When I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote letters (snail mail, of course) to a couple boys who had gone on to college. One of them wrote back inviting me to come to visit because my favorite rock band would be playing at his college’s fall festival. My parents could not miss how much I loved the Iron Butterfly, because I played their “In-a-gadd-da-vida” incessantly by day and by night. It so happened we were attending a family wedding in this boy’s college town the same weekend as his school’s Oktoberfest. My parents said I could go with Alan to the concert, and this was quite a thing because it would also be my first date. But then disappointment struck: the concert was on Friday and we would not get on the road early enough to make it there in time. Unthinking, I said, “I would have to fly.” My mom was a corporate secretary, and she came home from work the next day with the schedule for flights and the news that I could get a student rate if someone could figure out how I could get from the airport to the college. In those days you dressed up a bit, so I climbed aboard my Allegheny Airlines flight with my seventeen dollar ticket in hand to go for my first date listening to my favorite rock band. Needless to say, life does not get any more exciting!
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