1986: The Cutting Crew

My dad grew up with homing pigeons. In 1976, he moved my brothers an my mom out of Appleton, and built a house in the "sticks" of Darboy. In the back yard, he built a pigeon coop. There was a local pigeon racing club he became a part of. The pigeon club was pretty cool. They had a big party every year, with kids my age. They also had a spot in the newspaper to say who won the races.

Essentially you would drive your team of racing pigeons to a location on the map all at the same time, and a timer started. Once (and I'm not sure) the first or all of your pigeons make it back to your coop, time is compensated in some way... and it's scored. Winning such races brings money and your name in the local newspaper.

Mike worked at this huge bird store, and built a bird room in the basement, where he would attempt to breed finches and ring neck doves and all kinds of birds. The coolest one was a Blue front Amazon parrot named "Sonny." The parrot was cool because it could talk and repeat words. I got the biggest kick out of it. His white Moloucan Cockatoo named Princess. It ended up getting sick, losing all its feathers. Princess died of a disease that's like that bird's version of AIDS called "beak and feather syndrome." The bird caught it from temporarily living with a mate that Mike owned only briefly and sold off. We had a parakeet named Oscar that we kept in the dining room. My dad taught Oscar to say "bullshit" and "fuck you." My mom used to (in a small fit of rage) yell to God that she was "so sick and tired of that frickin' bird." As a kid, that brought quite a chuckle. We thought it was hilarious... any opportunity to laugh my butt off as a kid was taken full advantage of.

Both Tommy and Mike worked at my dad's dental lab. Sometimes I'd find myself there too, doing small stuff like taking out garbage. Mike would find plaster models of people's teeth, and taught me how to drill a hole through it so he could wire into the birdcages. I'm not sure if they scratched their claws on them or what. All I knew was that it was fun.



The song"Just Died in your arms tonight" was a pretty big radio song. It was all over the radio, and more often then not, you'd hear it in the car. I think about riding in the station wagon with Mike and one particular story:

Mike was involved with my Dad's hobby a little bit. We all had responsibilities around the house, and one of Mike's, especially in high school, was feeding the pigeons, and exercising them. On this occasion, Mike drove the pigeons far away to have them fly back. We drove a few hours southwest of our house. I remember seeing a water tower with an indian head painted on it, which I now realize was Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

We were driving all over for some reason. I'm not sure if we were lost or what. almost ran out of gas looking for diesel. Mike was sort of freaking out. We'd pull into a gas station, they wouldn't have diesel, and we'd have to find a different gas station. When we let the birds out, Amy lost jelly shoe and we were driving back before she said anything... and we had to go back for it. I don't remember stopping at any exact place to let the birds out, so how we found the place again to look for her shoe was impossible in my young mind. I think we ended up finding the shoe, and it would have been way too long a drive home to not have found it.

1985 : Every Time You Go Away

Paul Young - Every Time You Go away


I always considered my family a singing family. I grew up thinking this was normal... breaking into song in the car, at the dinner table, whenever a song came on that we know. My mom encouraged it, when I think most others might have been annoyed. Until high school, I always had trouble hearing the actual lyrics. Many times I'd just make up what sounded good.

I spent many summers at a cottage in the Wisconsin Northwoods. We would pack up the wooden sided Oldsmobile diesel station wagon and spend weekends or even weeks at a time up north. At the age of 5 this was bliss. I brought clothes and some He-Man guys and I was set. He-Man got to fight Skeletor in all sorts of new places up there... on the dock, on a tree stump - sky was the limit.

The closest town that had good shopping was about 45 minutes away in a town called Rhinelander. I vividly remember hearing Paul Young's "Every Time You Go Away" while sitting in the station wagon going up the driveway. The end of the driveway went uphill a bit, where in the fall I could pick blackberries. When the song came on, we started singing, this was a song I could not decipher lyrics. My lyrics became singing, "You Take a Piece of meat with you."

To me, that was like "packing a lunch." The real words are "take a piece of ME with you." At the age of five, I'm not sure I would have understood that... sounds in a food perspective slightly cannibalistic! But the lyrics, to my mother, prompted a serious "birds and the bees for five year olds" pep talk. I seem to remember her talking about how fast I was growing up and how I would "someday meet a girl from up north yada yada."

