The Eighties: A Bitchen Time To Be a Teenager! Read online

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 BY TOM HARVEY

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Just Load The Wagon Publishing

  PO Box 2093

  Kirkland, WA 98083

  Cover photo courtesy of Melissa Gregg-Cabral.

  All other photos from the Harvey family collection.

  More information at www.AuthorTomHarvey.com.

  Email the author at [email protected].

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA has been applied for.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010910509

  Just Load The Wagon Publishing, Kirkland, WA

  ISBN 10, paperback: 0-9828742-0-0

  ISBN 13, paperback: 978-09828-7420-2

  ISBN 13, e-format: 978-09828-7422-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9828742-2-6

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 13 14 15

  The year, 1985.

  Singing the Monache High School alma mater … on helium … dressed in girls’ cheerleading uniforms. Later that day, I was reprimanded by our Student Council advisor for being “disrespectful to the sacred institution that is our alma mater.”

  Gimme a break.

  This book is dedicated to the guys who wore parachute pants and “Members Only” jackets and to those pretty girls who wore tight Jordache jeans and leg-warmers. You know who you are and it’s OK to admit to your kids that you were cool back in the day.

  Speaking of cool …

  I bought my niece, Chloe, an AC/DC denim jacket with sequins and asked if she was “cool enough to wear it.” She said she was not cool (“Constipated, Overweight, Out-Of-Style Loser”) but that she was hoping her first boyfriend would be a real nerd (“Never Ending Radical Dude”).

  Despite the dramatic difference in semantics, I think Chloe is cool (per my definition) because she can sing the Scorpions’ Rock You Like A Hurricane with as much enthusiasm as Justin Bieber’s One Less Lonely Girl.

  Not bad for a twelve-year-old.

  The author proudly supports the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, dedicated to curing spinal cord injury by funding innovative research and improving the quality of life for people living with paralysis through grants, information, and advocacy.

  The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation is a registered 501©(3) nonprofit organization designated by the Internal Revenue Code. All contributions made to it are fully tax-deductible. Gifts may be sent to Reeve Foundation, 636 Morris Turnpike, Suite 3A, Short Hills, NJ 07078.

  More information at christopherreeve.org.

  In loving memory of …

  My mother, Patricia Ann Harvey.

  My uncle, Harold Jean Newton.

  My friend, Odie Dewayne Miller.

  My father-in-law, Jerry Watkins.

  Dictionary.com defines “bitchen” as

  –adjective Slang

  marvelous; wonderful

  That’s too sterile.

  “Bitchen” is like chicken stock—it can be used effectively in a variety of settings, such as:

  “See you on the cruise tonight?”

  “Bitchen.”

  Translation: Yes.

  “I flunked my Algebra 2 quiz.”

  “Bitchen.”

  Translation: Bummer.

  The first time I heard the word was in the sixth grade, circa 1980, in the form of a guy’s name: Bob Bitchen.

  It went something like this:

  “Hey, how do you like my new bike?”

  “Bob Bitchen, man!”

  The word is a derivative of “bitch” and bitch, despite what the American Kennel Club says, is a “bad” word. As a twelve-year-old, I found it easier to use the word in mainstream conversation if it was a guy’s name. Somewhere along the way we dropped the Bob part of it. An infinite improvement.

  If you don’t care for the word “bitchen,” feel free to try out some other eighties words like “radical,” “awesome,” or “gnarly.” I’m partial to “bitchen” so that’s what I’m going with.

