A Kid and His Convertible ~ Part 5 of My Generation

The yellows and oranges of fall were just starting to color the October Atlanta foliage. This was usually a time for high-schoolers to sneak Schnapps into football stadiums, but for me it was time to work. I had to pay my dad for the Alfa Romeo, and put a few bucks aside in case my mom actually gave in to me seeing The Who.

I’d landed a job parking cars at a local restaurant. It was as upscale as its poetically pretentious name: The Lark and the Dove. It sat cradled in a hill above the freeway, so when you walked in you had to go down a set of stairs into the dining room. It almost gave the effect of being announced at a royal event: Doo, da, da, loo! The Jones’ of Sandy Springs. Only there was no horn, just some light and easy jazz, and there was no official announcer, just one of the revolving door of beautiful hostesses leading the Jones’ to their table.

Not that I spent any time in the dining room. I was lucky to get a cup of the soup du jour, but on this crisp evening one of the sous chefs brought out just that.

“For you amigo.” he said as he handed me a thick and creamy broccoli concoction with steam still coming off the top. I stupidly tried some without letting it cool and immediately spit it back into the bowl so it wouldn’t burn my throat like it just did my tongue.

“No good?” he asked.

“Too hot.”

“Pinche gente! I tell them turn down fire, but they don’ listen to sous chef. In Mexico, I chef, they listen.”

Miguel arrived in the spring from Mexico and he got a job at The Lark through his cousin, who did cleanup for the restaurant. His brothers had already moved out to Atlanta when they heard about all the construction work in the booming metropolis. But Miguel wasn’t like his brothers who could carry fifty-pound bags of cement, or bang nails, or work on their knees laying floors all day. No, Miquel was more of an artist, and his medium was food. Unfortunately, he had to pay his dues by making piping hot broccoli soup instead of spicy hot tortilla soup.

“What does pinche gente mean anyway?”

“Fucking people.”

“Like people fucking?”

“No, like when you…” He held up a fist like he was pissed off at someone.

“Oh, I get it. Like when a guy driving a nice new car hands me some spare change for a tip. Pinche gente!”

“Si!” exclaimed Miguel even if he didn’t understand every word of what I had just said. He headed for the back entrance where all the kitchen crew came in and out. “Adios muchacho.”

I ate some more soup now that it had cooled, and got my tickets and key board in order for the night. The job was easy as long as you were organized. Knowing your cars was helpful too.

I heard the deep rev of the engine before I saw it: a newer model Mustang, cleaned all the way down to its shiny tires. Good for a two-spot at the very least, I thought to myself as I eyed the young-looking driver.

I worked for tips. No hourly wage. I’d usually get a dollar per car, sometimes a five or even twenty on the rare occasion. I’d gotten pretty good at figuring out how much of a tip I’d get on instinct as soon as the car pulled in: Buick with the seat pulled up so the old lady driving could kiss the steering wheel?… Change from a coin-purse if you were lucky; Big Cadillac with white leather seats?… Peacock who might give you a five or a ten; Red Ferrari?… Not what you’d think. Two or three bucks tops. These guys didn’t get their Ferraris by throwing around cash.

Parking cars gets you right into people’s personal space. Especially their smells. You could tell if someone was trying to get laid, or why they weren’t getting laid the minute you jumped into their car. A lingering smell of perfume and a sexy Sade CD queued up and you knew someone was trying to get laid. Fast-food wrappers and stale cigarette smoke and you could just feel the frustration. Some people never cleaned out their ashtrays. Others never cleaned period. Some tried to cover up smells with worse smells. Then there were the brand new cars that smelled of leather and whatever magical concoction created what can only be described as new car smell.

I opened the Mustang’s passenger door to a waft of a tropical island and the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She smiled demurely at me as she got out and pushed back her slightly damp hair, revealing ocean-green eyes. I stood there dumbfounded with her door still open.

“Shut the door!” the driver growled at me from his seat. And as soon as I did, he took off.

Pinche gente, I thought, as I hurriedly went to grab the front door of the restaurant for the beauty with the beast. She kind of giggled as I made a grand gesture and said, “welcome to the Lark and the Dove.” Only later did I find out that she was one of the new hostesses and her name was Mia.

