Tony's Tree

Whenever someone, usually someone who grew up elsewhere, said to me when I was growing up, "Nothing grows in Nevada!" I'd say only three words: "My mother's yard."

"Well, OK, in your mom's yard," they'd say. My mother could grow anything. She and my dad bought a piece of typically empty Nevada land; their friends told them that they'd "never be able to grow anything there." Mom told, with glee, the story of how their most vocal critic pulled into the back driveway in the spring, when the flowers were blooming, the lawn was velvet, and the trees were filled out. "He stared with his mouth open, then got back in his car and drove away. He never came back, but we never heard any grief from him again."

My mom literally brought home cut branches, stuck them in the ground, and they turned into trees. A now towering cedar came home from a picnic in a styrofoam cup. She had fruit trees, vegetables, more flowers than you can count.

Now, it's been more than three years since she passed away, her yard hasn't been watered even once, and it's an absolute jungle. The shrubs and vines and things have taken over. The flowers are reseeding. There are seedling trees that have to go, because they have no room to grow up where they are. They're burying fences and patios.

Since I was a kid, the largest tree in her front yard has belonged to my friend. I mentioned it in my blog post just after Mom passed away ("Mom"): "Can I build a Swiss Family Robinson tree house in your tree and just live in it?" one of my friends asked her once. "Sure. You just let me know when," she said. Every few years, he'd bring it up - "That tree still there?" and she'd say, "Still waiting for you." "Maybe I'll bring my son over, and we'll build that treehouse," he'd say. "I'll be here," she'd tell him. We've called it Tony's Tree for years. It will always be Tony's Tree. 

They talked about his planned treehouse many times. "I want it to have power, plumbing, everything. I want to be able to live in it," Tony would say. "Sure," Mom would answer. After storms, he'd want to know, "How's my tree?"

"You're never going to cut that tree down, are you?" he asked once. "Oh, no," she said, sounding scandalized.

After Mom died, Tony came over to her house for her memorial, and again for Thanksgiving. "Is that tree still mine?" he asked. "Of course! It's always going to be yours!" My whole family knew. It was his; any time he wanted to build a treehouse, he was welcome. His kids were too old to be excited about a treehouse, but he hoped to have grandchildren. Maybe some day, they'd get to use it. "Maybe some day, I'll be homeless, and need to live in it," he joked.

A year and a half after Mom died, Tony died. I was unprepared for it ("Loving Tony"). He was sober, he wasn't sick, he'd recovered from a devastating car accident - everything was supposed to be OK.

Nothing on Earth lasts forever.

The tree comforted me. It stood where it always had. It waited.

I was comforted by the fact that we all knew that it was still Tony's Tree. Some day, when we had the money, I would build the treehouse. Maybe Tony's grandkids would get to use it. When I looked at it, I saw my mother, I saw Tony, I saw possibilities, I saw stability and predictability.

But the tree is old, and the weather is harsh.

"A big branch broke off of Uncle Tony's tree," said my daughter. She lives in her grandmother's house (which is now her Uncle Gary's house).

"Yeah, a lot of branches broke during that storm," I answered. Heavy, wet snow, much needed snow, and high wind had wrought havoc around town. But that tree is older than I am. Its trunk is probably 12 feet or more around. It would be fine, I was sure.

Then I went down and looked at the tree. The broken branch is huge, looking like a decent sized tree by itself. Its base is as big around as a person, and left a deep gash in the trunk as it peeled off. It's the kind of gash that invites insects or disease. Worse, as I looked up into the canopy, I saw what I've been ignoring and denying - dead wood.

Many of Mom's willow trees are showing dead wood in their higher branches. It happens, it's normal. But I have been actively in denial about how much is in Tony's Tree. There's quite a bit.

"That whole tree has to go," said someone behind me. It may have been my husband, or my son; I don't know. I just stared at the tree. "Yeah," I said, but I didn't mean it. That tree will outlive me - won't it? It outlived my mom. It outlived Tony. It'll always be there, won't it?

"It has to go." Someone else said it. It probably does, but I'm not OK with that.

The tree is coming to the end of its life. I have to wrap my head around that.

We puttered around doing yard chores; my daughter isn't a yard person. I kept thinking about the tree. I walked up and put my hand on its trunk. "I know," I said, "I know."

"Who are you talking to?" my son wanted to know.

"The tree." Then the tears came.

