For the Love of Bob and WVBO
by Kelly Kerrigan
Waves lifted us up, then down, like the clap of hands meeting as a curtain closes. The sun sat with us all day, coloring my skin a darker olive shade and my dad a darker shade of red in the places the rays snuck past his sunscreen, like the bridge between his sunglasses and his nose. The radio was tuned to 103.9 WVBO – the valley’s greatest oldies of the ’60s and ’70s. Alongside played the clink of glass bottles, the hiss of a pop can, and the engine’s hum which lingered with the scent of petroleum. We spent every waking hour of daylight on that boat, on that lake. Our nights were spent with a boombox radio, the choir of grasshoppers, and the crackle from the fire that sounded like spring rain when you closed your eyes. I thought everyone knew those songs until I grew up. Back then, we’d drive to town to the local watering hole, the Fin ‘N’ Feather, a stationary Ferry boat from 1922. Us kids would jump around in circles, our parents teaching us how to dance as the golden sun loitered much too long like mist in the morning, as though it were terrified to say goodnight. So were we.
Now, a yellowing patch of grass presses against the dirt in an L shape where the cottage once resided. I can still see the ridges of the room I slept in and the back porch with the wooden picnic table my uncle found near his high school dumpster. My dad drove me to see it, the nothingness that sat there between the sunset and the water blanketing the rocks, and the dock where I used to count the stars and lie upside down over the edge to know what it felt like to really fall.
When it came, I didn’t know it was my last day on that boat. On that lake. I never got to say goodbye. Sometimes, last times roll in like the morning sun and fade like the Little Dipper at dusk; and next thing you know, you never see the things, the people, you love again.
They weren’t the Summers of ‘69, but as a child, I always thought that my summers on Lake Winnebago must’ve felt like what Bryan Adams was singing about. Mom always pointed her finger left and right when the radio played that one about Julio in the school yard. What a weird song, I remember thinking. Did that guy in “Sister Golden Hair” regret leaving the altar all those years ago? I dreamed of “Ventura Highway” long days, strong nights, alligator lizards in the air. It sounded like what heaven must be like. We’d all sing along to “Piano Man.” I remember always squeezing my eyes shut and crossing my fingers as a song met its last beat and the radio jockey’s hushed voice came in: Please, please, can they play the one about Silly Love Songs.
When I was seven, my uncles taught me about “Margaritaville” and Jimmy. We’d drive the boats, all the neighbors and their kids too, and meet at Fratello’s – the restaurant that sprawled on the edge of the Fox River in Oshkosh. Me and my cousins would run up and down the piers. Take a few bites of our chicken strips to please our parents, and each order four kiddie cocktails we’d never finish. Extra cherries, please – that’d kiss our skin a sticky crimson shade. The local band would be dressed in leather and Ray-Ban aviators and sing covers of the songs they played on WBVO. “Play Margarittaville!” I’d shout at the singer with a wadded-up five-dollar bill tight in my fist from my Uncle. She’d giggle, impressed, and nod to the band. “Bribery is always okay, if it’s for the love of a song.”
There’s one song that always reminds me of the lake, the pizza from Omoro topped with fresh Wisconsin cheddar that squeaked with every bite, and the Milwaukee’s Best Beer my Grandma Barb sipped on the porch in her one-piece swimsuit until the sun freed the sky of blue. I don’t remember the first time I heard Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” I just always knew it. When I was five, six, twelve, thirteen, I knew nothing of Bob Seger beyond the mullet on the CD cover and the way my dad acted when that song came on the radio.
I now know that Segar said he wrote the song after watching American Graffiti, full of fuel. He wanted to tell his story. Midwestern nights when the heat of the day still lingered past midnight. Making love in the back of a ’60s Chevy in the woods of Ann Arbor. The first girl he loved married someone else, and he had to write a song about it; maybe she’d come back, no, he knew she wouldn’t. And that’s not what the song is about. Songs are never actually about what they say they are. But he still had to tell it, still had to explain why. They were young, restless and bored. He, a little too tall, a little too skinny, the awkward teenage blues. And it was summertime. Sweet, sweet summertime.
Drummer Charlie Allen Martin promised Bob he’d push his crystal memories of youth along. Each clash saying, you got this, this is your story. This is everyone’s story now. But those nights belonged to Bob’s youth. Bob’s freedom. They used each other and neither one cared, they waited for the storms to kiss their love affair goodbye. He’d forgotten all about it until 30 years later, Bob woke up to the sound of thunder, and there he was in ‘62. Living in the night. One sound, one scent, one name, and there you are, as though you never left.
And just like Bob, one day I woke up to the reverb of thunder, and without warning, I was a grown-up, and those days on the lake had vanished. That song, that station, forever an imprint of what a season should sound like. Now Bob’s song belongs to me and my adolescence. When I hear it, I’m back in high school sneaking out with my boyfriend to jump in his neighbor’s pool, I’m drinking my first beer, I’m dancing around my kitchen in the winter pretending it’s July. But first, I’m always there; at that lake, on that boat, listening to WBVO; all of it is still intact, just like we last left it.
Quarter Notes Magazine 