I was mid-shift running for cars, when Dave pulled up in his orange Camaro blowing smoke out of the tailpipe. He looked like he had just gotten done working; he was sweating even in this cold weather.

“Yo, dude, I’m not feeling too good. Where’s the bathroom in there?”

“Entry level, all the way to the back.”

He threw me his keys and ran inside. I got into his Camaro and took in what could only be described as gym locker mixed with sick hospital bed smell.

About ten minutes later, Dave came out looking slightly less sweaty than when he went in.

“Don’t go near the bathroom dude.”

“What happened?”

“I went past the hot hostess and paused for a minute to chat her up. By the time I made it to the bathroom, it was coming out of both ends. I had to leave my underwear in there.”

I handed him back his keys and said “If anyone asks, we don’t know each other.”

“Too late, I told the hot hostess I was your best friend.”

Later that evening I was waiting for my last car to leave. I was hoping to get out of there before Dave’s bathroom incident came back to bite me, so I walked into the restaurant to check on the stragglers. They were at a table with a bottle of wine between them, still half full. The waitress for that station was so frustrated, she was about to yell fire to get them the hell out of there. I had the option to give them their keys and tell them I was closing up and hope for a tip, but I eyed Mia and decided I might stay for a minute.

She was reading a book, unfazed by the frustration all around her. I noticed the title of the book had “motorcycle maintenance” in it. Who was this girl? I thought as I approached her hostess stand.

“You fix motorcycles?” I asked stupidly.

She laughed a laugh that was deep and almost musical. She thought I was being funny. She put the book down and I saw the whole title: “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

“Just trying to fix myself I guess.”

Like there could be anything wrong with you,I thought, but just said “oh?”

She took that as an opening. “And I think I might need to work on my boyfriend as well. He was supposed to be here an hour ago to pick me up…”

“I’m leaving now if you need a ride?” I said as I almost threw the stragglers their keys.

“That would be nice.”

“I’ll grab my car and meet you up front.”

I pulled up in my Alfa and saw her standing there adjusting her scarf blowing in the wind like a scene from a Doisneau portrait. She got in, and that’s when I saw the headlights behind me. I recognized the roar of the engine, only this time it sounded like it was roaring at me: The boyfriend had arrived.

He got out and approached my car door before I could blink. His tenor matched the roar of his engine. He was a big guy, but only looked bigger from the low seat of my Alfa Romeo. I held up a finger and said “let me get out and we can talk about this” but as I opened the door and started to stand, he punched down on me. I slinked back down in my seat.

A song drifted through the darkness of my concussed mind: “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.” I wasn’t sure how long I was out, but when I came to, Mia was still in the passenger seat next to me holding a towel to my bloody lip. No boyfriend in sight.

“I am so sorry,” she said, “he has some anger issues.”

“Maybe you should give him that maintenance book.”

She smiled at my joke, which was just what I needed at that moment. “There’s just one thing we have to do before you take me home,” she cooed.

“What’s that?”

“Well, this is a convertible right?”

“It is.”

“Then why is the top not down?!”

“Well, it’s kinda’ cold out.”

“Doesn’t this thing have heat?”

“It does.”

“So, crank it!.”

And that’s just what we did.

After dropping Mia off at her mom’s place, I cut through the curvy roads back to mine and smiled thinking about her smile. I put my hand out in the crisp night air and let it float with the stream, the closest to flying I could get.

Farewell Tour ~ Part 4 of My Generation

The Who Farewell Tour tickets were to go on sale soon, so all we had to do was come up with some money, get in line early to secure tickets, and convince my mom it was a good idea. That third one was going to be a doozy.

My mom loved us and all, but she was strict, and not just with her own kids- she would scold anyone: The mailman who gave her the neighbor’s mail by accident, the gas meter-reader who walked through her bushes instead of around, even the poor kid working at the mall store who had the music loud enough to actually hear it.

She was also the one who cooked all our meals, cleaned all our clothes, and kept us all on our different schedules like clockwork.

Dinners were mostly at home around the dinner table. She used to summon us with a train whistle when we were young kids running loose around the neighborhood. As we got older, we didn’t need a whistle, we’d just sit around waiting for the food to come out; our teenage bodies requiring constant fuel.

