I submitted this essay in a contest to win a custom guitar. It didn't win, which is a bummer, but at least I can freely post it here.
By the time I had scraped together enough money to purchase my first CD, I had spent several weeks at an audio station in the Barnes and Noble music section, listening to the same thirty-second selections of the entire tracklist on repeat. At nine years old, I became obsessed with The Fray and their album "How to Save a Life." I bought all their EPs and their later albums but never got a chance to see them live until twelve years later at an Independence Day event in Small Town, USA.
My girlfriend, Erinn, and I left work early to drive five hours from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Mason, Ohio for the 2018 "Red, Rhythm, and Boom" celebration. We arrived just in time for the opening act, Five for Fighting. He belted out familiar hits like "100 Years" and "Superman," offering dad jokes between songs, usually evoking some genuine laughter and cordial applause. It was generally what you'd expect from a free small town concert, mostly families loosely congregated and mildly enthusiastic, with some exceptions. A small cohort of face-painted, twenty-something festival girls looked wildly out of place as they convulsed/danced in the front row. An extremely smiley middle-aged woman perched on some fencing to snap pictures of her celebrity crush with an outdated digital camera. A man I suspect was her husband stood beneath her, supporting her against the fence. Not quite the loud and raving concert crowd I was accustomed to, but I was just as excited to be there.
After Five for Fighting finished his set, members of the city council took the stage to ruin all of the opening act's momentum, issue short remarks about our great nation, and introduce The Fray. Their clumsy interruption didn't matter. The Fray seized the stage. The immediately revitalized crowd surged forward against the front barriers. The hour-long performance flew by in a blur of my favorite songs. The festival girls and other front-row audience members clamored for the band's guitar picks, drumsticks, and setlists as The Fray tossed them into the crowd. I jealously doubted the festival girls even knew most of The Fray's lyrics, but they got there first, fair and square. But they probably didn't even have to drive five hours to get here, I grumbled to myself.
As the crowd dispersed to watch the post-concert fireworks show and the stage crew packed up the band's equipment, Erinn and I lingered, for no particular reason other than dreading the long drive home. We planned to spend the night at my apartment in Ann Arbor before heading back to our families in West Michigan in the morning. That's when I spotted‒a purple glint on the other side of the barrier, just barely visible at dusk. I hurdled the fence and snatched the colored flake from the ground. The Fray's logo on the flip side of the guitar pick was barely worn. One of the band member's tosses must have fallen short. I gleefully showed Erinn as I jumped back to her side of the fence. I spent the entire walk back to the car in absolute fanboy awe of my prize.
We got back to Ann Arbor just after 2 AM. My apartment, a second-floor unit in a house, was suffocatingly hot. We didn't have AC, so my roommates and I relied on fans and open windows to keep the apartment bearable, but they had closed up and shut down the apartment before leaving for the holiday weekend. The thermostat read 94°F. Erinn and I hardly slept as we sweat through the night. At one point, I sat on the floor and leaned into the open refrigerator for a brief reprieve. We left the apartment around 6 AM, just wanting to get back home and take a shower.
We got about five miles out of town before we heard a loud pop. I forced the car off the next exit and parked behind a McDonald's. Of course, now was the time for my first flat tire. I generally knew what to do but had never seen it done before. We fumbled through jacking up the car and loosening the lug nuts. A gray-mustached man sauntered up to the car, holding his McCafe coffee in one hand. He recommended we jump on the wrench to help torque the lug nuts free. When we got the tire off, he inspected it for punctures. "No nails or anything, just seems to have ripped here," he reported, gesturing to the inches long tear in the tire. The man watched and reassured us that we were mounting the spare tire correctly. We thanked him and he politely declined our offer to buy him breakfast. He said we reminded him of his own kids and chuckled as he reminisced about his daughter's first fender bender. Then he remembered his wife was still waiting, so he returned to his own car.
What should have been a 2-hour straight shot of a drive back home became a meandering, 4-hour trek as we avoided the highway because we couldn't exceed 50 mph on the spare tire. Erinn and I were borderline delirious by the time we finally arrived. Thirteen total hours of driving with minimal sleep in extreme heat was miserable, but it did give us time to reflect on the small slice of America that we experienced on its birthday. This trip started off as a chase after a band from my childhood well past its touring prime but ended up being a broader experience of people: misplaced festival girls, awkward city council members, and a thoughtful stranger exactly when we needed one. Here in 2020, where I've barely left my house and lost a little faith in our country, I like to remember this trip for the people I encountered as much as for the music I'd been waiting to hear live ever since I was a kid listening to thirty-second snippets at the Barnes and Noble.