Janey’s Song, (a Bob Seger tribute)

Janey’s Song [image error]

or “wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then”

by S.M. Berberich

He gently steers his silver BMW Z3 convertible into a familiar left turn to enter Campus Drive.

“What a kick this will be,” he says to himself, overcome with nostalgia. “Man-o-man, the old campus again.”

The first thing he notices is a gigantic Jordon Athletic Center he didn’t know about. Then he sees the new Perlman Fine Art’s Theater that wasn’t around in his day. He doesn’t recognize the campus.

He books the Beemer past expansive parking lots A and B. “Oh no. This was where Agriculture College students tended the cattle herd. What a pity.”

At campus center things become more recognizable—Georgian red brick monoliths all over, where they should be. Huge pillars are still holding up the Georgian porch of the Student Union. “Of course they are.” There’s the ivy, much more of it, creeping over the Lockheed Physics Building and into his old lab windows, it appears to him.

And then, “Oh, my,” he says. There was the same familiar bus stop beside the undergrad library. A very special bus stop. “I thought it would be long gone.”

He hasn’t been back since his college days there, almost 30 years ago.

He slows the car to a crawl, obsessed by memories of that bus stop. Is returning to campus such a good idea? he wonders. It was so very long ago.

He can’t help staring. The bus stop is unchanged. Just the 2010 circa flyers and bulletins taped all over its plastic shelter are different, instead of flyers from 1980. He tries to read one while coasting. “Hey, look out!” someone shouts. A girl on the bus stop bench is pointing at him, signaling to others standing by.

He slams on the brakes, skidding to an inch of a campus shuttle bus idling at a red light for pedestrians.

Those students at the curb look so very young, mere babies, he thinks while waiting.

He finds himself snickering. “Now that I’ve got your attention, … “ He presses a button on the dashboard. The convertible top slides back. The students all turn to notice the old man’s silver rocket, a mid-life extravagance, for sure.

Bet if I tooled such a sexy ride back then instead of my old Malibu jalopy, things would have been different, he thinks. He tries to smirk. Not his nature. The thought instead makes him sad. Such an idea is absurd.

His Janey comes to mind. He takes a deep, painful breath. Now, there’s no denying it. The real reason he is cruising Campus Drive again is right there at that bus stop where Janey once entered his life, long, long ago.

He strains to see the faces on the young students waiting at the bus stop. There she is. Janey is there. Okay, she’s gone … again, and again, and again. Oh this was not a good idea, he contemplates.

He smiles as he flips on the Harmon Kardon sound system with the subwoofer. The kids should love this. But, the trick’s on him. The radio is playing the very song that always brings Janey back to mind. It’s torture.“Oh my God, no,” he says loud enough for the students at the bus stop hear him and stare.

The light turns green. He stays, staring. He’s frozen, listening to the lyrics from rocker Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” from 1980.

It seems like yesterday

But it was long ago

Janey was lovely, she was the queen of my nights

There in the darkness with the radio playing low

And the secrets that we shared

The mountains that we moved

Caught like a wildfire out of control

Till there was nothing left to burn and nothing left to prove

“Sir? is there something wrong?” a girl came to the car, just as Janey did that night. He sees Janey’s face on the girl. His mind flashes to an incredibly unlikely meeting of Janey late one night so long ago.

[image error]

“Sir? Are you okay? “Sir?”

He focuses. She’s just a strange student, very young, just like Janey was. This girl bears no resemblance, brunette and fully dressed in jeans and T-shirt. Unlike Janey, who was blonde and nearly naked that fateful night.

“Oh,” he says, embarrassed.

He drives down the familiar campus hill on Campus Drive. Intuitively, he pulls into …

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