As long as the tree was there, I didn't have to let go. There are other trees - willows, apple trees, plum trees, junipers, a cedar, maples, an oak, stumps from long dead poplars. I would be OK losing any of them, even all of them, but not this tree. I was never prepared to lose this tree.

My son hugged me, long and hard.

My daughter came out of the house, saw me, and said, "What's wrong with Mom?"

"Uncle Tony's tree."

I know that I won't love them any less if I don't have their things with me. I know that they love me, with or without their stuff. I know that I haven't failed the tree, or failed my loved ones. I understand all of that. It's simply an intellectual understanding, though, not an emotional response. I will miss this tree more than I can say.

My family has assured me that we will make something with the wood, something great. We will leave the trunk standing. Maybe we'll hire a chainsaw artist. Maybe we'll make it look like the home of fairy tale elves. We will make something, something wonderful, something to honor Tony and my mother. I know that we will.

But change is hard.

Loving Tony

I recently lost a man I have loved since we were both children. He was 48 when he passed away - much too young for us to be prepared to lose him. Still, as they say, "It's not the years; it's the mileage," and he'd lived more than most people.

He wrote a published book in his 20s. In his 40s, he started working on an autobiography. It would tell details of his life, like how, at 25, he owned the second largest company of its kind in the world, printing backstage passes for the likes of the Rolling Stones, Madonna, and Billy Joel. He was making, we often said, more money than God.

Nothing in his life was of ordinary size and scope. Years later, he lost the company, and eventually, his family. He developed a drug problem that should have killed him. He consumed alcohol like it was water.

And, he lived to get clean and sober, religiously attending his meetings for AA, NA, and CA.

He asked me to write the foreward to his book. This is it.

*******************

Tony Perry is my brother. Most people gain siblings through some action taken by their parents, and are linked by biology, marriage, adoption, or in some other legal and definable way. This is not true for us; our parents might not immediately recognize each other if they passed on the street. There is no legal document defining our relationship. He is my brother because of decisions he and I have made, and because something in his soul speaks to something in mine. If you have people like this in your life – and I am fortunate to have many – you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, there are no words that will adequately explain it to you.

I remember the first time I saw Tony. I was a 14 year old high school freshman. He was a 14 year old sophomore, wearing a jacket that said, "Italian Stallion" on the back. He wore that jacket everywhere. He was loud, abrasive, charismatic and funny. I was quiet and unsure. At the first audition of the year, he made a hash out of the cold reading, and obviously delighted in doing so. The teacher sighed and said, "Never ask a techie to read lines." My attention sharpened – I was one of the few kids from my junior high theater department to actually have tech experience. It soon became apparent that not only was Tony a techie, he was THE techie in our school.

I also remember the first time Tony met my mother. So does Tony – she impressed him immediately. The school boundaries for our school were odd and elongated, so that a large number of my schoolmates came from the neighboring city, and rode the bus for half an hour to get to and from school. Tony was one of those kids. One day he missed the bus, and asked if my mom could drive him home. My mom always had a car full of kids, no matter where we went. "It's pretty far, clear out in Hidden Valley," I told her, but she was willing to take him. Tony climbed into the back of the car with an armload of books, far too many to be just his homework. "Hi," he said, "I'm Tony. I steal textbooks." Mom didn't bat an eye.

"Hello, Tony," she said.

Down the street from our school, there was a convenience store. Tony seemed to live on apple juice sold in little round, apple shaped, single serving bottles. He leaned over the back of the seat and said, "I feel like an apple juice. Can we stop and get one?" Mom slowed down and pulled into the parking lot.

Tony was beside himself. "She's stopping! You're stopping! You're actually gonna stop?"

"Sure," she said. "You have money, right?"

Tony talked about that for years. "I couldn't believe she actually stopped so I could get an apple juice!"

We had little in common, really, but it didn't matter.

Tony was the sun around which the theater revolved. He designed our drama guild T-shirts and our black satin jackets. He was our official technical director and our unofficial social director. Tony created our own holidays, The Thirteen Radical Days of Christmas, and as a group we designed a different activity every day for the thirteen days leading up to Christmas break. One day, we went to a Monty Python film festival; one day we bought our lunch from the generics aisle of Albertson's. (Remember generics? Remember when they took up an entire aisle?) He planned our group vacations to Disneyland.