  On the cover

  Definition of “Bitchen”

  Prologue

  Introduction: Pre-1980

  Chapter 1: Sixth Grade (1979-1980)

  Chapter 2: The Summer of 1980

  Chapter 3: Seventh Grade (1980-1981)

  Chapter 4: The Summer of 1981

  Chapter 5: Eighth Grade (1981-1982)

  Chapter 6: The Summer of 1982

  Chapter 7: Freshman Year (1982-1983)

  Sidebar #1: High-school Cliques

  Sidebar #2: The Traveling Evangelist & the Evils of Rock Music

  Chapter 8: The Summer of 1983

  Chapter 9: Sophomore Year (1983-1984)

  Chapter 10: The Summer of 1984

  Chapter 11: Junior Year (1984-1985)

  Chapter 12: The Summer of 1985

  Chapter 13: Senior Year (1985-1986)

  Sidebar #3: The Hit of all NFL Hits

  Sidebar #4: The Army Recruiter

  Sidebar #5: AIDS/AYDS in 1986

  Chapter 14: The Summer of 1986

  Chapter 15: First Year of College (1986-1987)

  Sidebar #6: The Reds & the Blues

  Chapter 16: The Summer of 1987

  Chapter 17: First Year in L.A. (1987-1988)

  Chapter 18: The Summer of 1988

  Chapter 19: Third Year of College (1988-1989)

  Chapter 20: The Summer of 1989

  Chapter 21: Finishing Out the Decade

  Sidebar #7: AIDS in 1989

  Chapter 22: Reflection and Wrap Up

  Appendix 1: Thoughts About The Music

  Appendix 2: Thoughts About The Movies

  Homage To A Friend: The First of 290

  Research Reading

  Books That Made Me A Better Writer

  Acknowledgements

  Potential Chapters for the Revised Edition

  “Don’t Fight With The Garden Hose and Other Lessons I’ve Learned Along The Way”

  I started this book in March 2010 with tears blurring my vision. The world felt solid again after spending three nearly-sleepless, bumpy nights on the Amtrak from Seattle to Raleigh, NC. A huge fan of the 1976 movie Silver Streak, I’ve always wanted to take the train across country. At least now I can say that I have.

  Reeling from the deaths of my mother, my uncle, and my best friend in a thirteen month period, I gazed out of our cabin on Hyco Lake, NC. With ten days of solitude, the plan was to finish writing the life story of my recently departed friend, Odie. While reading what he and I had down on paper over a two year period, the familiar feeling of grief washed over me. The flashing cursor on the blank page of my laptop offered no comfort. I turned the stereo on, put my Ipod on shuffle, and went to the upstairs balcony with tears in my eyes. Another good cry was on the way.

  And then …

  Loverboy’s Turn Me Loose filtered up to where I sat, followed by Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance, followed by The Tubes’ She’s a Beauty. I was in 1980s shuffle heaven.

  My mind raced.

  Amidst the tears, I ran downstairs and resumed my place in front of the open laptop. My fingers flew across the keyboard. Eight hours and thirty single-spaced pages later, this book was born.

  For me, there are sights, there are sounds, there are smells unique to the eighties. On a daily basis, something–a song, a movie, a random thought, walking through an airport duty-free store–takes me back to my teenage years.
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  Where have the decades gone?

  Friends from high school are now parents–hell, some are grandparents.

  Blink and ten years get behind you. Blink twice and it’s twenty years. No one told me when to run. I missed the starting gun.

  I look in the mirror and sort of recognize the guy staring back. He’s put on twenty pounds, has a receding hairline that’s picking up steam, his vision has degraded, and he can’t get through the night without at least one trip to the bathroom. But just behind those middle-aged brown eyes is a glimmer–a spark–some days when I’m lucky, I can see that mischievous kid from the eighties staring back, if only for a second. God I love that guy.

  For the majority of the decade, I was the other Harvey–the younger, less-perfect version of my brother, David. Following two years behind him in the same classrooms with the same teachers, I heard with alarming regularity, “Why aren’t you more like your brother?” Every time those words were spoken, I silently vowed to find more ways to step outside his shadow.

  David was a better student and I’m OK with that. I relished being the rebel, the class clown, the guy who had to be moved because he disrupted the girls around him.

  In the absence of our father, he became more than just my older brother. In many ways, I looked up to him like a father. This allowed me to break out of my shy and conservative mold. He became the studious one so I didn’t have to.

