Too Much, Too Late

1 Eggfest '92 was going to be the best one yet. That's what they claimed, anyway, and that year we were all inclined to believe it. Eggfest was the same local bullshit every June around the first sign of summer. Fundamentally, the gathering was designed as a sort of thank-you to the state's 38 million laying hens, but we all knew it was nothing more than a means to get Dean into the travel guides. Ohio does indeed supply the nation with 9 percent of its eggs, but of the 7.9 billion eggs laid per year, only about 5,000 or so slide out in Dean. Apparently that was enough to rent a pony for kiddie rides, organize a bake sale, devil a few thousand of those suckers, and book some extremely capable and eager musical entertainment. I'm being cynical now, but back then Eggfest '92 was our largest show yet, and we weren't taking it lightly. No longer would we crash the thing, screaming, "Eggs! Eggs!" in homage to Edie the Egg Lady from the old John Waters movie Pink Flamingos (which we loved), and spooking the pony. With the thirty to forty stragglers who'd wander up each year and justify the following year's Eggfest, we'd be performing for 500 people easy. I was nervous. I was already getting used to folks being nice to me because I played drums in a real band, and I was hungry for more. And for eggs. The Jane Ashers had formed in my garage two years previously, in the summer of 1990. I was five years into my post-graduation from Benjamim Harrison High but I'd yet to send one college application out there for consideration. None of us had after-school jobs yet either. And I wasn't joining the army. I had the notion in my head that college was bullshit, and there was nobody around to challenge that. Not in my house anyway. My friends, they didn't have the grades or the money. And the notions in their heads were limited to "hungry," "girls," or "pot." I didn't know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I decided to give myself a year to figure it out. By the time I turned twenty, I told myself, I'd know my future. And if not, I could always try college. In the meantime, I had plenty of hobbies. I was building my own computer from spare parts. Eating frozen pizzas and drinking my dead dad's Jim Beam bourbon out in the garage. I had my drums out there too. My Frankenstein's monster of a kit. A third-hand Ludwig bass. Dented Pearl tom and snare. Cracked Zildjian cymbals I stole from the band closet at school and dropped during my getaway. My drums were hand-painted a sort of orange, the shade of a burnt cake--I'd never seen another kit quite the same color. I remember taking pains to come up with something odd when I was mixing the pigments and getting high. I didn't care if it was ugly, and it was. I just wanted it to be one of a kind. My things were occasionally unreliable. But they were also unique. Like me. Who needed higher education? I wasn't bored yet. Life was good enough. I lived alone with my mother, whom I adored, even though she was trouble. Ma had dropped off the grid just over a year after my father passed away in the fall of 1985. She made an attempt at proper widow behavior for a little while, probably for my sake. Minna was good-looking. I got her light hair and blue eyes. I guess everything else came from my dad: obstinacy, alcoholism, and this nose. Anyway, once it was proper, about two months after the funeral, the men came. Nobody local, out of respect for my father, who was well loved in Dean whether he worshiped the Son or not. I wondered where these men with their oily hair and powder blue two-piece suits were materializing from, because nobody in Dean would dare violate Artie's legacy in such a rude and horny fashion. Were they traveling salesmen passing through Dean on their way to Cincinnati or Toledo or Chicago even? More likely they were just blank, common men, half in the bag and vaguely wanting to nail my grieving mother after buying her aSpitz, Marc is the author of 'Too Much, Too Late ' with ISBN 9781400082933 and ISBN 1400082935.