What A Drag It Is Getting Old

We arrived in beautiful downtown Sandusky, OH, which is a lot farther from Cleveland than Google maps led me to believe. We came here on the premise that this place held one of the best roller coaster parks in the world and from what I've seen, the rides at Cedar Point Park look pretty impressive.

But they don't run when it rains and, for a visitor who's only mission is to ride roller coasters, rain is like a life sentence at Fulsom without parole with the inmates looking to do a push in into your jail cell....OUCH.

So, what does a family of five from Lindenhurst, NY do when it the skies open up and empty out in northern Ohio? Why, go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that's what!

We took a shit load of pictures while we were there. But you won't see any because the wife forgot to bring the connector cable on the trip. You'll just have to Imagine us standing next to some neat guitar props outside the place in a downpour, or next to Johnny Cash's tour bus (in a downpour) because the RRHOF does not allow any picture taking. I guess the RIAA does not want any pirated likenesses of the clients they represent being "shared" for free.

The Hall of Fame itself was...to quote a famous Ohioan, turned rocker, Chrissie Hynde "very run of the mill." With so much stuff to see and so little time in which to see it, I felt overwhelmed and pushed along. We saw a few interesting films and caught special exhibits of The Doors and The Clash. But, it all felt so cleansed and antiseptic. When I told my 13-year old son about the times I saw the Pretenders, The Clash, U2 and other great bands of that late-70s, early 80s era live and before they charged $500 a seat with a two-bottle Cristal minimum, I could feel my age with each passing thought.

But leave it to my wise-assed son to ask me, "how come your picture isn't up on these walls.....DAD?" Ouch! Now, that's a low blow that I wouldn't even throw at my own dear father. But I played along. I told him (sarcastically) that what separated me from fame were a few poor decisions I made along the road to becoming his father: like the one I made to go back to school when I felt my "rocker" career fading; or the one I made to sell my Fender Strat so I could buy his mother a diamond ring; or how about the time in late 1993, when I decided to forgo using a condom when his mother decided to give me some birthday sex.....you see, son, we all make bad choices in life that we have to live with in one form or other.

But he did get me thinking "what if?" Well, I'm happy to say that I could've made the big time and died quite ingloriously from a drug overdose or a plane crash, if I had stuck to it. Here's the proof....


(circa 1984)