We gathered around the table that night as usual. The meal consisted of meat and my most and least favorite things: potatoes and Brussels sprouts. I guess I grabbed a bigger heaping of potatoes than normal since I got a smack on the backside of my hand from the wooden spatula my mom was holding. I held my temper and pushed around the gooey eyeball-shaped Brussels sprouts while I prepared my pitch for going to The Who in Birmingham.

About midway through the meal, my dad said something my mom laughed at, and I saw an opening. “Mom, who was your favorite band growing up?” “Well, we didn’t really have bands like you do, per se…. We liked types of music.” “Okay, then what was your favorite type of music?” “When I was young? I don’t know, maybe classical.” She was killing me, but I was determined. “Well, you like Tom Jones, right? I mean, you have the album.” My dad took this as a cue and he sang: “What’s new pussycat…” Then together they sang, “whoa, ooh whoa, ooh whoa oh!” I about gagged on my potatoes, but realized this was my opening.

“So, what if Tom Jones announced a retirement tour and he was coming to a town near here? You’d want to go right?” “Oh, is Tom Jones retiring?” “I don’t know mom, I was just trying to make a point.” “What’s your point then?”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer, so I just spit it out. “The Who is retiring and the closest concert to us is in Birmingham and Dave and I want to go.” She looked at my dad, who shrugged like he didn’t have anything to do with this, and didn’t really want to. “Eat your Brussels sprouts and we’ll see,” she said.

I spent the next ten minutes trying to finish those nasty things and prove to my mom I meant business.

I made a point of showing her my empty plate before offering to do the dishes. She stepped aside with a surprised look on her face. “So, when is this concert?” she asked as she eyed every plate I washed to make sure it was clean enough to put in the dishwasher, and then made sure every item was put in its rightful dishwasher place.

“It’s the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.” “A school night?” she asked rhetorically.

I realized I still had some work to do if I was ever going to see The Who live.

Just Another Saturday Night in 1980’s Atlanta ~ Part 3 of My Generation

We pulled up in my Alfa Romeo wearing Dave’s dad’s suits to try to get into one of the trendiest clubs in Atlanta at the time: Elan.

I gave my keys to the valet, and we approached the bouncer who’d seen us get out of the car. I tried to go first hoping he wouldn’t notice Dave, who almost looked like the kid at the end of the movie Big, swimming in his adult-sized suit. The seersucker I picked out might not have been the most chic-looking, but at least it fit.

“Just act like you own the place,” Dave muttered to me as we made our way to the entrance. What Dave lacked in height, he made up in confidence.

Getting in turned out to be the easy part, socializing with this crowd was a bit more challenging. We got a few drinks and Dave tried unsuccessfully to talk to any girl who came within a six-foot radius.

On the surface, this group seemed a bit more polished than at some of the other places we could get ourselves into with our young faces and hodge-podge of fake ID’s: The biker bar that probably figured if we were ballsy enough to enter, then have at it; Confetti’s which was the after-work dance club for all of Atlanta’s bar and restaurant crews, so we could have been bar-backs or busboys paying it sideways; then there were any number of bar & grills that would serve you if you knew the waitress or could smooth talk them; and there was always Clarence Fosters, which was so packed every Thursday to Saturday they couldn’t keep track of what day it was, much less what year you were born.

I went to the bathroom at Elan and was greeted by an attendant. There were empty urinals, but I was never able to go with someone peeing right next to me. The attendant noticed I was eyeing the stalls, so he pushed one open for me and stood aside to let me in.

“Thank you,” I muttered while wondering what kind of tip I was supposed to leave for this experience.

When I finished peeing, I came out and washed my hands, while eyeing all of the different impulse items the attendant had out on the counter. There was mouthwash, cologne, combs, mints, even condoms.

I really wanted a mint, but I didn’t want to have to tip the guy so I held back. When I finished washing my hands I looked for a paper towel, but the attendant beat me to the punch. He offered me the towel he was holding.

Flustered, I just wiped my hands on my seersucker suit and walked out.

While I was navigating the bathroom, Dave had surprisingly lured two women to our table. I nodded as I walked up.

“There’s the dentist,” Dave said.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Marla here, has a question for you.”

Marla suddenly got real close. “I’m a little self-conscious about it,” said Marla.

“Oh, just ask him,” said Dave.

