December 1995: I was seven months out of college, and rather the worse for wear after a couple of rough introductions to the real world. But I did have a car, and that was what mattered on that snowy morning when my best friend needed a ride to the Des Moines airport. He was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, off to Minneapolis for his interview – if the snow allowed it.
That was looking like a big if, though. Even our drive to the airport almost didn’t happen, not because of the snow (you can’t scare a guy who learned to drive in Northern New England in winter, and then lived in Iowa for five years besides), but because my friend was in a foul mood. I’d known him for three years, and it had always been the same – when he got stressed out, he got real nasty real fast. Exactly what he said that morning has been lost to history, but I do recall being more than a bit aggravated before we even got out of his dorm. After one too many snotty remarks while I waited for him to finish packing, I lost my cool and told him I would be just as happy to go back to bed, and cooled my heels out in the hallway. Only a hug from his girlfriend (who explained to me that he’d been “so nervous he’s shaking” all morning) and a reluctant apology from him mollified me. Even then, the first few minutes of our drive passed in stony silence except for the oldies station on the radio.
As is so often the case, music soothed the savage beast, though in an off the wall way on this occasion. When “Peggy Sue” came bursting forth from the speakers, I quickly changed the station. Sardonically I announced, “No. We are not going to listen to Buddy Holly on the way to the airport in a blizzard in Iowa.” A morbid joke, and yes, a rather tasteless one, but it got the job done: we shared an uneasy laugh that slowly turned into a somewhat easier one, and the earlier tension was forgotten as we made our way into Des Moines.
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