Once we got to the store, I picked out some shoes that looked like a car from the side and bottom profile. I remember these shoes being expensive, and I could wear the tread off shoes in two weeks. My parents and siblings were always in awe of the sight of how fast I could wear out a pair of shoes. So from talking about growing up to picking out car-looking shoes, I still had a lot of growing up to do. My mom would be right about fourteen years later, I'd go on to meet a girl in college from WAY up north in Wisconsin, and ended up being the person I dated pretty much throughout college. Moms are always right, or they at least know what's going on.

Whenever I hear Every Time You Go Away... I think about putting meat in a ziplock bag, and riding in that station wagon up north with my car shoes on.

1985: Music defined by radio and siblings

105.7 WAPL - The Rockin Apple

I grew up with nothing around my house but cornfields. This area of the boondocks was called Darboy USA, a "suburb" of the city of Appleton. Appleton was a city of 66,000 at the time. One thing I could see from my yard was the radio antenna for 105.7 WAPL, The Rockin' Apple. "The best classic rock, the best new rock." When you are a child, you see this long radio antenna with flashing red lights. Being on the gullible side, I didn't have a frame of reference for size... it could have been an antenna or a tower! I had just assumed that EVERY song on the radio was being played LIVE inside that tower somewhere, hence the flashing lights - that's where the bands play! I don't know if I imagined the radio antenna was like a big elevator shaft, with rooms to perform going all the way up or what.

For example, if "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith was playing on the radio, I assumed Aerosmith was in town playing it live inside that radio antenna. It's funny because I don't remember anyone ever telling me this... it was just one of those early creative theories I had as a five year old that couldn't be further from the truth.

As I grew up, 105.7 WAPL wasn't as cool as I thought it was. It was just the coolest available. My gripe is this... they played a TON of Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Beatles, Grateful Dead and The Eagles constantly. Nothing against these bands, but I grew an distaste to them over time. Tommy and Mike even helped coin a saying "if Bruce is 'the Boss,' then I QUIT." Haha.

Nowadays, the only one I can really stomach of the bands I mentioned above is the Rolling Stones and some Springsteen. This overplaying of music was the first sign that radio stations can RUIN good bands for you. In these days of the mid 80's, they wouldn't play "heavy" music, even if it was popular. They wouldn't play Metallica during the day. If you called in to request it, they wouldn't even take that as a request until after 10:00pm. It was considered way too heavy for daytime airplay. The heaviest you could get during the day was probably Hendrix. Thank God for Jimi. To their credit, they played a lot of other good stuff too. This is where my musical tastes started to develop.

I was just really lucky to have an older sister and two older brothers. Being the youngest came with all sorts of perks. I wasn't "up to me" to seek and find what was cool. I was able to soak up what my siblings liked and usually that's what I liked to. I had my own identity since all kids a certain age like certain things... like He-Man and Star Wars and such. But when I was little, my older brothers had a rock cover band when they were in HighSchool. It was called Defiance.

Defiance

Their shows were often really elaborate with lots of speakers, pro sound, and stage lights... just crazy. They practiced in my basement and my mom & dad would buy Darboy Fried Chicken (not to be confused with KFC) and they'd stay for dinner. My dad helped out with a Keyboard, PA and other essential equipment... and supported them with funds to get started. The next thing you know they are playing bars all over... even opened for Ratt and Lita Ford at Green Bay's Brown Country Arena! My oldest Brother Tommy wielded this white Gibson Explorer, while Mike did lead vocals and played keyboards. That's the music.. how about the dress? We are talking about leather pants, bandanas, 80's sunglasses... the works. They covered all sorts of Bon Jovi, Ozzy, Judas Priest, Van Halen, Rush, Loverboy, Prince, etc. A great party band indeed.

Their guitar player was this kid named Michael Boyle from Appleton. I looked up to Michael Boyle quite a bit... all of them really. But I always wanted to play the guitar. He was a flashy player... had really puffy hair, and my brothers would jokingly call him Buckwheat after the Little Rascals. So that's what Tommy and Mike called him all the time. After HS, Defiance fizzled out... and I wouldn't see Boyle again for about ten or so years. So let's fast forward to 1994. He was working at my favorite guitar store when I was a teenager, Henri's Music in Appleton. I recognized him and said "Buckwheat!" You should have seen the look on his face. Saying that meant I was old school, but I looked too young to know him from that time. I'm Tommy & Mike Bongers' little brother. Being known as one of my "siblings' little brother" was usually a good thing, so it never bothered me one bit.