Plan B, Lloyd And The Snowbus To Hell

The snowstorms hitting a wide swath of the country remind me of growing up and the presence of snow on the ground for long stretches of winter being a given.

The snow, though, also offered the possibility of the Snow Day which was a near-miraculous event, offering a glimmer of hope in the dead of winter. You slept in and only trudged out into the cold on your terms for your reasons.

As kids, it meant spending the day in someone’s den or basement playing Atari. Once we got our licenses, it meant the opportunity to do donuts in parking lots.

(there weren’t a lot of entertainment options in our hometown)

Of course, high school basketball had far greater influence than the primal forces of nature in the decision of whether school would be cancelled. The result was often the dreaded Plan B schedule – a tease if ever there was one – with school starting an hour or two later than usual in order to allow the games to go on.

Before me and my friends were old enough to drive, I’d usually get up early and catch a ride to school with my dad. If not, it was the bus. Plan B pared my options down to the latter.

We lived at the edge of our small town, where the terrain shifted from civilization – such as it was – to miles and miles of sparsely populated farmland. Our neighborhood was one of the first stops on our bus’ route. We would then spend nearly an hour rolling through the hinterlands on often narrow country backroads with hairpin curves, hills, and combinations of the two.

(the schoolboard obviously believed that the shortest distance between point A and point B ran through point Z)

Piloting the craft was Lloyd, a local farmer who had to be in his late ’60s. Always clad in denim overalls, a non-descript grey jacket and a hat from a nearby feed store, Lloyd’s enthusiasm for the job meant that some days he managed to stay awake for the entire trip.

(he might have been mute)

Adding a bus load of sixty or so screaming kids – disgruntled to have had a day off cruelly snatched away from them – to the mix of icy roads upped the degree of difficulty.

Throw in a couple of rickety bridges and the occasional white out and it made for a good time.

As the bus lurched along the route, often sliding to the precipice of wholesale disaster, we’d “oooh” and “ahhh.” Lloyd would cock his head ever so slightly, a gesture that assured us that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was still alive.

From the back of the bus, we’d yell out advice to Lloyd as we traversed the barely passable roads. Our favorite unsolicited suggestion was a line delivered by Scatman Crothers in the movie Zapped which seemed to air daily on cable.

“Forget the horn. The bus is stalled.”

In truth, the trek was likely far more perilous than we realized especially as we headed down the forty-five degree incline of an icy “Suicide Hill” guided by a drowsy fellow with the hand-to-eye coordination of an arm chair.

(queue up The Sweet Hereafter on Netflix for theatrical proof of such perils)

Yet, somehow, we always arrived at our appointed destination.

In what may have been a feeble attempt to quell the natives, Lloyd usually had the radio tuned to Q102, a popular Top 40 station out of Cincinnati. According to Billboard’s chart for this week in 1982, here are some of the songs we might have heard playing above our din…

Duran Duran – Hungry Like The Wolf
from Rio

Since we didn’t have MTV in 1982, we didn’t see the videos for Planet Earth and/or Girls On Film, making Hungry Like The Wolf our first exposure to Duran Duran. Like the rest of America, we took to it, and, though some of them might have been goofy as hell – Union Of The Snake and The Wild Boys come immediately to mind – Duran Duran did put out some ridiculously catchy singles in their heyday.

Men At Work – Down Under
from Business As Usual

Men At Work had dominated the radio during the late summer and early autumn of ’82 with Who Can It Be Now? By Christmas, Down Under had become the Aussie act’s second smash.

I do know that my friends and I had seen both of those videos on Casey Kasem’s America’s Top 10 and been delighted by lead singer Colin Hay’s expressive antics and emotive nature. And, I do know that I received a copy of Business As Usual for Christmas that year which I wore out.

A Flock Of Seagulls – A Space Age Love Song
from A Flock Of Seagulls

I’ve expressed my childhood allegiance to Liverpool’s A Flock Of Seagulls and chronicled playing pinball with lead singer Mike Score. I still have great affection for their music from the early ’80s.

Though A Space Age Love Song didn’t get nearly as much airplay as I Ran on Q102 (or any of the other stations at my disposal), it was my favorite track from the band’s self-titled debut (which was also a gift that Christmas).

Toni Basil – Mickey
from Word Of Mouth

Mickey was massive during Christmas ’82. It was weird. I’d never heard the song until it popped up on American Top 40. Overnight, it seemed as though every Top 40 station in range added it and proceeded to play it dozens of times a day until we were all sick of it.

