Carrying the Lantern

Mike Taht turned 40 a few days ago. Sorry I missed it, so here's a belated happy one for the big guy. Mike was born the summer of '65, on a day with five launches. I was just out of high school and getting unready for college. The family was just done camping one last time out at Hither Hills, near Montauk, where a year earlier I had fallen for a sweetie from the Bronx named Janice Planamenta. I think, by August 12, we were on another camping trip, this time up to Kring Point State Park, at the Thousand Islands, where my friend Bob Fischer and I wet out in a canoe with an outboard clamped to the side, picked up some beer (we had both just turned 18) at a marina, and killed it camping on an island out in the St. Lawrence somewhere, as giant freight-carrying ships eased up and down the deep channel, like moving walls blocking our view of the Canadian side. The radio was playing Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, Sonny & Cher's I Got You Babe, the Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, the Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody, the Byrds Mister Tamborine Man, the Beach Boy's California Girls, Barbara Lewis' Baby I'm Yours, the Four Tops' I Can't Help Myself and the Beatles' Help!. There was a fabulous overlap of Folk, Motown, Beatles, Surf, Pop and teen romance ballads. FM was just getting hot, although Top 40 AM radio had nearly a decade left. At night we listened to WABC and WKBW while camping in both places, hanging out on the boats and beaches, feeling all grown up, or something like it.

I don't think I ever camped with the family again after that. I was off to college, and worked every summer, earning money for more college. By the time I got out, I was already married with a kid on the way. The Vietnam War was tearing the world apart and the paradise that was Summer was something that had to wait for my own kids to appreciate. So, as Sonny and Cher put it...

- Posted by William A. Riski - 10:11:17 PM - comment []