fast car
Until the early 2000s, music had a timeless aspect for me.
I lived miles down a dirt road, almost completely isolated from the outside world with rare interactions with people outside of my family, no television, no internet, fleeting moments of FM radio on low—ear stuck to the speaker, hoping no one flung my door open suddenly. All other music was borrowed from the library, under parental supervision, and went through an approval process before I could listen to it. (Classical and Christian music from 1994 and older always passed the test!) This meant that I would hear a song in the grocery store and have no idea if it was 50 years old or the latest hit. It was without reference point, time-less. When I look back on this part of my life, it has almost a dreamlike quality: the structurelessness of it, the unknowns, the questions that couldn’t be asked.
I got my driver's license at 19, and my first beloved car had only an AM radio. No worries, I kept my boombox filled with batteries so I could listen to CDs. But when those batteries ran out, I had the radio dial all to myself and a rush of freedom—I could choose any channel I wanted! AM radio didn't have the alternative music I was craving, but there was a random station that would play the same five songs over and over: 'Message in a Bottle' by the Police, 'It's My Life' by Bon Jovi, 'Fast Car' by Tracy Chapman, and two others that I can't remember now. I didn't know if these were brand new songs, very old songs, popular or obscure. (I assumed obscure because it was on the strange AM station.) I didn't know if these songs had subliminal messages that were filling my mind with terrible things. (A fear just as real as my anxious conviction that all of the milk jugs I picked up at work were covered with anthrax.)
One morning, Jake, the barista who had the keys to open up the coffee shop I worked at was a no-show. I waited a few moments before driving off in search of a payphone. When I found one at a gas station down the road, I found the crumpled list of phone numbers I kept in my glove compartment, dropped a quarter in, and got his parent's answering machine. I left a message and waited a few minutes before going back to the coffee shop. Listening to The Police—'I will send an SOS to the world'—it's now 4:30 AM, no one is out, very grey-dark with that specific Pacific Northwest mist settling, and I decided to drive back to the empty gas station. The payphone was ringing! I jumped out of my car to answer it. 'Sarah???' It was Jake, overslept, on his way.
I try to imagine explaining to my daughter what it would be like to not have a phone to text your co-worker, or a way to check their socials to see if they were out late the night before, to beg for a driver’s license, to not know that 'Fast Car' was already 12 years old when I discovered it.