On our first Disneyland trip, we had 9 or 10 of us, of both sexes, crammed into a single hotel room. My mother slept in the armchair; Tony slept in the bed next to me.

He'd started out across the room, on the floor, but two of the girls kept flicking Skittles candy at him after lights out. "Hey!" he yelled loudly, into the dark, "she hit my wiener with a Skittle!"

"Tony. Don't use that word," my mother chastised.

"Fine. She hit me in the penis with a Skittle." A few minutes later, he declared loudly, "She did it again!"

"Find somewhere else to sleep, then," Mom told him.

"There is nowhere else!"

"You can find someplace."

He walked around the room, stopping at the side of the double bed I was in. "I," he declared dramatically, pointing down at the bed, "am sleeping here." Then he looked down at me. "That OK with you?"

"Fine with me."

He checked with my mom. "OK?"

"OK. Now settle down."

I was notoriously chaste. For years, Tony took great delight in announcing to people, sometimes upon first meeting them, "I was the first man ever to sleep with Sharon Smith."

When Tony was arrested during my junior year, it absolutely undid me. I had not lived a life of unrelenting sunshine and rainbows, but this was, absolutely and undeniably, the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

One of the things we had in common back then was sobriety, a relatively uncommon trait in our group. When Tony arrived back at the school after being processed and released at the juvenile facility, I saw him climb out of the car and I went to meet him. I had never seen that look on his face, never seen him walk with that heaviness. He looked at me and said quietly, "They strip searched me for drugs, Sharon." My heart broke.

We were in the middle of rehearsing for our spring play, the largest show of the year. When Tony was suspended and then expelled and forced to complete the year at another school, I was a mess. Barred from even attending the show, Tony arranged for a bouquet of blue balloons to be delivered to the cast onstage during curtain call closing night. I wrote a sappy poem about it that was published in our school literary magazine, and saved one of the blue ribbons and wove it into my hair the next year when I went to the prom.

Tony was the only person I danced with at my prom. He was there with his fiancee, Jeanette. I was there hoping to see my best friend be crowned Prom Queen. Someone else won, and Tony barked to our table, "Nobody clap!" I clapped anyway – it was only courteous. I stepped on his feet twice during the dance; I am dance impaired.

Tony quite literally handed me back my life once. I'd been acting since I was 12, loved tech almost as much, and intended to continue doing both forever. But, I spent three of my four high school years with a teacher assigned to the theater classes simply because she had low seniority and no one else wanted the job; she'd never even seen a play before being assigned to us. I left high school having learned anything new, for three quarters of my time there, from the other students or on my own. I felt woefully inadequate to pursue anything theater related, even for fun. Oh, well, I thought, those are the breaks. Things happen. I'll get over it. Then Tony phoned one day shortly after my graduation.

The local university was having open auditions for "Chicago." Their auditions were always open to the public, so it didn't matter that neither of us were students - Tony wanted me to go try for a tech job with him. I dragged my feet.

"You don't sound excited about this!" he barked at me.

"I don't think I'm qualified to do anything."

"I'm not qualified either! Let's just go." Tony'd owned his own stage lighting company since he was 13; if he wasn't qualified, who was? I went with him. I spent the next ten years exclusively with the university theater department, then found I was also at home in other theater companies. As I write this, I'm preparing for the final dress rehearsal of a show, one I'm in with my husband and two of my kids. There are no words adequate to thank someone for handing you your identity back.

Most of the time, girls Tony was dating, and girls who wanted to date him, didn't worry about me at all, since I was obviously not a romantic rival. Sometimes, though, someone resented me. After Tony and Jeanette broke up, a girl working on a show with Tony and me took the opportunity to ask him out. He was taking the breakup pretty hard, and told her, "I just can hardly stand to even look at anyone female right now. I don't even want to be in the same room with any females." She was disappointed; in a few minutes, she became angry – at me.

Tony asked me, in the course of conversation, if I wanted to go to a movie the next night. Incensed, the girl said, "I thought you couldn't even look at anything female right now!" Tony looked at me, back at the girl, and expressed his puzzlement.

"That's not a female! That's Sharon."

The poor girl was fairly lukewarm to me after that, even years later.

When I got married, Tony stood beside my husband. When my first child was born, he brought a tiny T-shirt to the hospital that was a replica of our high school drama guild shirts. My children have called him "Uncle Tony" all of their lives. When he got married on New Year's Eve, I bought a black and gold formal to wear. When he broke his back, I drove him on errands and prayed for his recovery.