“Okay then,” she looked me right in the eyes. “Do I need braces?” she asked as she smiled at me, a mosh-pit of teeth two inches from my face.

“Uh, ya’ know, I’m a dentist, not an orthodontist, so…”

“Give her your opinion,” Dave said.

“Okay,” I acted like I was studying her teeth, “no, I think they’re fine,” I lied.

When the girls went to the powder room, I looked at Dave. “Dentist? And what are you?”

“Architect.”

“Of course, you get the cool job.”

Dave just shrugged. “Look, my Dad and Carine are at my house tonight, so let’s take these two to Carine’s.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Dude,” he answered with his multi-purpose word. Depending on inflection, it could mean many things including: “come on, let’s do it”; “don’t even think about it”; “awesome”; or the definitive “you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” This one was a “come on, be my wingman” type of utterance.

The Alfa was only a two-seater, so the girls had to follow us. I’d never been to Dave’s Dad’s girlfriend’s house so Dave navigated.

Carine’s place was in a Brady Bunch style Dunwoody neighborhood. The house had a For Sale sign in the yard and lockbox hanging from the front door. We pulled up the driveway and Dave hopped out.

“Keep them busy for a minute,” he said as he ran around the back.

“You don’t have a key?” I called out.

“Dude,” Dave answered over his shoulder with the “you fuckin’ kiddin’ me” inflection.

I kept the girls busy by showing off my new car until Dave opened the front door of the house from inside. The girls and I entered, taking in all that this single mom’s house had to offer: flowery wallpaper here, pink pillows there, a family portrait of Carine and her kids over the fireplace.

Dave’s girl spoke first. “You married?”

“No, no. Divorced,” Dave said, as he took the picture off the wall and turned it away from us.

“You build this place?” the girl asked, still believing Dave was an architect.

“You like it?” he threw out.

She looked around again. “I do,” she blurted.

“I did,” Dave lied, “let me give you a tour.”

A half hour and several discussions about teeth later, Marla must have thought I was either gay or not that into her so she gave up. She went to look for her friend and they both left shortly thereafter.

Later that night Dave and I recounted our evening over scattered, smothered and covered omelets at Waffle House. Dave had the time of his life. I, on the other hand, did not.

“Dude,” I said to him in his own language. He just laughed. I took a bite of my omelet and shook my head, “next time- you’re the dentist, and I’m the architect!”

The Kids Are Alright ~ Part 2 of My Generation

It was hotter than usual for late September in Atlanta and we were at Daves’ cousin’s place who was out of town with her parents. We walked around to a side gate which was locked. “You don’t have a key?” Dave shook his head, “we’ll climb the fence” he said in his usual matter-of-fact way. So much for belonging. In a matter of minutes, we’d scaled the fence and were basically breaking-and-entering. But not to steal anything. We were just there for the pool.

After a quick dip, we settled into a couple of lounge chairs to soak up some of what we considered healthy 1980’s sunshine. I shut my eyes and felt the warmth down to my bones. The bright sun created psychedelic images through my closed eyelids. I still had the Baba O’Riley synth going through my head, and I was just about to doze off, when I sensed a giant shadow above me like a bird, but bigger. I felt a whoosh of air and heard a loud splash. This would be Conner who had jumped off the roof instead of just climbing the fence.

Conner was known for grand entrances. This was a guy who created dress-up Fridays at school; not as a school-sponsored thing mind you, just something he did for kicks. One Friday he’d be Steve Martin from the Jerk, carrying a broken chair, the next he’d be dressed as our principal, Mr. Wheeler, down to the tan leisure suit with wide lapels and fat tie and even a walkie-talkie on his hip. “Go for Wheeler,” he’d say into his walkie-talkie, totally in character, “we’ve got a smoker outside the designated smoking area, code 10, code 10!.”

But the ultimate Conner entrance would be later the next year at senior prom, when he’d take a mannequin as his date. He named her Monica, dressed her in a silky sequin-belted sea-green number, even bought her a corsage. The photographer asked him why the mannequin, and he said “the girls here are all plastic anyway.”

In all fairness, there were some great girls at our school. Better than us really. We weren’t bad guys, we just wanted to have some fun, and since the girls in our grade seemed to be all sincerity and seriousness, we hung out more with the girls in the grade below. They were dubbed the Smurfs. The nickname came from the girls in our grade who saw this gaggle of younger, one-year-more naïve girls as an annoyance, and the name just stuck. Dave’s cousin, who’s pool we were borrowing, happened to be a Smurf.

