G.I. Bluesberry Yogurt and the Summer of '76

The kids down the street had a mom named Sharon. Sharon loved Elvis. 

In particular, she was a fan of the G.I. Blues album with a young trim E.A.P., all cleaned up on the cover, sans sideburns, facing left with his lips parted slightly in a sexy half sneer. 

She also loved the KISS Destroyer album. Although they don't seem complimentary at first blush, they became an easy way to determine what I was going to find upon entering their second story apartment any given summer afternoon. 

 

If KISS was playing as I ascended the stairs, I knew that Sharon would be up and about, dressed in her cutoffs and a short sleeved gauzy blouse showing cleavage. With her black waist length hair brushed 100 strokes and beaded Indian earrings sweeping her shoulders, she might possibly even be cooking something. I learned every word to that leathery, colossal booted, Jewfro KISS Destroyer album the summer of 1976 because when she was happy Sharon would listen to it over and over as we girls played Yahtzee or the game of Life on their lacerated beast of a dining room table. We'd pound our little 6, 5 and 4 year old fists yelling "You wanted the best! You got the best!" Little pigtailed heads bopping to the beat, sweat beading on our upper lips, we sang until our throats ached and we collectively lost our minds in Detroit Rock City. Sharon used get really excited about the line "First I drink and then I smoke!" and she'd light up her cigarette with an expert flick of a match, warbling muffled syllables about making the midnight show.

It was a far rougher, different scene than what I would hear and see at home. My parents had music on our turntable at all times too but we surely didn't have any KISS, and my mom did not smoke. There was an element of danger and disarray at Sharon's with overflowing ashtrays strewn about, random items of male and female clothing draping every square inch of the furniture, and carpets that looked chock full of dog hair even though their dog had died the summer before. As I sat on the toilet, which was never bleach clean, I'd gaze up at the assortment of stretched out grayish colored bras hung over the shower curtain, and I'd tentatively glance over at the stack of Easy Rider magazines in their grungy metal magazine rack

The Easy Riders were Grandy's. He was the father figure and proud owner of two Harleys, each with hand-painted gas tanks. The kids on our block would argue about which was prettier, the one with the blue teardrops painted on it or the orange lightening. I always preferred the turquoise watery paint but it seemed cooler to like the firebolts. Grandy wore a black helmet with no face shield and a leather vest three sizes too small when he'd take off riding. They had no car...Sharon worked within walking distance of the house and Grandy biked to work in good weather or got a ride when the rain, wind, or snow was a challenge. Since so many of our townspeople worked in the same mill, and gas was so prohibitively expensive, carpooling was really common.

One afternoon, hotter than hell (also one of Sharon's KISS albums in rotation, along with Love Gun and of course, Destroyer), I marched up the back rickety wooden stairs to my own cadence of Christine Sixteen. Stepping over candy wrappers, broken toys, and small tools, I reached the top and the eldest daughter met me there with a furrowed brow and her index finger up to her lips.

"Shhh" was what she said but she didn't need to because I heard G.I. Blues and that was almost never good.

I wanted nothing better than to turn and high tail it back down the precarious steps; but though I was only 6, I knew I had to stay and try to help if I could. Sharon was supine on the couch with the drapes drawn, in a heavy veil of cigarette smoke and her 4 year old daughter was sitting on the dirty rug beside her, all her normally bouncy flaxen hair stuck in strings to the back of her clammy little neck. Sharon was alternately weeping and humming and then singing and smoking. She was also drunk. It wasn't the first time I'd seen a drunk person but I was unaccustomed to drunkenness so unabashedly on display, heavy with emptiness and despair.

I suspect, looking back, that she may've lost someone special. Maybe her first born's father, maybe in the Vietnam War. Sharon's #1 child had olive hued skin, perpetually tanned in the summertime, black stick straight hair, coffee brown eyes, and a sharp tongue prone to bad temper. She always seemed ready to brawl and when punished, she never flinched or cried out. I know this because Sharon, in a freakish display of psycho-grandeur would whip the girls with a flyswatter on their high porch in front of any and all curious passers-by.

Where daughter #1 had ice in her veins, daughter #2 was artsy, flighty, feminine and quiet. She also had milky white skin that burned all summer and light brown curls. Daughter #3 was a bone china complected child, with a healthy pink pout and blonde fuzzy locks. She was also routinely whiny and argumentative but only with us girls. With her Mama, she was the brow smoother, the cold cloth fetcher, the 4 year old caregiver.

On those smoky dark G.I. Blues days the girls had to make their own dinners. They usually settled on blueberry yogurt, as it was easy to grab and soothing in the heat. I made sure I was gone by the time the foils were peeled open because I knew I did not want to be there when Grandy arrived on that scene. After having reported the yogurt dinner menu to my own mother, leaving out the darkness, chain smoking, and wailing, my mother quietly commented that good mothers provided more than yogurt for dinner.

One lazy Sunday, the girls sauntered down the street for our neighborhood gathering of flashlight tag chewing gristle and bones, proud that they'd had charcoal grilled family steaks like the rest of us. Someone told them to toss the sharp objects before play began and the three of them looked sick at heart at having to drop their beefy badges of normalcy.

An old flame made me a mix tape in the 1990s and knowing that I was in the KISS Army, he picked a Destroyer song to include among the other tunes. The mix tape came with a song list but actually playing and hearing the song aloud brought on a visceral reaction for which I was unprepared. Having not listened to Destroyer in its entirety since the summer of 1976 and having not heard a KISS song in a quiet solitary atmosphere, quite possibly, ever, I was running a bath when Do You Love Me came swinging out of my stereo speakers like a giant gut punch. I slid down to the linoleum and wept. All I could think of was Sharon, dancing with her wooden spoon up to her mouth like a mic over a grimy stove top and pot of boiling spaghetti water.

I'll never know what became of them. Without a word to anyone they moved out of town following a year of Sharon not being able to lift herself off the couch for walks to work or trips to the grocery store for blueberry yogurts or cough syrup when she and the girls were sick or fucked up exhibitions of discipline on the high porch. 

Maybe a geographic fix led to help with her depression and drinking. Maybe the music could continue and she could listen to G.I. Blues without it destroying her peace. Maybe she is dancing to KISS in a half buttoned shirt, with dirty bare feet, and a soft pack of Merits. I can only hope so.  

NOTE: My favorite KISS song remains Do You Love Me. I can now listen to it and appreciate with all of my heart and soul the memories of my life and times that helped shape me. 

I really like rock and roll...all of the fame and the masquerade. I love the concerts and studios. And all of the money, honey, that you make. 

#1970s #KISS #KISSARMY #DetroitRickCity #DoYouLoveMe #Elvis #GIBlues #EastRider #HarleyDavidson #Merit #blueberryyogurt #mushroomtumbler