Trigger! On first thought people can get confused by the
word trigger. Is it something on a gun? Is it the unexplainable? Unrecognizable?
A swelling of emotion? Something else? Or all of the above? For me it is all of
the above but today I write about the emotions.
As I sat this morning listening to a song by The Beatles,
Free as a Bird, I was triggered. It wasn't about the Beatles so much but the
talented Jeff Lynne, producer extraordinaire and lead of the band The Electric
Light Orchestra. I realized there are several things in my life that are
essential to my story that must be included. My story could not be told without
the inclusion of Jeff Lynne and The Electric Light Orchestra.
There was a time in 1974 that I was first introduced to the
Electric Light Orchestra, (ELO). I had been out doing crazy things on the
campus of East Tennessee
State University
in Johnson City Tennessee where I was going to High School.
I was a Freshman in High School and was doing a multitude of the stupid things
High School kids do, especially kids coming from a dysfunctional family,
staying from one place to another, doing drugs he could afford, mostly huffing,
and as confused, well as confused as one might expect. It was while coming home
late one night, being high as a kite that I was at my grandparents house where
I often stayed. Sitting up late, I watched this band perform an amazing
rendition of Can't Get it Out of My Head and to this day, I believe the best
rendition ever of Roll Over Beethoven. At that moment, even though I was as
high as a kite, I was won over to the music of ELO.
I don't know what it was other than their own ability to be
unique and do their own thing. They weren't really copying anyone else's style
of music, they were creating their own style. I started following the and
listening to everything I could, be it, to this day some of my favorites from
albums like On The Third Day, Eldorado, Face The Music, and others, but
especially these three early renditions.
In my own troubled life, I had moved from staying with
grandparents on occasion, to wherever I could find a place to sleep, be it a
baseball dugout, an abandoned bowling
alley, and ultimately with friends from couch hopping to a youth pastor, and
the creme dela crème, the YMCA Homeless Transient Shelter in Erwin Tennessee. I
had a bed, a boom box and a bunch of 8-tracks, including of course. ELO. I remember laying in bed so vividly to this
day, listening to the traffic driveing by while listening to the guitar riffs
on Fire On High. Something about the sounds of ELO and night time traffic
filled with sirens on occasions that still triggers memories.
I went to 3 different High Schools 6 different times from
the 9th grade through eventually graduation in the 12th, all while listening to
the music of ELO. Something else happened though. Just up the street from the
YMCA on the corner of Tucker and Main
Street in Erwin lived this hot lady, a few years
older but nonetheless, hot as all get out, Mary Jane.
I was smart, I started showing up and visiting Mary Jane
whom I had met at a church I started going to because another girl named Kim told
my sister that I was hot. Kim and I dated for awhile, it was good, but after a
tough breakup, I was lonely, and living at the YMCA. I was tired of Ragu spaghetti
sauce over noodles cooked on a hot plate I wasn't supposed to have. What did I
do after dating a few girls? What most anyone in my situation would do, I
started showing up at Mary Jane's around supper time. We would sit down, eat,
watch movies or television and over a bit of time start to fall in love. As
Mary Jane would tell me some years later, the band we did a lot of making out
to was ELO. There was nothing like a great band, a young man making out with a
much hotter older woman along with the music of ELO that would give taste of
Heaven.
Needless to say, a couple of years later Mary Jane and I
were married. It was the shock of some in the community. This woman older than me,
a school teacher and I, a guy who was homeless and left college early was
getting married. Some 40 years later while sitting in my living room in Wichita Kansas,
Mary Jane and I talked about how we had shown people that said our marriage
wouldn't work. I'll never forget her telling me so emphatically, "Yeah, we
showed them didn't we Mike?"
The love we had, kindled in part by the music of ELO would
grow. While there were setbacks at times, as there will be in any marriage, we
both knew the importance of ELO in our love for each other. One night, some 35
or so years after we tied the knot, we were sitting on the couch. I told my
Alexa, "Alexa play my music."
I honestly had no idea what Alexa was going to play when I told her to
play music. This time as Mary Jane and I sat close together on the couch, she
started playing Telephone Line by ELO. WOW!
Mary Jane wrapped her hands around my head and gives me a passionate
kiss I'll never forget. Enjoying it, I ask, "Wow, what was that for?"
She responds, "Alexa is playing our song. We used to make out to that song
all the time." Then showing that
that once dumb poor street kid was still kind of dumb, I responded,
"Honey, I used to make out with a lot of girls to that song." She
back hands me as she should have and we both start laughing.
We loved ELO so much that we made a pact that helped keep
our marriage so passionate for so many years. We decided that anytime, no
matter what we were doing or where we were at, that if we heard an ELO song we
had to give each other a kiss. There was the KIA car commercial, it played it
all of the time, it showed while visiting someone's house, or at a movie. All
the time, over and over again. We even
went to see the movie I Can Only Imagine, well guess what? The movie starts off
with an ELO song. Seems like we were kissing all the time and people wondered
why, so we had to tell them about our ELO pledge to each other.
