This is the End
“This the end, my only friend, the end…”
“The End.”
Jim Morrison wrote that song by The Doors.
I often find myself singing that line when I feel I am nearing the end of something. A good vacation, a good bottle of wine maybe, or as it was this week, the end of another summer.
A post popped up on my Facebook feed on Labor Day that was the top thirty songs of the week of September 4, 1970. The week of September 4, 1970, was significant to me because it was the week that I started high school. My first days at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
Labor Day in 1970 was September 7. My first day of high school would have been September 8 since schools at that time always remained closed until after Labor Day.
Hard to believe that was fifty-three years ago.
Back then we only got new clothes twice a year, at the start of school and at Christmas. And it didn’t matter how silly those bell bottoms looked as you went through your growth spurt, you had to wait it out.
I was fortunate (I guess) to have finished most of my growing early. I weighed 110 pounds when I started high school and 120 pounds when I graduated.
I also got a haircut to go along with those new school clothes and a new beaded necklace.
And that would be another end for me, the end of haircuts, well at least for the next four years. I didn’t get another haircut until sometime after I graduated high school.
The number one song that week of my first day of high school was “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon & War.
The photo above was taken by a neighbor on the last Sunday evening of the last unofficial weekend of summer, Labor Day weekend.
The end.
The unofficial end of summer.
I was fighting it a bit, trying to squeeze in some last-minute fishing as the sun went down. Kim and I were leaving early the next day to beat the holiday traffic so this was it for me. And just before the bait ran out, in the darkness, I snagged a keeper.
It was a good weekend, we ate crabs with friends, did some kayaking, rode our bikes to Taylor’s Island, and found a new place called Palm Beach Willies to take a break from cycling.
And I got to fish a little.
So, with the end of some things, there are often new beginnings. In September of 1970 the anticipation of high school, meeting new friends, learning new things, and experiencing growing up outside of my familiar boundaries was high. And I guess, since it was the early 1970’s, so was I at times.
Now fifty-three years later, the unofficial end of summer doesn’t have that same level of anticipation of something new and never experienced. Those familiar boundaries are back, but this time they don’t feel so confining, more comforting really. And who knows what new and unanticipated life change might be waiting in the next season.
I haven’t written anything to share since the end of June when my dad died.
This is the first time I have felt motivated to write.
So hopefully maybe that is the end of that.
The week of September 4, 1970, the number three song on the list was kind of a silly song in my opinion, a song by Mungo Jerry called “In the Summertime:”
When the weather’s fine we go fishing or go swimming in the sea
We’re always happy, life’s for living
Yeah that’s our philosophy
Life’s for living, we go fishing, we’re always happy?
Maybe it wasn’t so silly after all.
And, this, is the end.
Postscript:
After all those years of singing that line from The End, I decided to visit the lyrics for the entire song and Lord have mercy, I wouldn’t recommend doing that.
