Saturday Night is a conceptual place that takes on the identity of an unlimited amount of worlds. I hear the words and I am first transported to 1975. The song Another Saturday Night was released by Cat Stevens. He did not write it, it was originally written and released by Sam Cooke in February 1963 on the album "Ain't That Good News". It was written by Cooke while he was staying at a hotel in which no female guests were allowed. The song was about a guy with money in his pocket but no girl to spend it on. This showed a picture of what one version of Saturday Night could look like.
Let's not forget about the Bay City Rollers, 1975 again. Interestingly the song was originally released in the UK in 73 and it did not even make the charts. But the bubble-gum pop/rock band got their revenge when it was released again in 75 in the US and by January 1976, had hit number 1 on the Billboard chart.
Saturday nights, sitting around a campfire in 1977 in East Alstead New Hampshire. My cousin Dave and my Dad were building on Dave's family's log cabin. We sat in what would be the floor space of the new cabin, at a small campfire while Dave sang Clementine for my cousin Steve and me.
Saturday nights at my Grandmother's house. This is one of those places if I could choose a place to go back to, it is here. A wonderful dinner in the tiny kitchen on Carol Drive, followed by popcorn and creating things and laughter. Stories and warmth, in a house that smelled like fresh apples and honey.
Saturday nights in 1981 with Margie's family at Stafford Motor Speedway. Nights like this always made me feel like it would be 20 years till I turned 20, and 50 years till I turned 30. You get the idea.
Saturday nights in the smoky South Texas bar, jukebox playing familiar favorites. As we threw darts drinking one-dollar Lone Star Beers, the 20-year age difference between Dad and I was not even there.
Saturday nights when everything came apart like a single-engine plane not making it to the end of the runway in one piece. The thick fog of intoxication, bad judgment, and impulse. The lack of understanding of consequences and how eventually, choices made, cannot be undone in one day.
Saturday nights in isolation in the woods, listening to old music and discovering that decisions made today are more far-reaching than I could imagine.
Saturday nights in a city ten thousand miles from home, listening to Armed Forces Radio, driving down into the port from Log Base Echo, hours from bad news and invasion. There was no other life but this one. Bette Midler was shouting at us, "God is watching us!" I slept the on a trailer deck, under another trailer.
Saturday nights riding with my son listening to Garrison Keiller's A Prairie Home Companion, Liam telling me in the acted-out radio play parts that he could actually see the people and places in the play.
Saturday nights yield infinite possibilities. For you and for me, it is all different. I think the thing that fascinates me the most is that, if you turn the dial on time by just a few hours, the universe in which we exist is completely different. Saturday night contrasts Sunday morning like Earth does to Mars. Saturday morning too being the opposite side of a coin making it impossible for both to exist in the same view.
One thing is for sure, that great unknown state of mind, that possibility of being in a place so unique in space and time awaits us all, carving its notch into days and times unlike its own. From the people on Monfort Road in Strong Maine in 1978 gathering at one neighbor's house to watch someone shout, "Live from New York...It's Saturday Night!" to having my little sons falling asleep on my lap as I sit in front of a campfire, July 4th weekend in 2008. Owls calling from close by, echoing over a firefly-lit field. It's all good.
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