We had been together some 39 years and I had made a pledge
about the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. That is I would never go until ELO was
inducted. Well the previous year they had been inducted and my daughter who
lives in Ohio bought Mary Jane and I tickets
to go because now, ELO was in the HOF.
We were excited to go, so we did.
While in Cleveland
at the Rock N Roll HOF, I was frankly disappointed in a lot of ways despite
being asked for my autograph as we went to go in. See, I'm a musician and know
how to dress the part, even the long hair and long beard. Mary Jane just laughed
about it. While in the HOF
my back was hurting and I had to rest more than usual. Mary Jane on the other
hand was complaining about a little tummy ache. We didn't think much of it at
the time. We left disappointed in the HOF
for all kinds of reasons and went back to our daughters. It was early in the
week and each day Mary Jane complained a little more about her tummy. We left Ohio to drive back to Kansas because I had a concert on Saturday
night. We stopped at Lake of the Ozarks to
check it out and Mary Jane kept complaining more about her tummy hurting.
We got home on Friday, I did my show on Saturday and Mary
Jane didn't go which was rare. It was a night that I'll never forget as I was
inducted as a Great Musician from the State of Kansas into the International Blues Hall of
Fame. I came home excited, woke Mary Jane up to show her the plaque and tell
her. She was so glad for me. We went to sleep and the next morning she complained
more about her tummy. I told her I was taking her to the Doctor. She insisted she
didn't want to go, but in a not so nice way, I told her she was going to the
"damned doctor, you have insurance!"
We went to the doctor the next day, and the doctor said she
thought she knew what was going on but wanted to run more tests and wouldn't
tell us anything. Mary Jane had an appointment that Friday at 9 AM. It was
unusual to go with her but I told her, "honey, it's early enough in the
day, I'll go with you and we can go have breakfast afterwards." That
sounded good to her so that was the plan, but a plan that never happened.
At the doctors office they did a scan of Mary Jane's tummy. From
there they saw something and sent her immediately to the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita.
It was there that our nightmare begin. Mary Jane ended up being admitted to the
hospital and would be there 5 of the next 6 weeks where she was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer. There was hope though in what was called the Whipple
Surgery. They thought it was a good possibility that she would respond well to
the surgery, even with it being as dangerous as it is. 3 weeks later they
attempted the surgery.
I'll never forget the 17 or so people in the surgical
waiting room with us. I'll also never forget the surgeon walking out some hour
and a half later to tell me they had to abandon the surgery. The cancer had
grown so much that if they had continued the surgery she would have died. They
diagnosed her at stage 4 and gave her 6 months at best to live.
Mary Jane fought hard, but I'm not done with ELO. It was
2019, now a year later and Mary Jane is still fighting and ELO was touring the United States.
We applied through an organization called The Dream Foundation to get a scholarship
to go to the Cleveland
concert. I was now a full-time caregiver and bringing in zero income and the
incredible doctors bills had us dramatically in the hole each month. Unfortunately,
we were turned down. I didn't give up though. We were going to go on our Dream
Date!
I decided to get in touch with friends in Nashville Tennessee.
The Bridgestone Center made great tickets available for us, my friend Jim
Schulman from University High in Johnson City was now the Vice-Mayor in
Nashville so he helped make things happen and gave us his parking place at
Bridgestone, so close to the door. Then, well then, there was Facebook. I asked
my friends to help make our dream date possible. Man oh man, how those friends
came through.
A lot of things happened, I could go into so much detail,
but my wife of going on 40 years, this woman I had been with for 42 years and I
were going on the dream date we never though possible to see the band we loved
more than any other, Jeff Lynne's ELO.
There were people who had heard of our story. They
came to meet us, talk to us, took photos.
Mary Jane insisted on getting a hat and t-shirt, she would wear them,
until the day she died six months later, on December 22, 2019.
I sit here writing, literally with tears flowing down my
face thinking of these memories, while listening to ELO in the background on
shuffle, with by chance, Zanadu playing. The line comes up, "A million
lights are dancing in the sky where you are." Not making that up.
Triggers, I don't know, all of this today, as I approach
November 20, this Friday, on what would have been our 41st Anniversary. Thank
you God for the wife I had and ELO. Now let me live for the future, with whatever
you may have for me, but I am sure, along with ELO.
Please don't take this wrong,THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO RAISE FUNDS!!!!, but I promised my wife to do
my own record, which has just been released but I promised to release hers as
well. Everything is done except for the licensing fees for some of her cover
songs. Prayerfully, those funds will come in someday to get that done, of
which, 1/2 of all proceeds go to the Cancer Relief Organization in Wichita that helped us so
much, Victory in the Valley. Thanks for reading, God bless you and thank you
again Jeff Lynne and the rest of the cast of ELO over the years. Your music has
made an impact, of which, my story couldn't be told.
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