A Song Can Take You a Long Way Home

Summer of ’76, I was sixteen and thought the world had finally made room for me. I had a gold ’72 Dodge Charger that gleamed like a brass trumpet in the sun, and an AM/FM radio that pulled in songs the way a fishing line pulls in dinner. Back then, those songs weren’t “classic” anything.

They were alive, the sound of windows down and elbows tan. I didn’t have much of a plan, which felt like a case for freedom.

One night, I drove the highway until the lines on the road began to braid themselves together. Tires hummed, and the wind rattled the loose change in the ashtray.

The dash lights glowed as if the car was keeping me company. Somewhere between one song ending and another beginning, I realized I didn’t need to be anywhere in particular.

So I wasn’t. I drove from Northern California to Southern California.

I pulled off near the northern foothills, close enough to the Mexico border that the air felt different, like it had crossed a line before I did. I rolled out a sleeping bag beside the Charger, the hood was still warm, ticking softly as it cooled, as if it was settling in for the night, too.

I slept lightly, half-waking to the smell of dust and sage. At dawn, the sun came up slow and orange, as if it had all the time in the world.

The hills took the light first, then the rest of us. I remember sitting there, back against a tire, eating a squashed sandwich and thinking, without saying it out loud, that this must be what being grown-up felt like.

Turns out, I was wrong about that part, but right about the moment. Those days came crowded with school halls that smelled like floor wax, girls who laughed at our shenanigans, and liquor stolen from our parents’ cabinets.

We talked big about the future, as if it were a town we were all moving to together. Funny thing is, nobody gave directions.

Now I’m sixty-five. I say it out loud sometimes to hear how it sounds. The jump from sixteen to here feels like stepping off a curb and landing three blocks away.

I still listen to those songs. They live in a box called “oldies” now, which feels a little rude, but I forgive it. And when one comes on, the years stack up all at once, faces, parking lots, summer nights, the particular ache of wanting more without knowing what “more” was.

There’s a gentle humor in it, if you look sideways. I used to think I’d always be becoming something.

It turns out that a lot of life is learning how to be what you already are. Small-town wisdom, the kind you get from men leaning on pickup beds and women wiping their hands on dish towels, says don’t rush your coffee and don’t wish away your days.

They were right. They usually were.

Now and then, I take a drive with the radio on, so I can hear who shows up. The Charger’s long gone, replaced by something sensible with cup holders.

But when a familiar guitar lick sneaks in, the road straightens, the air warms, and there I am again, sixteen, listening hard, believing the future was a wide-open thing. And the truth is, it still is, it’s just quieter now, more like a back road than a highway.

And when the song ends, I don’t feel sad. I feel grateful for that night by the car, a sunrise that didn’t ask anything of me, and a life that went by in a flash and a fullness, all at once.

That’s what a song can do: Take you the long way home, and somehow make the miles feel kind.