6 – 1979 – Smashing Pumpkins (1996)
AND
9 – Disarm – Smashing Pumpkins (1994)
As I sit here listening, I’m not sure why I have these songs in my playlist. I’m not a big Smashing Pumpkins fan (I do like Billy Corgan, the Karl Pilkington of rock), but I remember thinking, when I was downloading from Grokster in 2002, that I needed some songs from the last 10 years. I like the bell in Disarm. My tastes run, as you will see, to the 60s, 70s, and 80s for the most part, very little music since the 90s.
I’m looking at the playlist and the most recent song is Viva La Vida, by Coldplay, a great song and one I repeat about 4 times every time it comes up in the shuffle (also another song with a bell, "more cowbell!!"). I can’t explain, but it gets me going every play and I sing along (when I’m alone in the car, which is most of the time in my daily 2-3 hour commute) at top volume.
Maybe 1979 reminds me of what I was doing that year. After going to Western Illinois for a year and a half to finish the coursework for my MA in History (http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/all/vf-uiu/Record/7278193), I came back to Accutronics in January of 1979 while I continued to revise my thesis and get ready for my defense of it. I was back as Production Supervisor (about 12K a year, not bad if you’re still living at home with your folks) and the first thing I did was go out and order a new Ford Mustang, the third Mustang I had owned, having had two 1968 Mustangs earlier in the decade that I had through college and grad school. I had even gone so far as to have the second one restored, replacing wheel wells and floorboards.
I finally finished the revision of my thesis in mid-1979. My thesis advisor had also asked me to add some maps of the various battles the 36th Illinois had fought in. This required me to find a book that was old enough such that the copyright had run out so I could copy the maps and insert them into the text. This was in the bad old days, before word processing, when the whole thesis was typed. Western Ill. had certain specs for your submission, particular fonts that had to be used and rag content of the paper for the two copies you provided, along with the original. All three copies would then be bound, one went into the main WIU library, one went to the history department, and the third I got to keep.
However, if revisions requested by my advisor, Dr. Victor Hicken, author of “Illinois in the Civil War” (http://www.amazon.com/Illinois-Civil-War-Victor-Hicken/dp/0252061659/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330711646&sr=1-6), were too extensive, i.e. added more than one or two words to a line, it meant that I had to re-type that page and every page in the chapter after the revision. So I tried to fit revisions as best I could to avoid this.
When I started on my thesis, I spent several months visiting libraries in Northern Illinois, looking for local papers from the 1861-1865 time period. I finally settled on the Aurora Beacon, the Woodstock Sentinel, and the Elgin Daily News, because each had one or two correspondents from the regiment who wrote regular letters to the paper, describing what was going on in the regiment or had transpired in a recent battle.
The 36th Illinois, also known as the Fox River regiment, since the companies came from towns along the Fox River in North Eastern Illinois, fought in many of the Western theater battles, Pea Ridge, Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and the Battle of Atlanta. Then, when Sherman marched off to the sea, through Georgia, the 36th was sent back up to Nashville, where they suffered more casualties. (The 36th suffered the highest % of KIA of all Illinois regiments, I seem to recall)
The Aurora, Woodstock, and Elgin libraries each had the newspapers on microfilm and for 10 cents a page, I could get a negative image photocopy of the letters I found. I then cut each letter out and mounted it on a page of loose-leaf filler paper and recorded the date and a synopsis of what the letter covered, then placed them in order by date, making 5 binders for 1861-1865.
Then a friend from my early Accu days who was attending the University of Illinois, majoring in Engineering, Bob W., got me a copy of the 36th Illinois’ 800 page regimental history, which I used to outline the movements of my regiment and I began to write. After a month or so, I had to return the book to the U. of I, and my mother called to tell me that someone in Algonquin had a copy which they would let me use (it was a pristine copy that they let me keep and I still have it next to my thesis on the bookshelf at home).
Each night, between 10PM and 4AM I would write, describing troop movements, battles, etc., pulling description from the letters written home to the local papers. While writing, I listened to Bach, Kottke, and ELO. I would try to write one page per night, minimum. I write very small and using narrow lined paper, one page was about 700 words. At that rate, I wrote one chapter each week for 5 weeks (typing the pages up each weekend) and turned them in to my advisor.
Anyway, back at Accu I worked on getting my thesis in shape and moved out into an apartment in Cary with my books and new $800 VCR (and $300 in blank tapes). One night, my friend Mike C., the Quality manager, had me over to his house for dinner. I packed up my VCR (remember, in 1979 these were bulky as a box of rocks) and two six packs of Leinenkugel bock, and showed up at his house.
After a nice dinner, and several beers, we settled down to watch tapes from that new-fangled HBO, “National Lampoon’s Disco Beaver From Outer Space” and a Robin Williams special (this was before I burned out on him and he became an annoyingly overbearing stand-up to me). After several more beers, Mike and I decided to go looking for a former friend from Accutronics, Mike U., who we had not seen in 3-4 years, at some local bars.
It was now after midnight on a Wednesday and we started in Cary at a bar, having more beer there, shooting some pool. Then, when the bar closed at 2AM, we decided to drive down to Fox River Grove to a bar in a bowling alley (or a bowling alley in a bar, it had only 6 lanes, I think) and as we started out, a Cary cop lit us up. Mike pulled over and reached under the seat, pulled out a .45 and handed it to me, telling me to put it in the glove compartment.
I did as I was told.
When the cop came up to Mike’s window, he hadn’t seen our little game of hot potato, thankfully, and Mike put on one of the finest performances of sobriety I’ve ever seen. He got off with a warning and we continued on our merry way to the bar/bowling alley where we stayed until 3:30AM or so when we decided we weren’t going to find the other Mike and we had work in 3 hours so we’d better call it a night.
After returning to Mike’s, I loaded up my car and drove home for about 2 hours sleep, then got up and went in to work at 7AM.
Mike didn’t make it in that day.
When I was 24, I could pull off that kind of stuff. Not so today.
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