For years, he had the Midas touch. Nothing he tried failed, or turned out badly, or lost money. Since he never does anything in a small way, when it all went to hell it was really, truly hell.

Tony probably doesn't remember this, but when things got really ugly, with the cocaine, the booze and the craziness, I told him that he could only screw up badly in front of my kids once, and then he wouldn't see them again until they were 25. I meant it, too. He may not remember it, but somewhere he internalized it. He may have been absent from our lives for months at a time, but he never made me question whether he could be around my kids. He came close only once. The few horror stories they've heard, they've heard now that he's sober. They never had to watch him spiral out of control. That's a gift, too, to me and to them.

"Can you imagine me on cocaine?" he asked at one of our theater reunions. (Yes, we organize our own high school reunions, just for those of us from the theater department.) We all said the same things. "I don't have to – I saw it!" "It was ugly." "You're so lucky you never really saw it, Tony." "God help me, it was awful."

When Tony decided to get sober, he was a mess. His hands shook. His memory was dreadful. More than once, we'd be somewhere in public and someone would approach, saying, "Hey, man, it's been a long time. How are you?" Tony would have an entire conversation, then ask me after they'd gone, "Who was that, and how do I know them?"

His life sounds more like melodramatic fiction than a real life. It's not, I promise you. You will find yourself disbelieving what he has to say, but it all happened.

Tony is exasperating, clueless, infuriating, loving, amazing, talented beyond belief and his own worst enemy. I love him with all my heart.

Love him or hate him, you'll never forget him.

******************

I'm not sure what it will be like to be here on Earth without him.

I wish him peace in the next life.

I am so glad that those of us who knew him have each other to lean on right now.

I miss you, my brother. I always will.

First Concert Memories

I clearly remember my 15 year old self puzzling my mother by asking, "Can I go to New York City next month?" I knew the answer was likely to be no. But I had to take the chance, gamble on the long shot, that it would be yes.

I think it was the "next month" that threw her. It wasn't a nebulous, "some day" question. It had a deadline, and a rapidly approaching one. Still, I was 15, money didn't grow on trees, and New York was dangerous and 3,000 miles away.

"No! You cannot! Why do you want to go, anyway?" I'd never expressed an interest in New York City before.

"Simon and Garfunkel are reuniting and giving a concert in Central Park. It'll only happen this once."

My older sister never liked or understood my taste in music. She referred to it as "old weirdo music." She was a huge disco fan. I wasn't exactly clear on what defined disco - the explanation that it was "dance music" made little sense. I knew I wasn't a huge fan of her records, though. Mostly, I liked music that was 15 or 20 years old, or even older. I'd listened to my mom's records most of my life, and loved Ed Ames. I knew Tennessee Ernie Ford, Harry Belafonte and Robert Goulet. I loved the records my older brother and oldest sister had, too, lots of late 60s folk music. Those were the kind of songs I remembered my elementary school music teacher teaching us. In the early to mid 80s, when I was in high school, none of this was big with many kids my age.

Simon and Garfunkel were special. I couldn't believe they'd broken up, and it upset me that there was bad blood between them. Now, they were getting back together, but it was just for one night, and it was clear across the country! I remember clearly when I heard the announcement over my little transistor radio in our family's only bathroom. I leaned on my mom a bit, knowing it was hopeless. "But Mom! This is my only chance to see them, ever!"

It wasn't, as it turned out. Buoyed by the reception in Central Park, discovering that they could indeed work together again, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel planned a new album and a nationwide tour.

It may have been the memory of my out of the blue request two years earlier that made my mother receptive to the idea of letting me go. I'd never been to a concert at all, any concert. "And it's so much closer than New York, Mom! It's just in Oakland! I've been to Oakland before!"

Depending on who was driving, Oakland was three or four hours from home. That wasn't really the iffy part of the equation. The ticket price was doable, especially since I was the only child left at home and I had a part time job that earned me a bit of my own spending money. The kicker was that the friends I wanted to go with were Tony Perry and his brother Guy, and it meant two nights away from home to do the trip the way they planned it.

What they really wanted was a huge road trip with a dozen or more of us. We'd done that before, taking a trip to Disneyland. There were probably 20 kids and one adult.