  I wasn’t a total screw-off, but I stopped to smell a lot more roses.

  Drank a lot more beer.

  Kissed a lot more girls.

  Settled for a B instead of stretching for the A.

  I entered my teens with a license to enjoy myself. It was a liberating realization at the time.

  Before we go any further, I have the following disclaimer:

  I would be doing a disservice not to acknowledge events that had a major impact on society during the decade. In terms of global events, Mount St. Helens blew her stack, the Berlin Wall fell, Chernobyl melted down, and a drunk asshole spilled millions of gallons of oil in Prince William Sound–the list goes on.

  America endured Michael Milken’s junk-bond fiasco, a disastrous Wall Street crash in 1987 where the Dow dropped nearly 23% in one day, the death of the Andy’s (Kaufman and Warhol), and the rise of cocaine as the street drug of choice.

  In professional football, the decade belonged to Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers with four Super Bowl wins (counting the pinnacle of the 1989 season played in January 1990).

  In the NBA, it was Magic versus Bird with the Los Angeles Lakers taking five NBA titles; the Boston Celtics three. A kid from the University of North Carolina, Michael Jordan, redefined the term super star and enthralled us with his tongue-wagging super-aerial feats. Nike did well to latch onto him as his star rose.

  In baseball, ailing Kirk Gibson’s homerun in the 1988 World Series was the quintessential baseball moment of the decade–perhaps, of all-time.

  In boxing, a young slab of solid steel named Mike Tyson pummeled anyone who dared stand in the ring opposite him–Tyson wasn’t a boxer, he was an annihilator. He was also a biter but that came later.

  I mention these events here, not to lessen their importance in any way, but to say that you won’t find them in the pages to come. This isn’t a chronological history book, nor is it a book full of lists and trivia (though you’ll get a smattering of both and a whole lot more).

  This book is my experience growing up in, to borrow an album title from Motley Crue, the Decade of Decadence.

  Dictionary.com defines decadence as 1) the act or process of falling into an inferior condition or state; deterioration; decay: 2) moral degeneration or decay; turpitude, 3) unrestrained or excessive self-indulgence.

  Was it really a time of self-indulgence and decay? You’re entitled to your own opinion.

  Names–not all, but many, including girls and teachers–have been changed. However, everything in the book happened exactly as I remember it. I’ve not take any creative liberties to “liven” up the story. I’ve not blended fiction with fact.

  According to recent US Census data (check it out at factfinder2.census.gov), over twenty three percent of the American population–nearly seventy million people–can claim at least one teenage year in the eighties decade. If you’re a Generation Xer, I have one word: Congrats! I spent my entire teenage span within the decade and embrace this fact with pride.

  Your comments are appreciated and you can email me at [email protected].

  Also, please visit AuthorTomHarvey.com and my Facebook community page at facebook.com/86kicks. As in, “We’ve got spirit that really kicks ‘cause we’re the Class of ‘86!”

  Now, let’s get on with some bitchen recollection.

  INTRODUCTION

  I came into the world black, blue, and yellow all over (jaundiced), on February 8, 1968. I’d like to thank my parents for their enthusiasm in May 1967 and the manufacturers of the defective spermicidal foam.

  Mom always said I was a good swimmer.

  As the seventies gave way to the eighties, I was just shy of my twelfth birthday and it’s clear to me that my growing up years–if you define “growing up” via milestones like smoking your first joint, losing your virginity, and becoming a licensed driver (in that order)–did, indeed, occur in the decade.

  Before we get nostalgic, let’s take a peek at the adolescent years.

  My mom, Patricia, God rest her soul, had four children. I am the youngest of the boys but not the youngest in the family: Lorne is the oldest; David follows two years behind him and I follow two years behind David. The lone girl, Tricia, is seven years younger than I am.

  My brothers and I share the same father, God rest his soul, a blue-collar guy named Thomas C. Harvey, Jr. That marriage didn’t last and, upon remarrying a guy named Metro, Mom and he conceived my little sister.

