Should Have Been a Rock Star 6 - The Edge of a Dream

The Edge of a Dream

In May of 1974, I finally stood on the edge of the rest of my life. It was a moment of uncertainty, a contradicted moment in which I wanted to stay with my parents, friends and family, and at the same time nervously wanted to find the outside world. On the fall, I would leave home to travel to Kansas and play football at Sterling College.

I was valedictorian of Kiefer High School. It was a tiny class and I had the highest GPA at the end of our senior year. The school did what it could, but there was no way it had the courses and opportunities that a larger school could provide. But, luckily, I was a voracities reader, read ahead in the textbooks, and the librarian had found me early as a devoted reader. She fed me books. She found that I loved Ray Bradbury and ordered all his books for me to read.

Graduation day came. I had not written my speech before to be approved by the teachers. I’m not sure why. I think I didn’t want to say the same old tired things that every gradation speech since Adam has included. I am surprised that they didn’t have me get it approved, but I think they trusted me. I was the dependable guy. I was the go-to guy. There was little question as to whether or not I would be ‘inappropriate.’

I walked the outside perimeter of the football field as the crowd filed into the stadium to take their places on the rough wooden bleacher steps. My brother Tim walked with me and I would say, “Whatta you think of this?” and then give him my idea. He was 4 ½ years younger than I and the good thing about that is he agreed with it all. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to express how I would miss the people at Kiefer High School. It was almost a Mayberry sort of town, with the Town drunk, the loud guy at ballgames, the friendly store clerk and assorted colorful characters that fill out a good story line. The only thing it lacked was Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife.

The evening cooled and the sky grew a darker blue. Our bright red graduation gowns glowed beneath the lights of the football field, just as our red Trojan uniforms had just months before. We marched in. We sat. We stood. The salutatorian spoke. She was a girl I had always had a crush on through high school, only to finally marry my cousin a few years later. Then it was my turn to speak.

I remember moving nervously to the podium and politely starting before beginning to adlib about the teachers and people we would all miss. I had prefaced my speech with the line that today we stood on the edge of a dream… something we had all been dreaming of for years. The words in the middle of the speech are a blur to me now. I finished my speech, not with a quote by a great dignitary, or the poetic words of the poet laureate, but with words from a source more meaningful to me, the words from a song by the Moody Blues. At late nights, anxious and unable to sleep, their haunting orchestral tunes would wash over me with hints of melancholy and longing. The primitive small speakers of radio couldn’t mute the lush exotic sound of their music. “Night In White Satin,” “ Question,” and “Tuesday Afternoon.” But it was these words that I can still repeat today…

“When the white eagle of the north
flies over had
and the blues, reds and golds of autumn
lie in the gutter dead
remember then the summer birds
with wings of fire flaying
come to witness springs new hope
born of leaves decaying.
As new life will come from death,
Love will come at leisure
Love of love and love of life
And giving without measure
Gives in return
A wondrous yearn
Of promise almost seen.
Live hand in hand
And together we’ll stand
On the threshold of a dream.”