             As it turned out, Bob, his girlfriend and Jeanette and his best friend Tim were the only other group going. They would go to Oakland in Bob's car and share a room. Tony, Guy, myself and a friend of theirs that I'd never met, named Kim, would go in Tony's car and share a room. Tony wanted to leave early, very early in the morning the day of the concert, so he wanted a huge sleepover at his and Guy's house the night before. That way, we could all get ready and leave together. Oh, and by the way, his parents were gone somewhere, and wouldn't be supervising this sleepover. I told my mother all of this.

             And, my mom said yes. "We cannot tell your father where you're going," she insisted. She remembers telling him that I'd gone on a church youth group trip. Dad would have just burst a blood vessel or something if he knew the whole plan. Granted, it all sounds like an invitation to disaster. But it wasn't.

Thankfully, my mother knew a great deal about all of us. She knew who drank, who took drugs, who was having sex, and with whom. She knew because I discussed it with her. She knew that I was not only doing none of the above, but that to a point they all toned it down around me. She knew that Tony did not drink or do drugs. She trusted his driving, even if he occasionally went a bit too fast for her. She'd ridden with him through Los Angeles traffic and nine hours home through the desert. She knew we wouldn't be doing any "fooling around." She knew we were all genuinely excited about the concert, not about unsupervised time together. If we wanted that, it could be had without a trip. So, the answer was yes, I could go.

The night before we left, Tony and Guy had us all over for a party. The question of who would sleep where in the 4 bedroom house was solved by deciding, we'd all sleep in the kitchen! The sectional sofa was pushed into the corner of the kitchen. They dragged what looked like every mattress in the house out, and shoved them all together in front of the sectional. We all sat on them and watched TV. I set up my camera and took a time delayed photo of all of us, piled on the huge bed and grinning. When at least half the kids went home, those of us sleeping over grabbed blankets and bedded down for the night.

We were all facing different directions. I was next to a guy named Pat, someone I barely knew. Tony's and Alicia's feet were at my shoulders and ribs, their bodies pointing away from me. I think Bob was at my feet, across the bottom of the mattress. I was near the seam where two of the mattresses joined, which actually helped keep me from rolling too far. I was trying so hard not to touch Pat, not to kick someone or be kicked, trying not to snore (which I do) that I actually slept very little.

The only thing resembling impropriety was that two of us, on what was ever after called The Big Bed, kissed after the lights were out. (Not me, by the way.) That was it. There were no hormonal surges on display.

I was still tired in the morning. It was dark when we left to go pick up Kim, since she hadn't slept over with us.

I had to drop Tony and Guy around the corner to wait, and pick up this girl that I'd never met, by myself. She lived with her grandmother, a woman who didn't particularly like Tony, and she had told grandma that she and I were going alone.

I was told all of this pretty much as we were pulling over and the boys climbed out. It was unnerving. Our parents knew what we were doing, and I wasn't prepared for this. I was told where I'd supposedly met Kim before – I don't remember where it was - because they were sure I'd be asked. They left out the important stuff, though.

Kim's grandmother asked where we were staying. Kim whispered, "Aunt." "I guess with Kim's aunt," I said, as grandma glared and Kim hissed, "Your aunt." "I mean, with my aunt. She lives pretty near the Coliseum. But I've never been to the Coliseum before, so I'm not sure how close, " I babbled. We tried to hustle out of the house as quickly as we could.

I was completely unnerved and growly when we picked up the guys. "You didn't tell me we were supposed to be staying with my aunt! I almost blew the whole thing right there!" I griped about having to not only be deceitful, but also trying to match the story they'd obviously concocted together but left me out of. But, now we were all ready, the station wagon was loaded, and we headed out over the Sierras.

Kim and I sat together in the back. I was actually a bit nervous about her. The Perry brothers tended to make girls swoon, and if she was going to spend the weekend mooning over one of them, it was going to be annoying for me. Luckily, she was nice, levelheaded and not swooning.

Like many brothers, Tony and Guy were in some ways the same and in some ways vastly different. Money brought out one of the differences. Guy liked to collect it for its own sake, to just look at it and enjoy accumulating it. Tony spent it freely, sometimes much too freely. I don't remember how much money Guy had on this trip, but he frequently fanned out the bills and sat looking at them and recounting them, despairing when their number dwindled.

