The first time I ever saw U2 was on the Time Magazine cover that was taped to the inside of Ed Huey's locker at Edwards Junior High School in Central South Carolina. If it wasn't Ed Huey (I think he was more into RATT), it was David McKale. Or maybe Chandler Harkey. Somebody had it taped to their locker.

Here's the only image of U2 on the cover of Time from around that time that I could find online:

For some reason, when I close my eyes and imagine that chance encounter, that brief flash of the inside of the locker before it was slammed shut to stop a trapper-keeper from falling to the floor, I remember that the image was of The Edge and Bono and Larry Mullins Jr. and Adam Clayton standing in front of a tree in the desert. But I couldn't find that magazine cover online weather it existed or not, so I'll replace that picture with the image above and we can pretend that this one is what I really saw. Lordy. It was 30 or so years ago, for goodness sake.

That one image started me on a journey that has led to writing this middle aged cliche blog article where I sit and eat chips and salsa and drink beer alone in a Mexican restaurant while I wait for my daughter to get out from her musical rehearsal so we can drive home together.

The first time this story was published was in my friend Katie Mullins' music blog - Katie Darby Recommends. She started her blog, I think, before she got married to my friend Andy Mullins, thus the Darby in the title, or maybe she kept her maiden name and used it as her stage name. She graciously squeezed this story between her real writing about real bands, and probably only published it because Andy and I are friends and he asked her nicely to not hurt my feelings. The blog is long gone, and can only be found on the Way Back Machine at this point, but it meant a great deal to me when she would humor me and hit the publish button - even if it was with a grimace.

Anyway, here's the story, first published on Katie Darby Recommends - June 29, 2013:

Tom Petty and a Semi Near St. Louis.

A long time ago when me and the Counting Crows were both young, a few of us would all get together on Tuesday nights in the basement of the school Salvation Army center and watch Rattle and Hum on the huge projection screen tv with couches arranged in front of it like an old drive in movie theater. We would forget everything else, turn the lights off and watch Bono and the Edge work magic in the American desert. We knew every line, every chord, every lyric...and when the red background came up and Bono and forty thousand people started singing Where The Streets Have No Name at Sun Devil stadium that night in Arizona, we knew that we needed to be a part of it somehow.

This is me, back in the day. Long hair, replacement sunglasses.

I don't know who it was, maybe Mike, maybe Dink, but one of us came up with the idea to drive from our little liberal arts school in Kentucky all the way to Joshua Tree National Park in California and back over spring break. It was months away and we were deep into winter, but Greg said we could take his car. We started hoarding cans of Mountain Dew from the bag lunches they made at the cafeteria for students who had class during the lunch hour. Mike was dating Ronald McDonald's daughter at the time, and was able to sweet talk himself into stacks of free value meal coupons, and Dink found the stash of single serving potato chips when he cleaned the cafeteria floors at night, dancing with the mop to big band songs in his head when nobody else was around. We kept all this in the floor of our closets and behind our couches so nobody would find them. We waited for spring.

Greg and I were in a band that we named 16 Cloves. We had arena sized dreams and a handful of songs that we played over and over late at night in the dorm. Sox recorded a few for us on a rented 4 track in an upstairs chapel one night and mixed them down on a tape that I hid at the bottom of a sock drawer after I graduated. I knew that one day I would play those songs somewhere--in a coffee shop maybe, or the school gym. I had everything worked out in my head about what I would say between songs on the set list, how the audience would hang on every word, be amazed by the depth of every lyric, and notice the subtlety of every joke, their glasses and mugs clinking softly in the background. I also saw myself on stage, like Bono, the crowd like the crowd at Sun Devil, the night just perfect and my songs making their way through the rain into the heart of America.

Dink, Mike, Greg.

Spring arrived, and we set out. We had spent the night before packing the car, trunk full of chips and cans, front full of pillows, tapes and cd's. We stopped at McDonald's and each got a double quarter pounder with cheese extra value meal (super sized, of course). We paid proudly with our free meal coupons and laughed as the cashier had to consult the manager on how to process the transaction. We decided that we would only get the double quarter pounder with cheese meal (super sized) for every meal. We stopped for gas. Greg was driving and we came up with some game about seeing how quickly we could pump, pay, and get the car back on the road. We timed the first gas stop and then roared back onto the highway towards St Louis.

We had planned the route using a real map. Each stop corresponded with some long lost relative that we contacted and asked if they would be willing to put 4 guys up for the night. Kentucky to Colorado to Oklahoma to Arizona to California. It was a crazy route, but it made total sense as we looked at the line we drew across the states.

Somebody put on Tom Petty; it was probably Mike as he was sitting shotgun. We had a Discman knockoff connected to a tape adapter in the stereo tape deck, and Free Falling was playing through the factory Camry speakers. We had settled down from our initial high of leaving and were full in the lull of driving, looking out the window at the beginnings of the Midwest starting to form along side us. I scribbled something on a yellow legal pad and Dink was quiet. I had on Bono's sunglasses, and Tom Petty was making it all right in the world.

Then suddenly Mike yells "Woah! Greg!" I look up to see the passenger mirror disappear into the rear left wheel of a semi truck. We bounce off and start to spin, fast and flat, away from the truck. I calmly notice that we were now in the median, grass kicking up, and the world spinning by. Greg had a two handed, straight arm death grip on the steering wheel, jaw clenched and eyes wide, things starting to fly around the car. The airbag deployed and burned the insides of his arms. Something catches and we stop spinning long enough to fly straight back into the rear wheels of the truck. We hit the truck twice and then slowed, skidding sideways and smoking in the middle of the highway. Greg must have switched off the ignition because Free Falling stopped playing. A couple cars drove by, the rest pulled up in neat rows stretching off into the distance of midwest highway.

All four of us got out and stood quietly on the shoulder. We realized that we were all holding something--I had a pen, Mike had a pillow, Greg had grabbed some trash and Dink had a stack of cd's. Greg threw the trash down and pretended he hadn't grabbed it. My sunglasses were gone.

The highway patrol that showed up told us that when he got the call over the radio about a Camry vs. Semi that had just happened, he knew we were all dead, that the truck typically throws the car under it and then rolls over it. He couldn't believe it when he saw us all on the side of the road, alive and totally unhurt. I only remember patiently waiting for the car to stop spinning so we could all get out.

Car.

We stayed that night in a motel next to a truck stop, waiting for Greg's parents to come pick us up. We drove to Omaha, and his dad bought him another car--a Jeep Cherokee with a bike rack on the top. We watched Braveheart. We drove to Mike's parents house in Oklahoma and ate orange cinnamon rolls.

We made it back to school, attended the rest of our classes, and graduated. Dink worked for a successful dot com that got bought out, retired wealthy in his late 20's. Mike became a pastor. Greg went back home to work on the family farm. I got married, started working for the man, and happily rocked the suburbs.

Every once in a while, though, I find myself checking out the racks of gas station sunglasses.