Conner dried himself off and popped a beer from a cooler that appeared out of nowhere. I say out of nowhere, because that’s how it always seemed. I mean, we were teenagers who probably should have been drinking Gatorade but we always had beer at the ready.

“You hear about the Who retiring?” Conner asked.

“Dude,” Dave said with an inflection that meant “what a shame.”

Conner nodded in agreement. “Any Smurfs coming today?”

“Nah,” Dave said, “just us.”

Dave didn’t really get our infatuation with the Smurfs, maybe since his cousin was one, or maybe it was that feeling of not wanting to go backwards. Dave and I were always looking ahead, trying to do things that we hadn’t yet done.

 

My Generation ~ Part 1 of My Generation

Atlanta in the 1980’s was an ever-evolving tapestry. Like a 16-year-old boy, it was full of ideas, hope, and testosterone. For years, the little brother to older and bigger cities. But after all the hand-me-downs and noogies, Atlanta had finally gotten its driver’s license.

As had I. Now I just needed a car.

From the candy-apple red, to the curves, to the removable top, she exuded sex appeal. Her name rolled off the tongue like foreplay: Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. This was an R-rated car and I was a PG kid… in the eyes of my father anyway. Unfortunately, he was the one person I had to convince to buy the car for me: and for that I would need extremely detailed information.

My dad was a stickler for details. He would read a manual before even touching a new device. I, on the other hand, had to touch, feel, maybe break something before I could really understand it. This was the pre-internet early-1980’s, so I couldn’t just Google the details my dad demanded. I had to go out of my way. I had to go to the dreaded library.

I borrowed my dad’s brown-turd-of-a-car, with a name that stuck to your tongue as you tried to spit it out: Chevy Citation. My dad had been fooled into buying it after Car & Driver magazine gave it a front page with the headline “Outperforms a Ferrari Boxer.” As I drove down Heards Ferry- one of Atlanta’s many hilly and winding roads named after ferrymen who used to float people across the creeks and rivers here before paved roads- I jammed the clunky stick-shift into 3^rd, and wondered in what category this rattlebox could have surpassed a Ferrari Boxer. To me, this turd on wheels felt more like driving a covered wagon to the ferry, than a Ferrari to the library.

I parked the turd and approached the building. I would have rolled up my shirtsleeves if I wasn’t in a tank-top. Instead, I turned my baseball cap backwards.

The library was not the most user-friendly experience back then. I’m not even sure “user-friendly” was in the lexicon of the day. Once past the lady at the front desk, who glared at me judgingly over her reading glasses, I tried flipping through the giant filing system. This behemoth held thousands of 3×5 notecards, which meticulously catalogued everything in the place. This was Google’s Lucy.

After a good ten minutes of dead-ends and frustrated noises on my part, I noticed the judgy-lady coming my way. Oh crap, do I just walk away so I don’t catch the wraith of this woman? Too late, she was quicker than she looked.

“May I help you?” she asked icily.

“Uh, I’m looking for information on cars?”

“Have you tried a car dealer?” she said, apparently wanting me gone as much as I wanted to be gone at that moment. But my quest was too important to abandon.

“I, uh, I’m trying to talk my dad into buying me a used Alfa Romeo, and I need some stuff to convince him.”

The lady took the reading glasses off her nose and put them back in her hair. “Convertible?” she almost cooed.

Wow, if I get this kind of reaction from just a mention, imagine what driving it would be like? 

About an hour later, I had all the documents I needed, and the librarian’s phone number. She slipped it to me on my way out. Her name was Liz and she insisted I take her for a ride one day… with the top down.

The first piece of evidence I presented to my dad was a Car & Driver magazine article that Liz helped me track down on micro-fiche and even Xeroxed for me. For some reason my dad still trusted the magazine. I think he was in denial that his Citation was anything short of what he had been sold.

“Look dad, Car & Driver calls it ‘a dream’.”

“Yeah, you’re dreaming alright,” was his response. He then grabbed the Xerox copy and said “where’d you get this anyway?”

