So, we get out of high school and all go to college, with Scott going out-of-state to Cornell College in the exceedingly small town of Mt. Vernon, Iowa. I remember the first time Ron and I visited this town, and the events that shaped our initial dark association with it.
We were driving Scott up to Iowa so he could take his last final for the semester. For some reason, we left for Iowa six hours ahead of schedule because we'd found ourselves with ants-in-our-pants at three a.m. We were a little drunk and we'd just taken all of Scott's muscle relaxants on a dare (which he was prescribed after falling 28 feet while roofing a house), but we got the itch to go right then and there, so by God we did. Scott and I promised Ron that we would stay awake for the entire 6 hour trip, despite our intoxication. No one had any money so we had to find a way to come up with enough mullah for three days worth of food and gas. At the 24 hr. grocery store, I convinced an ex-girlfriend to give us sufficient monies and I was applauded for my scrappy maneuvering. Off we went.
At about five a.m., while Scott and I snored voraciously, Ron ran over a deer, which he didn't even notice until later. At about nine a.m., we rolled into Mt. Vernon only to find ourselves locked out of Scott's apartment. After we broke in, we slept gloriously. Hours later, we woke up and bought a couple boxes of cheap malt liqour and began drinking heavily with this guy named Matt (soon to be drummer #2). After many beers, Matt's gruff exterior shattered and he started anguishing over an experience he'd had the previous month while visiting the strife-torn (then) U.S.S.R. He felt horribly guilty for betraying his country, but even more horrible were his violently hypochondriatic tirades about how he'd contracted some horrendous disease. So possessed by fear was he, that he actually made Ron phone a bona-fide communist in Poland from a bar pay-phone at midnight for an interrogation. Later, he was able to calm down and I ended up going home with some vaguely unattractive woman who was into cameras. I then shamefully wandered Mt. Vernon for four hours trying to find Scott's place. Scott, Ron, and Matt were, in all likelihood, also involved in various shameful scenarios, but they won't tell me. I think that same night our eventual roadie #1, "Sweet" John Coleman, was found unconscious, face-down in the middle of a football field. Hmmmmm.
The next morning, Scott slept through his final. That's what he did that day.
Finally, the next day, we packed all of Scott's belongings into Ron's little Toyota, not realizing that we'd lost track of one of Scott's pipebombs - it was in the car somewhere (it had slipped down the defroster vents), but there was just too much stuff jammed in there to know where it might be. We hadn't the patience to look for it, so we contorted our bodies in cruel fashions so's to fit in the vehicle (see photo), and we sped off. In anticipation of a fiery, pipebomb-induced roadside death, we posted a sign in the back window that read, "Goin' Home with Jesus." We made it home alright.