Solitary Man

It doesn’t take much, sometimes just a fleeting glimpse of an image on the side of a building as you drive through town, sometimes just the whiff of an unexpected but vaguely familiar smell; it doesn’t take much to bring to mind a sharply-focused memory from the long-ago past. As I sat at my computer grading assignments submitted in my online Business Law class, it was hearing Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” in my iTunes shuffle that brought such a distant recollection to mind. I have many of Neil’s songs in my digital collection, even more in my vinyl LPs, having been a fan since he burst onto the music scene in the fall of 1966. “Solitary Man” was his first charting single and my introduction to his unique artistry. It’s a deeply personal, introspective song, written in a minor key. It remains one of my all-time favorites.

Though I was concentrating on a student’s answer to a case problem involving the legal requirement of genuine assent in contracts, this poignant song triggered something within the deep recesses of my subconscious that caused an equally poignant memory to percolate to the surface of my thoughts. It was the image of my 13-year-old self lying in the rear-facing, third seat of our family’s Chevy station wagon as Daddy and my brother Keith and I were traveling north on Highway 49. We were returning home late one school night from a basketball game on the coast.

That cream-colored 1962 Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon was much roomier than the old, white Rambler station wagon we’d owned before it. That third seat in the back-back folded down for luggage hauling, but when it was up the car became a nine-passenger vehicle—just the ticket for our eight-person family. And with its own speaker and separate volume control, that rear-facing seat was my favorite spot—prime real estate for road trips—particularly when I could have it to myself and could stretch out.

It was a late winter night in the early weeks of 1967. The sky was crystal clear with the Milky Way dominating the vista from my recumbent position. I marveled at how the stars of Orion’s belt looked like a jetliner in flight. We had been to an end-of-season conference tournament down at Harrison Central High. Keith was a sophomore second-stringer on that year’s basketball team at Stone High, the county’s consolidated school in Wiggins. I was an 8th-grader in my final year at Home School, a county attendance center in the rural Big Level community where we lived. I was not looking forward to transferring into town for the next school year.

I don’t recall the team we faced that night, but I do recall that we won and that Keith got a few minutes of playing time. I believe he even got a basket or two, so it was a good night. I also recall how quiet the car was after we got on the highway and started that long stretch towards home. Daddy and Keith in the front seat may have been talking—about the game or maybe about hunting and fishing, their favorite topics—but the only thing I could hear was Neil singing plaintively as the radio played softly in the rear speaker. My thoughts, however, were elsewhere.

I was thinking about high school. And I was thinking about Sharon, the pretty girl in the seventh grade, a year behind me. She and I had been sweet on each other for a couple of years, always flirting and teasing, but little more than that for fear of the taunting that would follow if we were too open about our attraction to each other. But now it was more, Sharon was officially my girlfriend and neither of us cared who knew it, not since that first kiss back almost a year ago. It had happened in the school parking lot, beside her grandfather’s pickup and shielded amid all the other vehicles there that night as the community assembled for the one of the last ballgames of that school term. In the months that followed, we had been quite thick, spending as much time together as we could—at school, playing silly games at recess, sitting together at lunch and at ballgames and on the bus to away games and field trips. There was also that wonderful evening in October at the county fair in Wiggins when our two families just happened to be there on the same night. She and I rode the Scrambler and the Ferris Wheel a half a dozen times and took in several of the sideshows.

All of our classmates and teachers knew that Sharon was my girl, but I wasn’t entirely sure what my family knew. Keith and Judy, in high school with separate interests and activities, did not appear to know or care. John, being three grades behind me was either unaware or oblivious to what little he may have seen at school. The same would have been even more true of Karen and Linda, my youngest siblings. Hindsight tells me that Mama and Daddy knew. My older siblings probably also knew, for I remember an occasional bit of ribbing around the house and farm. But I’m quite sure none of them had any idea of just how smitten I really was.

My 13-year-old conflicted self (Russell Lott, March 1967)

But there, in the rear seat of that station wagon, listening to Neil sing about lost loves, I had a head full of doubt. I was thinking about Sharon and wondering if what we had would remain after I moved on to high school. The summer would be hard enough, but how would we survive being apart for a whole school year? Heavy stuff for a kid who’d just turned thirteen. At that point in my young life I had never suffered any real loss, and the prospect of such a separation filled me with emotions I had not experienced before. Gazing at the night sky as we drove home, I sensed a loneliness that seemed as immense as the gulf separating me from the stars. But what I had no way of knowing then, what I could not have even imagined, was that my life was about to change in a way for which I had no understanding, let alone preparation. For it would be in just a few short days that Daddy would have the fateful automobile accident that would take his life.

Words to Ponder

con·flict·ed (adjective): being in a state of emotional confusion.
des·o·la·tion (noun): extreme sadness caused by loss or loneliness.
Source: yourdictionary.com & merriam-webster.com

SONG OF THE DAY

“Solitary Man” by Neil Diamond (The Feel of Neil Diamond, 1966)

Russell LottApril 28, 20206 Comments