On a dark desert highway... cool wind in my hair
Before the chickenpox vaccine, kids would usually get the virus pretty early, like in elementary school. All of my friends and peers and classmates had chickenpox, and I never got it. My mom hypothesized that maybe I’d had it when I was an infant—like maybe a pock or two—and they just never noticed, and so I was immune. This made sense because I’d been in such close proximity to so many other kids who had it, and it was highly contagious.
I was in, I think, 6th grade (so this would have been around 1986) when my baby sister Julie got it. Because I had had it already, she didn’t need to quarantine. I loved playing with Julie. I recall scooting around on the floor on some scooter (a “flying turtle”) with her in my lap; holding her up in the air with her drool, like, falling on my face. Julie had a very mild case of the pox, and all the activity didn’t seem to bother her.
Well, it turns out I hadn’t had the pox yet. I was at an after-school activity when they served Sprite for a refreshment—I took a sip and nearly barfed. This kind of thing would happen, so I hear, when you first noticed you were sick with the pox. You’d drink something cold and nearly puke a good one.
I got it bad. While Julie’s was mild, mine was all over. Pox in the back of my throat; on my eyelid; the soles of my feet. EVERYWHERE. It itched so much I felt driven mad.
That night I was up with a fever and the itching. I recall it was 3 AM. I was in the dark listening to the radio, a soothing green light coming from the dials. The DJ came on and it sounded like he was speaking directly to me. “I don’t know why you’re up right now, but this song is for you.”
The first few magical, shimmering notes of “Hotel California” by the Eagles glided through the air.
The music went straight into my soul. It’s an insane song to listen to while having a fever hallucination. Robot night watchmen. Some sort of satanic murder ritual. Poor Don Henley trapped forever.
For the next three years, that was the only song I wanted to listen to. The problem was that my parents owned no Eagles records (the internet and streaming weren’t a thing), so I had to rely on chance luck to hear it on the radio. I listened to 93.1, the classic rock channel, whenever I could, in the hopes that “Hotel California” would play. Funny thing is that I really hate a lot of classic rock. But it was worth it to hear those magical notes, cryptic lyrics, and that soaring final solo.
Finally, when I was in high school, my parents got a CD player. They knew about my Eagles fixation. For Christmas, I got a jewel-case-sized package, and I could tell by their faces what it was. The Eagles had a two-volume greatest hits album. Track 1, Volume 1: “Hotel California.” I tore the package open.
The Eagles Greatest Hits: Volume 2.