It seemed to take about three weeks.

It was a fun song that became grating quickly. I snagged the vinyl of Word Of Mouth last spring and noticed that several members of Devo played on it. It was quirky New Wave – fun, but nothing aside from Mickey standing out. I might have to give it another shot.

Nothing Like The Threat Of Armageddon To Stoke An Appetite

Thanksgiving, like the once annual airing of The Wizard Of Oz used to be, is an event.

Yeah, some people make it out to be dysfunction junction (and for them, maybe it is), but getting to watch football all day on a day which usually would be spent slogging through work is a brilliant concept.

And, of course, it is a chance to feast.

It’s like being king for a day.

Bring me gravy! I shall gnaw on this turkey leg in a slovenly fashion as these superhumans on the television perform amazing feats for my amusement!

OK. It’s not necessarily that dramatic and, as the Lions always play on Thanksgiving Day, the feats are not always amazing in a good way.

(though I cannot imagine how empty a Thanksgiving without the Lions playing the early game would be – it would be like a Halloween without a visit from The Great Pumpkin)

One Thanksgiving was spent living in London, eating some take-out pizza in an ice-cold flat.

And, in a cruel twist, my favorite team, the Steelers, was making a rare Thanksgiving Day appearance. They would lose, in overtime after a bizarre coin toss snafu to begin the extra period.

It was a game that would have been maddening to have watched and it was maddening to miss.

Thanksgiving hasn’t been brilliant every year, but that year – no food, no football, no heat – is really the lone one I recall as being truly miserable.

As a kid, our parents dragged us off to mass. I mean, you have the day off school and can sleep in and lounge on the couch; the last thing you want to be doing at an early hour is trudging off to church.

When I was fifteen, the priest decided to use his sermon to rattle off a laundry list of accidental nuclear exchanges between the US and USSR that had been narrowly avoided.

(this was 1983 and two months earlier there had been all of the hullaballoo surrounding the television movie The Day After)

I kept having images of an extra crispy bird and excessively dry stuffing.

It was a bit of a bummer.

It was also a year when the Steelers had a Thanksgiving game. Detroit beat them 45-3.

I had forgotten (or blocked it out) and had to research who played that season.

But, global tensions and football smackdowns aside, I have no doubt that the food was good.

That autumn, I was still listening to a lot of Top 40 stations, but Q95, an album rock station out of Indianapolis, had caught my attention as well and 97X was exposing me on a semi-regular basis to modern rock for the first time. Some of the songs on the radio that Thanksgiving…

Men At Work – Dr. Heckyll And Mr. Jive
from Cargo

By the end of 1983, Men At Work, who had burst onto the scene a year earlier, was over. It was amazing how massive they were and how quickly it ended, but their quirky music still sounds delightful twenty-five years later.

Dr. Heckyll And Mr. Jive was their third hit from album number two and had been preceded by Overkill and It’s A Mistake on the airwaves. I still think the former is their finest moment, but the latter did little for me.

I don’t actually recall hearing Dr. Heckyll And Mr. Jive on the radio much, but I always smiled at the line, “He loves the world except for all the people.” Some days, it’s quite true.

Rufus And Chaka Khan – Ain’t Nobody
from Stompin’ At The Savoy

I wasn’t much into R&B growing up. There was one station and, on occasion, I would end up there, but, unless the song crossed over to the pop stations, I wasn’t likely hearing it.

Ain’t Nobody crossed over big time and it hooked me the first time I heard it.

Michael Stanley Band – My Town
from You Can’t Fight Fashion

Cleveland’s Michael Stanley was a major act in the Midwest in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Living on the Indiana/Ohio border, their music found its way onto many of the stations to which I was listening.

There was a lot of economic malaise in the first few years of the ’80s, especially in the Rust Belt. The punchy, anthemic My Town was rock straight from the heartland and its sing-a-long chorus got it a lot of airplay, especially when stations began editing in a shout out to their respective city – Cincinnati! – into the song.

Genesis – Mama (radio edit)
from Genesis

Paloma professes to like Phil Collins, yet, whenever a song of his pops up on shuffle, she invariably is displeased and hits next. It’s a fascinating phenomenon that has us both baffled.

As for Mama, it was the first song from Genesis’ followup to Abacab and the album continued the trio’s trend toward more pop-minded fare (for the most part). Mama, though, is a sinister sounding track which is what happens when your lead singer cackles like he’s been on a bender with Gary Busey.