– KHJ – The Real Don Steele – May 25, 1968 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
You’re trying to put your finger on it. Don’t know how it happened. Don’t exactly know when it happened. All you know, you went to bed last night and the last thing you remember was laughing in your sleep. It woke you up. It was dark. It was quiet and it was three o’clock in the morning. Your dad is snoring down the hallway. You fall back asleep.
The next morning your world changed. It got serious. You got serious. You started thinking about life and time and graduating in a few weeks. You were thinking about your draft board. You were thinking about college. You were thinking about your girlfriend and how you were getting on each others nerves lately. You were thinking 1968 might be strange.
But you remember the day before – the afternoon before. After school. On the bus. Sitting in the back with your arm out the window. Catching warm breeze. Feeling sun. Somebody has their radio on. Real Don Steele – just like every day – every afternoon. Somebody’s trying to smoke a cigarette. Back row – Ducking their heads, trying to keep the bus driver from noticing. You do. Camels. Tiny clouds of smoke. You start laughing.
You tell yourself to remember this time – this place – this exact minute. It’ll be over soon and you wont be able to come back to it. It’ll be gone – forever. You’re happy now. Life is life. You have a future – you don’t know what that is. But this moment, everything is happening how it always does – how it’s always supposed to. You think about that as your brain takes mental Polaroids at everything happening around you.
And you sigh at yourself as you stare in the bathroom mirror. The guy on the other side looks different than the guy who was staring back at you the day before. He got older. You wonder how that happened. You aren’t quite sure it’s you. Maybe an imposter.
Maybe you should stop reading the newspaper.
And while you’re up to your eyeballs in contemplation, here is 2 1/2 solid hours of The Real Don Steele from KHJ, just as you heard him on May 25th, 1968.
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