The three passengers took turns in the front seat, and I was in front when Tony and Guy got into an argument about money. We were all buying our own food and souvenirs, so those costs were flexible, but we were splitting the gas and hotel cost evenly. Tony had just filled up the station wagon in Sacramento and asked us to pay him for our share of the gas. Guy fanned out his bills again, complaining that "if I give you that much, I'll only have (X number of) dollars left!" Tony argued that Kim and I had pitched in willingly, and Guy argued that that ought to be enough. They went back and forth, getting louder and angrier, until Tony pulled over at a scenic overlook, got out of the car, went to the passenger door and forcibly snatched money out of Guy's hand. For several more miles, Guy sat fanning out his money, counting it and whimpering. Poor Guy was miserable.

I don't remember where we stayed. It was in Oakland, someplace sensible like a Travelodge. I can't remember if we worried about being too young to rent it. At 17, either Tony or I could pass for being of legal age. The room was in Tony's name, and he had enough gift of gab to smooth it over if somebody questioned our age, I'm sure. It's only as an adult that it occurs to me that we couldn't legally rent our own room. We'd done it before, at Disneyland, and I wasn't worried about doing it again.

I don't remember where Bob, Jeanette and Tim were staying. It was either in the same hotel or close by. They, like us, got a double room and split the cost.

After checking in, we crossed the bay to spend our day in San Francisco. We did the tourist thing, hanging out at Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. I had my camera, as always, but I didn't want to take too many pictures. I wanted to save them for the concert, hoping that I could get some good ones there.

As performers ourselves, we watched the street performers with interest. We sat down on a planter to watch one, a charismatic juggler. Tony was a very good juggler himself, often juggling knives or his fire sticks. Balls and juggling pins were OK, but too boring for him. As we watched the San Francisco juggler, he handed his fire sticks to an audience member, a teenage girl three seats down from Tony. After he lit them, he said to her, "OK! Now, juggle!" She looked horrified, and the crowd laughed. We all speculated about what the juggler would have done if he'd handed Tony the fire sticks, because Tony would have stood up and juggled them.

Tony had painted a design on the back of the ivory sweat jacket he wore that day. Tony loved to design commemorative clothing. He did most of the T-shirt designs for our drama guild, and had designed our black satin drama guild jackets. This design said, "Simon and Garfunkel" in multicolored letters, and had the date, 1983. We ate dinner that night someplace like Denny's, a spot where the concert techies were also eating, unbeknownst to us. Also unbeknownst to us, Tony had virtually duplicated the official tour logo on his jacket. He discovered that fact when he was paying for our dinner and one of the roadies approached him. They had already paid, and were leaving the restaurant. "Come on, man, you've gotta get on the bus. We're gonna be late," the man told him, and tried to herd him out the door to the tour bus.

Tony was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. He looked at the bus loading in the parking lot, at the shirts and jackets they wore, and at the man trying to hurry him out. "I'm not a roadie. I'm just a fan. We're going to the concert tonight," he told him. Walking back to the table to tell us the story, he was already kicking himself. "I shoulda just gone with them! Nobody would have known! I could have gone backstage! I could fit in. I could find a job to do." For the rest of the night he would periodically say, "I can't believe I didn't get on the bus!"

I don't think I'd ever been in a bigger crowd than the crowd at the Oakland Coliseum. I was amazed that we found Bob, Jeanette and Tim. I couldn't believe how many people were there, and I couldn't believe that I was actually one of them.

Our seats were on the bleachers somewhere on the right side of the stage. We could see the stage itself, but they had set up a huge movie screen above the stage so that everyone would have an up close view of the show. I can't remember what the age of the other concert goers was. I doubt that I noticed. Tony had either just made a friend – not at all unusual – or had met someone he already knew, because I remember talking to a blond man, close to our age, whose ticket was for the floor of the Coliseum.

I honestly don't remember if there was an opening act. I doubt it. I remember clearly that when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel took the stage, the roar was deafening. Their first song was "Cecelia."

I don't remember who I sat next to or who was around us. I was amazed that I was there, really there, hearing these legendary men sing. I snapped photos of the stage and screen and listened to the songs I'd known all my life.

The blond man came back, asking us if we wanted to go down on the floor with him. It was much closer to the stage. I was worried that we'd get in trouble, that we'd get kicked out, that the other fans would be angry. My timidity was overridden, (actually, blatantly disregarded by everyone else,) and we walked down the bleachers between fans, excusing ourselves, and were led to a spot near the center of the floor, so close that we could almost see the expressions on the singers' faces. Whoever we were next to there was welcoming, not angry, at our appearing there during the show. We cheered, we sang along, we had a great time.

