Big words, but I speak of something of great importance for me, so it's justified.
As I sit here listening to Abbey Road reflecting on what the last four years of my life has brought me in photographing the Twin Cities music scene and beyond, I can't help but think about the things which inadvertently set me up for this wondrously insane life I've chosen. Then again, sometimes I'm almost certain that it chose me.
Let's lay down some basic groundwork on my past. I was born October 24th, 1985 (Sidebar: Guess what? My golden birthday is this year! Big plans in store, stay tuned.) and raised in a small town in southern Minnesota, Albert Lea. My parents first owned a bar called The Long Branch Saloon in Manchester, a tiny town of less than 70 a few miles out of town. I'm told that as an infant I would crawl about on the pool tables, and as a toddler I would imitate select bar patrons by hitting and cursing at the pinball machine. I call BS on that, mainly because I don't remember it. (Well duh.)
A few years later, my parents sold The Long Branch, bought an old bank building about a block away from the bar, and turned it into a bar/restaurant, the Main Street Bar & Grill. My only sibling, sister Melissa, was born around that time in 1989.
About 6-7 years go by and my parents decide to trade-up, selling the Main Street Bar & Grill in Manchester and purchasing a larger old restaurant in a slightly-larger town (about 650) called Alden, about 10 miles west of Albert Lea on I-90.
They still own & operate the Main Street Grill in Alden, though not without a strong desire to sell and finally get out of the restaurant business for good. It's not like they've just phoned it in though. You'll always find some of the best service and food at a fair price anywhere around down there. Plus I've got a few older prints of my concert photos hanging up on the wall there too.
Long story short: I was raised in the hospitality industry by parents who have toiled away in it pretty much all their lives. However, they've done it without having to work for "The Man", in so much as they own the place themselves. I think that's pretty awesome, and their kindness, generosity, and all-around rapport with the customers instilled a great sense of social openness in me as well.
However, I'm also the awkward type. I say weird, funny, amusing, random, obvious, or just plain dorky stuff at times. Other times, I say other things. Sometimes I'm witty with reflective/observational humor, and I also love puns. I also have a mind that spends a good deal of time in the gutter. I attribute most of that last bit to my dad's sense of humor, which I mostly share.
It's not like it's anything that out of the ordinary, but I think it's because I was actually a really smart kid way back when. Like top 2 or 3 in the class, and a total whiz at stuff like math, history, and vocabulary. (All the big words you find should make that last one obvious.) It put me in a weird position, because I wanted to be "normal" but didn't really feel like it in more ways than one. So to say the least, I never really fit in with any groups growing up.
I remember very little from elementary school, except for the fact that in 1st grade, I got 3rd place in the class spelling bee. I misspelled "better" as "beter". My first crush in 5th grade, Karen Leonard (who eventually got a 34 on the ACT and I always liked because she was one of the very few people I knew was smarter than me), got 2nd place and misspelled "empty". The kid who got 1st place? His name's Erik, and I think he wound up a huge stoner or something random like that. Funny how that works out, haha.
One thing that shaped a lot of my childhood outside of school was baseball, a sport which my dad loves and introduced me to at a young age. I actually wound up as the only kid (out of many dozens of other kids) my age in my town who played baseball every year from teeball at 6 to high school/summer town baseball at 18, so I guess I was the only one who stayed dedicated to it for good.
Never was a power hitter or anything flashy like that, just a scrappy kid with a lot of competition and drive in me. Baseball was something I knew I was average at but felt I had the ability to be more than just that if I kept working hard and hustling.
Unfortunately, not fitting in at school also translated to the baseball diamond, as I found myself regularly on the short end of the stick when it comes to the adolescent boy's need to prove their superiority while cutting down their peers. But that's just a fancy way of saying I wasn't popular.
Still never really figured out why I was the outcast growing up, but between being an outsider-looking-in at school and on the field, I eventually grew a pretty thick skin. Sure I was pretty thin-skinned at times, but these days I laugh off just about anything that you can throw at me in terms of ridiculous ridicule.
