Mix Tape

The rig: 1991 Trailet New Yorker hooked to 1996 full-size Ford Bronco by way of a fancy load-levelling hitch.

The purpose: To transport one horse and his owner to and from hunt meets.

Average number of minutes spent in rig on the way to a meet, round trip: 50 minutes.

Length of mix tape from the summer of 1998 that is caught in the tape deck and cannot be adjusted volume-wise, fast-forwarded, rewound or ejected: 45 minutes.

Number of embarrassing tracks on said mix tape: 16.

To boot:

1. Summer Lovin' from Grease

2. Passionate Kisses: Mary Chapin Carpenter

3. What A Wonderful World: Louis Armstrong (somewhere in the middle of this one, the tape switches over to the other side, where we find:)

4. D'yer Maker: Led Zeppelin

5. Sunblock: Emmet Swimming

6. Real World: Matchbox 20

7. Just The Two Of Us: Will Smith

8. One Week: Barenaked Ladies

9. Build Me Up Buttercup: The Foundations

10. Pencil Thin Mustache: Jimmy Buffett

11. Love Is Strange: Mickey & Sylvia

12. Pure Imagination (you know, from Willy Wonka): Smoking Popes (this one starts on one side and continues on the other.)

13. She's In Love With The Boy: Tricia Yearwood

14. Train Slows Down: Emmet Swimming

15. Saddle In The Rain: John Prine

16. If I Had A Million Dollars: Barenaked Ladies

Percentage of words I know by heart: 100.

I remember this tape, and even though I can't see it since it's stuck in the machine, I know that it's a pink and yellow plastic thing that used to be a mix of Disney songs given to me by my childhood friend Marion one Christmas. This is probably why I can hear a few bars of The Aristocats in the middle of that last track. I used to record over things all the time.

It's funny how this tape makes me remember exactly how I felt in the summer of '98. I only know that it was 1998 because that's the year that Emmet Swimming record came out--I had to look it up. They played that Sunblock song every morning that summer as bumper music for The Bob and Madison Showgram (back when it was still the Bob and Madison Showgram), and Margaret and I had that temporary job out in RTP alphabetizing all day in a windowless room packed with aisle upon aisle of grey metal filing cabinets. We got the job through ManPower, where either Katherine or Elizabeth worked, and we tried to get there as early as we could each morning, like 7:30, so that we could leave early to beat the traffic coming home. I remember that felt so early and so grown-up.

I guess not all of the songs are so embarrassing. But they feel half a world away from this dirt road.