When high school ended, nobody handed me a map.
Music was all I really wanted to do, but in 1976 Missouri wasn’t exactly the kind of place where an eighteen-year-old kid could make a living with a guitar. My parents wanted me to go to college, and if I’m being honest, it seemed like the smartest option I had. I wasn’t giving up on music. I just didn’t know how music could become a life. So I packed a few boxes, grabbed my guitar, and headed north to Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville. I signed up as a Business major.
With a Music minor.
That probably tells you everything you need to know about where my head was.
I loved music.
I just didn’t see much of a business case for making music and making a living at the same time. I’d met a handful of musicians who were making a decent living. I’d met a whole lot more who fit the description of “starving artist” perfectly.
I also liked to eat.
Business looked like a career. Music looked like a hobby. Turns out, appearances can be deceiving.
The First Lesson
Ironically, the first lesson I learned in college happened before I ever got there. A buddy from home and I headed for Maryville in his Firebird. Between the two of us, we had enough long hair to convince just about every highway patrolman in northwest Missouri that we were probably headed somewhere to do something we shouldn’t.
Sure enough…
Somewhere around Tarkio…
… the red lights came on.
Out of the car.
Search us.
Search the trunk.
Search under the seats.
Search under the hood.
They looked everywhere.
Eventually they shrugged, handed everything back, and sent us on our way. Even today, every time I hear Brewer & Shipley’s “Tarkio Road,” I can’t help but smile. “… looking inside the trunk… under the hood… hoping to find the secret places where you always keep your mind.” That lyric takes me right back to that afternoon.
Let’s just say…
The officers were looking in all the obvious places. Fortunately for two long-haired college freshmen, the secret places where we kept our minds were considerably harder to search. We climbed back into the Firebird and continued north.
College had officially begun.
The Wrestler
My second lesson had nothing to do with business. It had to do with my roommate.
He was a wrestler.
Apparently wrestlers don’t believe sleep is an essential part of the human experience. About two o’clock every morning he’d leap out of bed and begin doing push-ups and sit-ups on the dorm room floor.
Grunting.
Counting.
More grunting.
More counting.
That arrangement lasted less than a week. Since he looked like he could fold me into my own suitcase and carry me back to Independence, I decided it might be easier if I found another roommate instead. Fortunately, I knew another guy from home.
Before long we were roommates.
That’s when college really started.
Student Union Economics
I did attend classes.
At least…
… that was certainly my intention. Truth be told, I spent considerably more time in the Student Union than I did in the classroom. The Student Union had foosball tables. Foosball had a remarkable ability to become beer money.
Beer money occasionally became…
… well…
… pizza and “other” supplies.
At eighteen, that was all the business plan I needed.
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