The Bug came with an AM radio, which was limiting if you were 16 years old and feeling free for the first time in your life. Fred spent $79 for an 8-track tape player. The expense tapped him out. It was up to me to provide the tapes. I bought two, both by the Allman Brothers: Eat A Peach and Brothers and Sisters.

        I also brought a book of matches, to jam between the tape and the player, so the sound wouldn't wobble. Anybody who owned an 8-track knows what I'm talking about.

        We wore those tapes out. Whenever I hear “Blue Sky” now, I remember Fred's Bug, that spring and the blooming possibilities of a life just starting to move.

        One particularly soft day last week, I sat on the deck and thought about that ancient season. The Kid Down The Hall was inside. From an open window, I could hear Dicky Betts: “You're my blue sky, you're my sunny day.”

        What the . . .

        “What are you listening to?”

        “Allman Brothers,” he says.

        He is nearly 16. We have already fought the music war. It ended with me running a nail across the Snoop CDs. I don't mind teen rebellion. I'm not real big on misogyny and gratuitous violence.

        Since then, The Kid has gone retro. He has a poster of Jimi Hendrix on his wall. He says he wants to grow his hair to look like the Beatles, circa Rubber Soul. He's listening to the Allman Brothers. On a record player. One of these days, he's going to show up in a pair of white, high-cut Chucks.

        Wait a minute. He already did that.

        The Kid is reading On the Road, Jack Kerouac's trippy narrative about finding oneself on a coast-to-coast journey.

        “Why that book?” I wonder.

        “Jim Morrison said it was his favorite,” The Kid says. Jim Morrison sung for the Doors. He died in a bathtub in Paris, in 1971.

        Talk isn't abundant when you are the parent of a 16-year-old. Kids that age avoid you like zits. When the chance for actual conversation arises, you take what you can get.

        “Why are you listening to my Allman Brothers records?”

        “They sound good.”

        “I've always told you that. You always wondered how old Gregg Allman was. Why do you suddenly like their music?”

        “I've matured.”

        “How many people in your school wear Chucks?”

        “About four.”

        “Why do you wear them?”

        “I dunno.”

        “Anyone else listen to the Allman Brothers?”

        “A couple.”

        “Is there any of my music now you don't like?”

        “All that soul stuff,” The Kid says. “Marvin Gaye. Al Green. That sucks.”

        He has taped my Rolling Stones records. He wants to borrow my Eagles stuff. He has burned all my Beatles CDs.

        The Beatles were scary for my parents. But their lyrics were hopeful and upbeat. All you need is love. We can work it out. Lyrics today are downbeat and hopeless, materialistic and crass.

        Music is not the reason kids behave the way they do. I didn't listen to Led Zeppelin to cop a heavy-metal attitude. But it is a reason.

        Music helps define kids now, same as it did then. On his way to figuring the way life works, I'd rather the Kid's brain be swayed by “something in the way she woos me” than by some other lyrics I've heard.

        It's his springtime now. The cars show up in the driveway, quieter than 27 years ago. No kids listen to 8-track tapes. But their futures are the same wide-open road.

        It's funny to hear the soundtrack to the Kid's life now; it sounds a lot like mine did then.
        Contact Paul Daugherty by phone: 768-8454; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.
       

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