The Bloody Doors Off

We’re listening to John Denver tonight.

(Quick aside, I nearly wrote ‘Bob Denver’. Gilligan’s Greatest Hits. I’d have bought it.)

We’re listening to John Denver tonight.

My wife’s idea/choice.

I know every song.

And it takes me back to my childhood home. Which is funny, because I’d been thinking about the old homestead earlier in the evening. I remembered the floor plan, my orange room, my brothers’ shared yellow room. The model train set up in an unfinished part of the basement. The downstairs rec room, adorned top to bottom with faux wood panelling. There’s a fake fireplace against the wall in the middle of the room.

I loved sitting beside it. I craved forced air heat. Since I was a kid. In wintertime, I would sneak into my parents’ room in the middle of the night when the furnace clicked on. I’d sit next to the air duct grate and hold my toes over the hot air until I couldn’t take it any longer.

We had two televisions. Eventually. My earliest memories, and there’s photographic proof out there, of me, nose pressed against the upstairs television. And maybe 7 or 8 years later, playing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea while watching the show in the basement.

Some time after the divorce, mum met Larry (on a flight to a vacation destination, I don’t remember where) and they became inseparable. After he moved in — can’t remember if it was before they got married or after; I mean hey, that’d be pretty progressive 40 years ago. (Oh my god I’m old.) Anyway, Larry renovated the basement to create a new master bedroom for them, and Wayne got their room. I was stuck in orange incarceration until he moved in with his wife.

I remember parties they had. Most of the faces are blurry with time.

But my uncle Bern was there.

And now he’s not.

I told my dad and brothers that I won’t be at his funeral on Wednesday. They seemed okay with it.

‘Sides, I always worry that church bells will alarm the congregation if I step on holy ground.

Oh! My original reason for this post.

How the hell did John Denver happen? I mean, one day he’s plucked from obscurity and becomes a Country & Western cross-over artist. Me, never liked the stuff. Too many men and women leaving their partners, their love of ‘Murica (sorry friends to the south, I love you, but it’s true) and their trucks.

And he was so wholesome. I’d bet he drank a glass of milk every night before bed.

Of course, after hearing just how much of a hound dog Bob Hope was with the USO ladies, for all we know John Denver was a coke addict who sold his soul for a hit-making guitar.

I’m not saying he was.

He starred in Oh God! with George Burns. A better match you could not ask for.

The kid’s future was bright.

And he had to go and get killed while flying a plane.

(Full disclosure: when I first went to Google to find his cause of death, I typed in ‘Bob Denver’.)

Do yourself a favour, and stream Oh God! Carl Reiner directed.

No, Rob Reiner directed The Princess Bride.

You’re welcome.