Telephone conversations

1985

We had this annual tradition of vacationing for a week to ten days every July in northern Wisconsin, at a place called Peninsula State Park in Door County.

In 1985, we met two girls from Green Bay. Their campsite was directly across the road from ours. Naturally, we ended up hanging out with these two girls for the duration of our stay in the park. On the last two days of the trip, two other girls joined the first two girls. We all got along so well that we made it abundantly clear that we would all stay in touch after the trip.

The summer of 1985 changed the dynamics of our group. I was infatuated…no, obsessed with one of the first girls. Her name was Nancy. I just thought that she was the most interesting, most attractive girl I had ever seen. Curt sort of felt the same way about one of the other girls. Her name was Rogene.

All of us took to writing letters back and forth to each other. Nancy left Green Bay in August to drive to California to go to school. It was the first time I had ever seriously thought about quitting my job, hitting the road and moving to California. I was living in a dreamworld.

I was 22-years-old. All I had ever known was the suffocating life I was living in Racine. Nancy suddenly became the reason for me to have hope of changing my life. I think I knew deep down that I could never just quit my job and move west without some sort of plan and commitment. This was a disappointing reality for me. I got angry a lot, which pissed off the rest of the guys on more than a few occasions.

In an effort to win Nancy’s heart, I wrote long letters to her. I then took things one step further by going to the local 5&10 store to purchase candy, gum, a teddy bear - and a bunch of other things to put in a box to send to her. I then got the idea to create a mix cassette tape with music, talking and me playing the guitar.

When the other guys caught wind of my idea to make a cassette tape for Nancy, they got together at Curt’s house to make a tape for the other girls. This audio clip was supposed to be part of the tape they were going to give to the two other girls.

Ultimately, Nancy moved back to Green Bay and got pregnant and then married. It was one of those hard lessons in life when you realize that time has a way of changing all of us. It also has a way of changing our perspectives and our priorities in the process.