Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

 

Snow on spruce boughs, The second coming of a rabbit Disrupts the morning silence I think of you asleep miles away In clouded memories of fog Here in the snowy north, The temperature dropped to negative 25 Even the birds are silent, But the spruces still contemplate our Tiny backyard, unaware of our plights.

It's hard to believe that I will be moving back to the Midwest soon. I snagged a teaching job in Ironwood, Michigan, a town that I visited often in the late 90s because it was an hour from my hometown. I generally went there to buy records at a corporate record store (Was it a Sam Goody?). I was living in my small hometown after a poor trial run at college, and did not get back to central Wisconsin until Fall 1999.  I had heard there was a punk venue, and I found it on one of these forays into Upper Michigan. It was called The Rat Cellar. They sold a few records and had shows in the basement. For a few years, I hung out with the local punk kids and watched many local and national touring bands in that dank basement.   There were a few highlights from those shows besides the friends I made. Sadly, I did not keep in touch with any of them. However, I did see one of the little kids who attended those shows more than a decade later in a Wisconsin Rapids basement. Connections ...