  Metro is pronounced MEE-TRO–not the way Terri Nunn of Berlin sings it. Look at that, we’re already into eighties references and I’m not even trying.

  Mom always wanted a girl, so at least MEE-TRO got that one right. Behind his back, the stepsons called him “Meatball,” but I guess there’s no relevance to that. The guy was a real douche bag–as deadbeat ex-step-fathers go–but I’ll spare you that digression.

  Our stepdad was in the Coast Guard, so we did our share of relocating: Oakland, CA; Mystic, CT; Honolulu, HI. For our third move in less than four years, we had a choice between Oakland again and Honolulu. Meatball took a family poll and it was unanimous. Where the hell would you live given the choice?

  The Harvey brothers in Hawaii:

  David, Lorne, and the author

  We arrived in Honolulu in 1976, the year after my sister was born. Meatball brought his son, Brian, to the mix so we had quite the family dynamic: three boys from one marriage, one boy from another marriage, and one new baby–a half-sister to all four boys. Brian had the unfortunate luck of being twenty days younger than me, and, hey, twenty days is twenty days. He was in fourth position on the totem pole as far as the Harvey brothers were concerned.

  Note to self: Find Brian and apologize. Profusely.

  Life in Hawaii was exotic and full of adventure. The military housing on Red Hill sat next to an extensive tract of undeveloped jungle. And Red Hill was (and is, for that matter) a hill. We lived on Kukui Drive, the last cul-de-sac at the bottom of a long and winding road. It was a great skateboarding hill, and I left massive amounts of skin and blood on the gravelly road–the speed-bumps were hell, let me tell you. If I wasn’t actively bleeding from somewhere (knees, palms, elbows, big toe, forehead), I wasn’t keeping up with the bro’s.

  Not three hundred yards from our house, beyond the chain-link fence (as if that was going to stop us) was a waterfall in dense jungle. Had Mom known how close to death we put ourselves in on a daily basis, she would have surely banished us from the forest. (And don’t call me Shirley.) The waterfall was fifty feet wide with a hundred foot drop. We’d climb down the rocky perimet
er to hold meetings in the concave. Agenda items included who hated stuffed bell peppers the most (that would be me), a status update on cute girls at Moana Loa Intermediate School (Lorne’s contribution), and what we thought would happen on the next episode of Himitsu Sentai Goranger (group discussion).1 It was our own private paradise, complete with bright-red, foot long centipedes and brown-spotted, green geckos. When the water was calm, we gingerly walked on moss-covered rocks to the edge and peered over the precipice. One slip and it would have been one less kid in this year’s ukulele recital. Seriously.

  In an effort to keep us safe, we made a sacrificial offering to the jungle gods in the form of our mascot: a red, rusted tricycle named Kawasaki Junior. David launched Junior over the falls–the thing exploded upon impact–and I shed a tear at what we’d done. Oh, the guilt.

  A few miles into the jungle, we discovered a vast, unfinished stretch of freeway. Known today as the western most section of the H-1 interstate highway, all we knew was that there were miles of white, unexplored concrete. Elevated a hundred feet above the jungle floor, the thing just abruptly ended, connecting to absolutely nothing. One crazy sailor two units over (his name was John and he looked just like Jerry Lee Lewis) found the entrance to the construction area. He’d borrow our ugly brown station wagon and all the neighborhood kids piled in for the biggest thrill of our young lives: driving the H-1. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, John drove a carload of kids to this abandoned stretch of freeway and turned us loose behind the wheel. It’s a miracle no one plummeted that crappy old Ford right off the edge. Scratch half a dozen kids from the next ukulele recital.

  In the cool, overgrown jungle, we also discovered bunkers. We’re talking real-life, World War II anti-aircraft bunkers. Red Hill was well-fortified some thirty years ago. The abandoned bunkers were dark and damp. We explored the spooky web of underground tunnels with flashlights and listened to our voices reverberate into the dark unknown. It was scary and dangerous. We loved every minute of it.