I suppose that also explains my knack for self-depreciating humor, which I always tinge with a strong dose of sarcasm (yet another family trait). Better for me to laugh at your ridicule than to let it bother me. It still sucked a lot though, being basically rejected by my peers as nerdy, unimportant, or anything else stupid they could make up in their heads.
Rejection still affects me like no other though. I suppose that's what's kept me a very timid person when it comes to the ladies. I'll befriend practically everybody (that's what happens when you're raised by parents in hospitality) but the overly gentlemanly chivalric code I live by keeps my hormones almost always in the off position when I'm out and about. Better not to be shot down 100 times by girls than succeed once is a weird way of thinking about it, but it's pretty much the story of my life, minus one.
I eventually grew weary of the mostly mean or less-than-caring adolescents in Albert Lea and open-enrolled at Alden-Conger High School in 8th grade. I'm not sure whether or not that was necessary, cause all I did was drop myself in a new environment that was already tight-knit with cliques with kids who had known each other since kindergarten at this K-12 school.
It was convenient having my parents' restaurant a block away from school for lunch, but that was about the only benefit of going to school in Alden. Ironically, the girls in Albert Lea turned out way hotter and the school I landed at was also full of a variety of outcasts such as myself. At the time I was there, Alden-Conger High School had the highest percentage of open-enrolled (out-of-district) students in the state, as something like 40% of the students were from other tiny towns nearby that they too were probably sick of.
It took a mountain of courage for me to even talk to girls back then, but most of the time it was me being a teenage dumbass and trying to be funny but too smart or them just shooting me down. I think I wore a lot of black classic rock T-shirts junior year, which I'm sure didn't make me look very attractive anyway.
[Just finished Abbey Road, now putting on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. Music inspires me to keep going, obviously.]
Either way, I wound up as little more than a social nomad in high school, bouncing around between varying circles that all overlapped but still didn't find me interesting enough to include for more than just a moment here or there. I remember a moment senior year where I came back from lunch feeling sick and puked in my hand in the hallway. My sense of humor made me laugh and say "cool" (I watched a lot of Beavis & Butthead and own 120+ episodes on DVD, there's you're clue), but a girl freaked out on me and I found myself disappointed that she thought this random unfortunate happening couldn't just be a minor but amusing mishap not worth more than a minute's worry; cleaning it up.
[Currently running back through this entry and making changes & edits as "Positively 4th Street" plays on my iTunes right as I hit this spot. I love perfect timing.]
I suppose that ties in with my self-depreciating nature, in that I can brush stuff off like nothing. Sure comes in handy sometimes anyway. And though I'm sure I've exaggerated a lot about my experiences growing up, it's still basically true.
Anywho, after finally escaping the confused confines of high school, I moved on up to the north side (i.e., the Twin Cities) for college at the University of Minnesota. And out of my graduating class of 45 (a huge one for that school), I was the only one going to the U. Thus, I would be stepping into a brand-new situation without knowing a single soul.
One might think that with my past this was a recipe for disaster, but it turned out to be quite the contrary. Why? Because this time I wasn't the only one. I believe that the greatest advantage college offers teenagers is that everyone has to start over fresh, with no prior reputation and no past to distort your image in the eyes of a student body who is going through all the same crap you are too.
My good side (the one inspired by the hospitality industry) finally got to shine through in full at college, as I found myself making friends pretty much wherever I went. Freshman year was an enlightening experience in that I finally found like-minded people who were also open-minded and willing to make new friends too. Instead of a social outcast, I was now a social butterfly, bouncing around between varying groups of new acquaintances as needed while also establishing a few preliminary connections that eventually came to fruition in my later days in the music scene.
It really, really, REALLY hurt me on the inside to leave and return home that first summer after freshman year, but before then I was faced with what turned out to be literally one of the most life-changing decisions I've ever made. One that inadvertently made me who I am today. More on that... in my next blog entry.
Ooh, cliffhanger. I'm such a bastard. Luckily it won't be that long before the next post though cause I wanna post it today, the day of the 4th year of an important anniversary for me.
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