party in the USA). I always put one soothing song in the middle of the playlist so the riders could get a bit of rest mid-ride.

The song was Atlas Hands, by Benjamin Francis Leftwich. I first heard this song on a slideshow tribute to my son Kitt after his death. 

I will remember your face

Cause I am still in love with that place

But when the stars are the only things we share

Will you be there? 

Alone in that room, my tears flow to the floor, mixing with my sweat.

This was the third time I had cried this week (the other times were when Ri Jeong-hyeok kissed Yoon Se-ri in the sensational Korean drama Crash Landing on You and when I was driving through the Black Hills). It feels good to cry. I highly recommend it. It feels even better to cry while sober. My favorite time to cry in my drinking days was on long flights. I’d drink some wine, cue up the tear-jerker on my video string, and let the tears roll. I cried most often in the weeks after Kitt’s death. Especially at night I would walk and walk, drink and drink, and cry and cry in my anguish. 

Life enhancing purchase of the day: velcro straps to keep my two earbud cords neat. No matter how neatly I try to keep them, they invariably become tangled. Even Barack Obama struggled with his earbud cords. This is one annoyance I don’t need to have.

The Geneva Carnegie blends Old School with New Kids. The circulation desk faces the front door, as usual. The stacks on that floor are not along the wall or perpendicular to it; they spread out as if a hand held fan, so that the librarians from their desk can see down each row (no making out, lovers). The library's computers are arrayed in a circle of tables quite close to the circ desk. The reason is clear. When I arrived, six boys were deeply engaged in a multi-player video game there under the librarian’s watchful eye.

In this book I’m following Abigail Adams’ admonition to her husband John at the outset of the American Revolution, “I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” I would be remiss if I omitted male librarians from this story, as they also deserve their due, not least because they have always been in the distinct minority of library staff (if not library directors). The Geneva library, for instance, was started through the efforts of men in that community.

I was curious about one woman of importance to that library. Beside the front door – where two red bikes stood, unlocked – stood a Serviceberry tree with a memorial plaque in honor Kathryn Ashby, a long term president of the library’s board. Molly, a librarian wearing a purple Good Vibes t-shirt and, of course, glasses, passed along a newspaper story about Kathryn's life.