At one point, Paul Simon brought out and introduced his wife. I didn't recognize her – someone had to point out to me that she was Carrie Fisher. As well as all the old stuff, the duo sang some music from their new album. Even though I don't own the song and it's been many years since the concert, I can still hear the chorus in my head from one new song: "Maybe I think too much, maybe I think too much." They didn't chat too much with each other or the audience, and there were a couple of glimmers of the rift that had kept them apart. Responding to the applause after one number, Art said to the crowd, "How about us, huh?" The crowd cheered, but Paul snapped at him, "I wrote the song."

          I took more photos, hoping they'd do the sight justice. Someone told me not to bother, that they wouldn't turn out, but I took them anyway. They did turn out surprisingly well, too. They were a bit gray, and the stage lights washed out the faces a bit, but they were still pretty good photos. I wish I could find the negatives, or even the prints today. One hung on my wall when I was a kid. They're probably in a box somewhere.

At one point Tony turned to me. "The bad part about this being your first concert," he said, "is that it will ruin any other concert for you. Nothing else will ever be this good." I wondered if he was right. Even if he was, it didn't worry me.

I think there were three encores, but it may only be two. As they sang one of their final numbers, I turned away from the stage to look at the crowd. I'll never forget that sight. The stadium was full, packed, with people singing, waving lighters, sharing the moment with the singers and each other. It was amazing.

I don't remember seeing anyone intoxicated. They were probably there somewhere, but they didn't ruin my night by being near me – or at least, being obvious. Even as we all filed out and left the parking lot, everyone seemed to be smiling, happy and courteous.

I bought a commemorative program, two T-shirts and a small button for my jacket that just said, "Simon and Garfunkel." I think I planned to tell my dad that they were gifts from Tony and Guy if he asked, but I don't think he ever did. I wore them often, too. I'm wearing one shirt in the drama guild photo in my senior yearbook.

I was exhausted after the concert. We went back to the room and got ready for bed. We'd asked for a rollaway on the theory that somebody might be squeamish about sharing a bed. We didn't use it, though. Tony and Guy slept in one bed, Kim and I in the other. I no longer really cared if I snored or if I kicked Kim. I needed sleep more than I needed vanity.

At some point, I became aware of an annoying noise. It didn't go away; it got louder and louder. Finally I was awake enough to identify the sound – someone was knocking repeatedly on our door. Nobody else woke up. I literally stumbled out of bed and toward the door. I barely had presence of mind to look through the peephole. It was Tim.

I probably said something deeply unwelcoming, like, "What are you doing here?" It turned out that Bob and Jeanette wanted privacy, leaving Tim nowhere to sleep. I invited him in. I think he or I woke one of the guys. I think he slept on the rollaway, or maybe the floor. I was asleep again in about 60 seconds.

When we got back home the next day, I had to settle for telling my mom, "It was great!" in a whisper. The details had to wait.

A month later, my newspaper advisor let me write a long, wordy review of the concert for the school paper. I still have it somewhere. She rarely, if ever, cut my work. It was very sweet of her.

I put the pin on the collar of my favorite jacket. On the other side, I put a Beatles button. A friend of mine named Angie personified the era's popular punk music. She had the spiked hair, fingerless gloves, black clothes and T-shirts from groups I didn't recognize and whose names, not to mention lyrics, were often profane. My buttons caused her to roll her eyes. "Get with it! Listen to something recorded this decade! Forget the music that's been around since before you were born!" I didn't, though.

Just a couple of years ago, a friend asked me if I'd ever consider letting my kids do the same thing. He knows how fiercely protective we are, and wondered if having teenage daughters changed the way I thought about the trip. If I thought there was a chance there would be sex or drugs or other recklessness going on, it would be a definite no go. But, I told him truthfully, "If they were all going to behave the same way we did, you bet I would let them go. In a heartbeat."

A popular party game among members of our church in the small town we lived in years later was a "Guess Who?" game. Each person wrote down on a piece of paper a little known fact about themselves. The host would read them out loud, and the party goers would have to guess who each referred to. One woman frequently put that she'd never had a cavity. My husband often said that his two front teeth are false. I almost always wrote that I've attended a Simon and Garfunkel concert. Given that I was only born in 1966, no one ever guessed that it was me.