Who says you can't go home?

With all of the songs about teenage nostalgia and growing up out there, my favorite line has always come from the band Cross Canadian Ragweed: “You’re always 17 in your hometown.”
           
I was 17 the last time I played with my high school outfit, Rock Bottom, outside of Scooter’s Bar and Grill in Alta, Iowa, and on October 13, 2018—a full 10 years later—we did it again while the Cyclones won in black jerseys over a West Virginia team that’s now in the Big 12 (who could’ve predicted that way back then?).
           
While I’ve only seen a few clips, I’m sure we were sloppy and borderline incoherent at times, and my current physique made me embarrassed to see the old photos. This gig certainly wasn’t about securing a record deal. But considering the occasion, I won’t forget the experience of reuniting my high school garage band anytime soon.
           
In 2008, we played for Kim Walsh’s 50th birthday. Kim’s son Gabe is our drummer, and the Walsh family received the unenviable luck of putting us up in their basement for every practice. Kevin, Gabe’s dad, gave us a hard time about drinking all of his Diet Coke, but Kim always loved the music.
           
The fact that we were even able to celebrate Kim’s 60th last weekend is no small miracle. During the last Scooter’s gig, she was battling breast cancer, but it’ll be 10 years cancer free in December. Every day, she fought it with an amazing optimism that inspired anyone lucky enough to be around her, and this year, she retired from Heritage Bank. It truly is amazing.
           
Cancer and my hometown have both been on my mind lately due to the amazing story of Aila Nesbitt and the small-world connection that ended with a front-page spread you may have read recently. Her mother’s family, as you probably know, hails from Grundy Center, and Aila’s father Nick and I were four years apart at Alta High School.
           
Her paternal grandfather, Brad, along with another English teacher at Alta, inspired me more than any instructor I’ve had before or since. But to fully understand Brad, it’s important to appreciate the impact he had on the speech program.
           
At a high school about the size of AGWSR or BCLUW (usually less than 200 kids), almost half of all students participated in speech contest. It’s unheard of, and about the only extracurricular accomplishment I can look back proudly on from my days there is advancing to All-State in both large group and individual speech my senior year (along with winning the big banner for choral reading at large group).
           
None of it would’ve been possible without Brad. He had the whole thing down to a science and actually made high school kids who were playing sports and doing all the other activities at a small district want to come in and practice at 6:58 a.m.
           
What Rick Schupbach is to Grundy Center girls’ golf, what Dave Lee is to BCLUW softball, what John Olson is to G-R football or what Diane Harms is to D-NH volleyball, that’s what Brad Nesbitt meant to Alta speech. So, when I heard that his granddaughter was battling leukemia, I felt for the whole family. I was lucky to be able to tell the story, and I’m confident that Aila will beat it and go on to do all of the things the other girls her age are doing.
           
Since my parents moved to West Des Moines (and we never had familial ties to Alta in the first place), I don’t feel the connection to home that most others probably do. Even going back and making hotel arrangements is a hassle now, but it was most certainly worth it this weekend—and my mom had a blast as well.
           
Rock Bottom did what we did back then: 90s music and a few teen angst songs that we wrote ourselves, and I got to crank up the loud, tasteless guitar solos the world had been missing for the last decade. To Gabe, Robbie, Adam and Chris, wherever we end up in life, no one can take those moments away from us. Playing in a rock band in a sports crazed small town is always a bit of a risky proposition, but we had a heck of time doing it.
           
Best of all, I got another shot to play the song I wrote to propose to Kellie—this time, without crying. It’s been a special couple of weeks.