I received an email this week from the dude on the right. It seems we may have a high-school reunion to attend around Thanksgiving. One with a zero on the end of it. So… Dillard. Over the past 36 years or so, he’s been the Stanley to my Simmons, the Wilkes to my Walton in hoops, and the Tony to my Phil Esposito in street hockey. This week some 28 years ago, we had just finished an epic, seven day cross country drive to attend the University of Arizona. On the way we stopped in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Springfield, IL, St. Louie for some “real” Buds, Oklahoma City and finally Amarillo, TX before arriving in Tucson. Somewhere along the way, we browsed a Creem magazine and found out KISS would be playing Tucson the week we arrived. Sweet.

Before “the Arizona days,” there were many a day and night spent in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Just today, Megan said, “don’t be so dramatic” over something I said or did. I found that pretty humorous given the amount of drama she’s lived in her 17 ½ years on and off the planet. Still, as I thought about the drama in the life of a teenager, I tried to remember back to the days when Hog and Dillard were the center of the universe. We had steady girlfriends from about sophomore year on, so yeah, there was some drama. Today I was reminded of one of those dark, dramatic nights back then as I laid on a Precor aBench between sets. Jay Farrar’s live version of “Like a Hurricane” was cranking through my head and I drifted back to that summer night some three decades ago when Dillard and I first heard the original Neil Young version on the radio while driving in his ’69 Camaro convertible, which looked something like this except for the stripes.

Yeah, as I recall we were both “fighting” with our girlfriends so we were out cruising and getting “blown away” under an ink black summer sky. Neil was singing to us right at that very moment because he knew we were Hog and Dillard and he had just the words and guitar chops to soothe our tortured souls.

Hey, it’s been awhile, but that’s how I remember it.