“The library…. Look, a friend of mine’s dad, who’s loaded, is willing to give this car to me for cheap.” I figured this would make my dad listen. After-all, he was the most frugal man with money I knew. Probably the only heart surgeon driving a Chevy Citation anyway.

“You went to the library?” was all he said, in a surprised tone, as he left the room.

I waited until the first olive from his martini glass was in his mouth before I hit him up again. From years of observation, this was my window when all was good. By the second olive, everything was an argument.

“Here is a current Kelly Blue Book,” I said as I handed him the book. “I’ve earmarked a page I want you to see.”

He smiled at my unwillingness to cave as he looked over the details. “$12,000 dollars?” he snorted. “My brand new Chevy Citation was only $6,500, and it outperforms the Ferrari Boxer.”

Does it. Really? I thought about saying, but held my tongue and pulled out more evidence. “Current used car ads. Notice your Chevy tends to lose value rather quickly. The Alfa Romeo does not.”

He was already into his second olive. That was fast, I thought, I’d better wrap this up. “He’s willing to sell it to me, as a friend of his son’s, for $7,000.”

He shook his head, but he didn’t say no.

My next move was a little more subtle. At the advice of Liz the librarian, I’d rented “The Graduate”. After the argumentative stage of martini drinking, my dad would sometimes get a case of melancholy. Bring on the melancholy, I thought.

I stayed quiet throughout the film, even when the red Alfa Romeo made its appearance. I’m still not sure if it registered with him that this was the car, in an older version. He cleared his throat at the end of the film, and I looked over to see him wipe his eye. Was that a tear or just an eye rub? I’ll never know, but the next day he bought me the car.

Car & Driver got this one right: driving around Atlanta in the Alfa Romeo was a dream. You know when you hug someone and everything fits just right?  Well the leather seats in this thing were like that kind of hug, and the smooth burled wood steering wheel and stick-shift handle felt like they were made for my hands. I took the top down and cranked up the aftermarket Blaupunkt 6-speaker stereo. It sounded like a symphony in that small space, but this was no classical score. No, this was The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” aka “Teenage Wasteland.”

We listened to a lot of music, me and my friends, from Springsteen to Zeppelin, Jimmy Buffet to Soft Cell. (Yeah, Soft Cell. Tainted Love. You know the song even if you won’t admit to liking it). The Who, however, was a constant. I’d say the soundtrack of our lives. They had a sweeping powerful operatic vibe and a snarly young rock attitude that we connected with at our age.

“Baba O’Riley” started off with a pulsing synthesizer that built into a pounding piano, and a crescendo of deep thumping drums… And that was just the intro! By the time Roger Daltry’s voice took off with “Out here in the fields”, I was rocketing down Jett Road in my convertible with the top down.

Jett Road was somewhat unique for Atlanta: relatively straight, long, and traffic-free. Being Atlanta, there were hills, but they were of the rolling kind, which made it all the more fun to speed on.

Off of Jett Rd. there was an appropriately named Tanglewood Trail. Oh, the tangled webs it weaved. This area of Buckhead was an enclave of old and new money. There were the houses with tennis courts and swimming pools of course, and then the one on Tanglewood with the basement disco, professional sound-system, professional lighting, even a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. The son and daughter went to our school. Rumor was that the father was in the music business and owned the rights to some Beatles songs, among others.

I always felt a little out-of-place in this area, even as a doctor’s son. You remember the car he drove, right? Well today I felt like these were my people as I turned my bright red Alfa Romeo onto Tanglewood Trail. I pulled into a driveway across the street from the disco house just as Baba O’Riley was reaching its final verse and Roger Daltry screamed “they’re all wasted!”

My friend Dave was sitting, shirtless, on his old dark-orange Camaro. The color was more like rust. I don’t believe this was a Camaro approved and applied color. Dave directed me where to park. I was just about to turn off the car when the DJ made an announcement that would change both of our lives forever: “Okay Who fans. Dates have been set for the farewell tour. Yes, I said farewell. Now if you haven’t seen them live, you’d better do everything and anything you can to get there because this is your last chance! Unfortunately, the closest to Atlanta they’ll be is Birmingham, Alabama…”

“Dude!” was all Dave said, but I could tell by the inflection that he meant “this is a once in a generation event and we have got to get tickets!”