Chorus (sung as a loud, enthusiastic drunken lament)
It’s a Friday Night in
Nothing’s coming up
Or going down.
There ain’t big deals
There ain’t no cheap thrills (three-ills)
It’s a
It’s a
So went the chorus of my personal folk song. The rest of the lyrics have abandoned me through the fog of time, but I’m left with images and snippets from a time when I was more reckless and unfiltered.
I sang “Bedford Friday Night” several times a year back then. It was an anthem of sorts, albeit a soulful drunken one. Every year, a gang of young adults would gather together in a foggy narcotic commune of people, music, outdoors, sport, cigarettes, and beer simply called “Trout Fishing.”
Trout Fishing was a weekend event that took place sometime near opening day of trout fishing season on a national forest fire road near North Creek not far from
I always strayed around the periphery of this clan of wild men and women. I admired their freedom, wit, and music. I wasn’t much of a fisherman back then, and really had no patience for sitting out by a stream with a fishing pole, trying to hook fat hatchery rainbows with corn. I suppose my view of that has changed over the years. Back then, I’d drive in for the Saturday afternoon games and evening entertainment.
Trout Fishing was a constant cooler-fed party. The base camp was set up along a switchback on an old grassy forest road. Tents would be pitched in the nice grass. I usually chose to sleep under the stars on the mountainside a bit removed from the main street scene.
Sometimes during breaks from fishing, the people would stream back to the campsite and engage in a variety of unique sport. Whappo! Hockey was a favorite. This cross between lacrosse, rugby, and steeple chase is played using a native stick carefully selected from the forest’s wide selection of downed limbs. The “puck” was an old Converse All Star creek shoe. The game was played with two shirtless teams standing on either side of a soggy spring crossing on a bend of the fire road. The object of the game was to score points by collecting the smelly creek shoe on the tip if your stick and then rushing up to the soggy spring and flinging the shoe across the divide-attempting to strike an opposing player. Such players, caught by effective slings, experienced the tell-tale “WHAP!” of the shoe on their bare skin and ensuing welts. Direct hits were awarded one point each. Sometimes vicious stick scrums would ensue when the shoe landed in the murky middle between the teams.
An eagerly anticipated event of the weekend was the truck bed wrestling challenge. Known as “Mid-Atlantic Truck Bed Wrestling,” this sport was violent. However, with the numbing effect of alcohol, it was usually painless. The premise was quite simple. Have two contestants square off in an empty Chevy S-10 truck bed. The last person remaining in the truck bed was declared the winner. Competitors could use any method of extracting their opponent from the bed. Flying from the bed of an S-10 pick up with the wind blasting through your hair, you could almost feel free as a bird for a moment or two before your body mingles with the reality of gravity and rocks. Big Wesley (6’3”/270lbs estimate) was the unquestioned champion of this yearly competition, except for the year when he was defeated by a wily 5’2” female wrestler.
Dinner time brought small fires and people creating trout dishes along with a cornucopia of exotic camp fire food, communally shared. After the main feast, the concert would innocently begin beside a roaring campfire. Butt and Quag(mire) were the leaders of the music scene. They’d play their guitars for hour upon hour, song after song. They had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of traditional Appalachian tunes as well as George, Jim, and Evan. Sometimes people would join in with their guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, or in my case, spoons. Wiedeman after Black Label, Blue Ribbon after Natty Boh, George after Jim. At some point, someone would suggest to Butt and Quag that it was time for the anthem. The whole camp chorus would leap into “Bedford Friday Night.” Into the abyss, our voices would echo through the hollows of those remote woods, primal screams of youth and a simpler way.
Slowly the fire would die and the revelers would nod off, picked away one by one by their own body’s rebellion. I’d drag myself up the side of the mountain to my nest and lay there watching the stars whirl by, spinning with intoxicating speed. I wondered about nothing. No thoughts of facing my scary unknown future nagged me. With the fresh April wind blowing over me in waves and the sky tipping on its side, I was living the moment; careless.
Twenty five years later.
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