BUILD YOUR CASTLES IN THE AIR, THEN PUT THE FOUNDATIONS UNDERNEATH THEM

Mr. Thoreau told us. Like a lot of his advice, it seems backwards to me. But what a castle!

We had a castle in MTV. Oh, it wasn't much of one, but when you're teenaged, it would do. It was out in the boons (as if MTV wasn't) and that's where we spent a lot of weekends.

Once driving became a focal point of our lives, we lived in our cars. And if we didn't have one of our own, we borrowed the parents' on weekends. And headed to the woods.

There were really only so many places you could hit in MTV Proper. But with 13 feeder schools filtering into MTV High, there was plenty of country. Johnny Rabbit on KXOK and Dick Biondi on WLS could be heard from every car.

Bushwacking was a popular activity. You just rode around looking for where guys took their girls parking. Wow, I am sounding old. Next I'll be using the terms beau and sparking and making whoopee. And when you'd find them, you'd shine light, honk your horn, or even sneak up on them and shake the car. The best ever, and forgive me if you've heard this one, was performed by George Felty. On a country road, secluded and perhaps better described as a country lane, he went down one end and with a chain saw cut down a tree that fell across the east end of the road. Similarly, on the west end, literally trapping the couple in the middle of the lane.

Pretty extreme. Most nights it was just driving, talking, and listening to the radio. One of my friends, Jimmy Tapocik, had a reverberator hooked up to his radio. Basically, it made it louder, but we all thought that was cool. Another friend had an oogga horn on his parents' Nash, and we thought that was something, too.

I know I'm stopping now, but that's the way it was back then in the Midwest. Unless there was a high school football or basketball game.