Mikie and I adopted each other as brothers. Not officially. It just was so. We met at a church youth social. Or church baseball. We sometimes went to unofficial Christian socials or instigated them. There was a beautiful woman that interested us. Mikie was in love with her, wrote her songs and sang them on the phone but she liked me. Mikie didn't like that. But it never became part of the story. We dropped her and the church.
He played the guitar and sang. It might have influenced me a little toward guitar playing. I knew I wasn't going to college for trumpet. Guitar seemed the best thing after not liking bass.
Everyone wanted to hear Mikie sing. He could just play some cords and sing some nonsense about sitting in a tree and everyone would love it. Still with illusions of learning the bass, we moved in together. Rented a house down by the tracks. The story was, someone had been murdered there. And their ghosts, or goats, still lived in the attic.
They never bothered us.
I got bothered pretty fast from the panic. Even though it was friendly panic. I had to be in class eight in the morning most every day. And often till ten at night. With constant parties. It was a mad house. Never any food after a party. No one had money.
Neither of us was ready to work with the other.
So I gave up on the illusion, moved into a row house near the college. Clayton was the strange room mate that lived in the basement.
Mikie thrashed around for a while then started playing the clubs. Often as a solo act. With love songs as far as I can figure. Go figure.
Last I heard he was playing in a Reggae Band.
I tracked him down with the help of a friend, maybe my sister. Which is okay. We talked for a few hours one night and he couldn't believe half the things I was saying.
I told him we should get together to make music.
Again.
Though I couldn't play back then, we wrote good songs together with little effort. I still think he's working on believing it.
Something will have to happen.
But since we are in a universe where that is always the case, then for sure there is no reason why we can't do what we had planned to do back 1982.
Time is only a way for the universe to divide it self up so that we can look at it.
So let's make it soon so we don't get too old. Thinking about it.
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