PART I: "The Ritual of Readiness" (Wherein gods are summoned, beers are cracked, and destiny gets accidentally motorboated)
It was the spring of '79 and the Cornhusker Co-op smelled like bong water, industrial-strength desperation, and something that died under the refrigerator in 1977. We were sophomores at the University of Nebraska,barely. We had passed our fall classes through a sophisticated system of academic bribery, strategic weeping, and one memorable incident involving Doug's girlfriend's sister's fake pregnancy scare that somehow got us all extensions on our final papers.
We lived in a house so structurally unsound that the city building inspector had wept openly during his last visit. The front porch tilted at a 15 degree angle that made standing upright a philosophical challenge. The bathtub drained directly into the basement, creating what we optimistically called "the indoor swimming pool." The carpet in the hallway had developed its own ecosystem,we'd spotted what appeared to be a small mammal living in the shag near the bathroom door.
We called it paradise.
That Thursday afternoon, I was in our kitchen,a generous term for a room containing a hot plate, a mini-fridge, and enough roaches to form their own labor union,eating cold chili straight from the can with a beer opener because all our spoons had mysteriously disappeared. I hadn't worn socks in nine days. My hair looked like I'd been electrocuted while masturbating.
Dusty sat cross-legged on the floor like a brain damaged Buddha, wearing only gym shorts and a Popeye tattoo that was either permanent or a really slow healing infection. He was welded to a bottle of Cutty Sark, treating it with the reverence most people reserve for religious artifacts or pornography.
Then Doug exploded through the front door like a Viking raid made flesh.
He brandished a crumpled flyer like Moses holding the goddamn tablets. "STEPPENWOLF!" he screamed. "TONIGHT! BELLEVUE! BIG AL'S!"
Dusty squinted through his chemical haze. "That's like... the actual band? The one that's not dead?"
Doug's eyes blazed with the fervor of a man who'd just discovered fire and pussy on the same day. "It says 'STEPPENWOLF' in letters big enough to be seen from space. That's either the legendary rock gods themselves or a pack of rabid German werewolves with amplifiers. Either way motherfuckers we're going, or we die trying."
I asked the only question that mattered in our economic reality: "Can we afford tickets without selling a kidney?"
Doug produced a sock bulging with quarters like some demented Christmas stocking. "I've been saving since February. Haven't done laundry since Nixon was president."
Dusty nodded with the solemn wisdom of the permanently stoned. "I can smell the commitment. It's like... dedication mixed with athlete's foot."
Doug began pacing like a caged panther who'd been fed nothing but cocaine and motivational speeches. "This isn't just a concert, you beautiful degenerates. This is our fucking Odyssey. Our Canterbury Tales. Our chance to touch the face of rock and roll divinity before we graduate and become insurance salesmen who masturbate to old Playboys in suburban garages."
I stood up too fast and nearly achieved unconsciousness. "Let's do this thing."
But first: the sacred preparation.
We initiated what we reverently called "The Ritual of Readiness",a ceremony more complex than anything practiced at the Vatican and twice as likely to result in permanent brain damage.
Phase One: The Costuming
Dusty selected his lucky Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt, a garment with three cigarette burns, a mustard stain shaped like the state of Alabama, and what appeared to be a small bloodstain from an incident we'd agreed never to discuss.
Doug donned cutoff jeans that barely qualified as clothing, cowboy boots that had seen more action than a Saigon whorehouse, and a bandana soaked in enough Aqua Velva to sterilize a hospital.
I chose a leather vest that made me look like I'd been rejected from three different biker gangs for insufficient masculinity.
Phase Two: The Chemical Sacraments
One bottle of Ten High bourbon (chosen for its ability to remove paint and inhibitions with equal efficiency)
A six-pack of Hamm's beer (the champagne of trailer parks)
Two Schlitz tallboys Dusty had been aging in the toilet tank like fine wine, if fine wine could give you hepatitis
Phase Three: The Sacred Herb
A joint the approximate size and density of a small log, rolled in a page torn from Dusty's philosophy textbook (Nietzsche, we figured, would have approved)
Phase Four: The Musical Invocation
Doug's 8-track player, a technological marvel that had somehow survived three different apartment fires
One tape: Steppenwolf's Greatest Hits, played at a volume that could cause sterility in laboratory animals
As the sun died like our grade point averages, we stood on our sagging porch like conquistadors about to discover venereal disease. Doug raised the bourbon bottle in a toast that would have made Hemingway weep with pride.
"To the road ahead! To the wolf that howls in all our souls! To sex, drugs, and rock and roll and if we're really lucky, maybe some actual sex!"
We drank. We howled like mental patients.
Then we climbed into the Dart.
And thus began our journey to enlightenment, damnation, and quite possibly tetanus.
PART II: "Highway to Hell (and Back Again)" (In which our heroes become road warriors, Nebraska reveals its twisted soul, and physics weeps openly)
Picture, if you will, three human disasters crammed into a 1970 Toyota Corolla the color of infected mucus. This automotive abortion had four mismatched hubcaps, one functioning speaker, a cassette player that had fused with its tape like some unholy technological marriage, and something living beneath the backseat that made noises like a dying cat having an orgasm.
Doug drove because he claimed to possess "the perfect combination of reckless abandon and suicidal courage necessary for high-speed travel through the American wasteland." Dusty rode shotgun, clutching his box of Bugles and bottle of Ten High like they contained the secrets of the universe. I was wedged in the back between a moldy beanbag chair and a pair of underpants that belonged to none of us and smelled like they'd been marinating in failure.
We were forty minutes behind Doug's meticulously planned schedule,a schedule that existed only in his bourbon-soaked brain and had been devised during a three day bender that involved significant amounts of cough syrup and what we later discovered was veterinary tranquilizer.
The Nebraska landscape unfolded before us like God's own fever dream: endless fields of corn, punctuated by farmhouses that looked like they'd been designed by someone who'd never seen a house but had it described to them by a drunk person. The sky hung above us like a bruise, promising either salvation or a tornado that would solve all our problems permanently.
Doug floored the accelerator with the enthusiasm of a kamikaze pilot.
"BEHOLD!" he screamed, spraying High Life across the dashboard like some kind of alcoholic blessing. "WE RIDE TO BELLEVUE! WE RIDE TO DESTINY!"
We had no maps.No AAA membership. No functioning brain cells. But we possessed something more valuable: blind faith in rock and roll and an 8-track system blasting "Born to Be Wild" at a volume that could cause spontaneous abortions in neighboring counties.
The first thirty miles were pure masculine euphoria. Windows down, shirts off, chest hair flowing like patriotic banners in the wind. Doug provided running commentary like Walter Cronkite reporting from the edge of sanity:
"Gentlemen, do you smell that? That's the aroma of destiny mixed with Dusty's crotch rot. Breathe it in. This is what freedom smells like."
We passed a tractor moving slower than continental drift. We passed a cow that looked at us with the judgment of someone who'd made better life choices. We passed a 1968 Oldsmobile with a naked mannequin lashed to the roof and three children in the backseat sharing what appeared to be a homemade pipe.
Only in Nebraska.
Doug launched into one of his legendary philosophical rants, the kind that had gotten him thrown out of two philosophy classes and one Denny's:
"Music,real music, not that disco abortion that's currently raping America's eardrums,is prophecy made audible. And Steppenwolf? They're not just a band. They're the fucking four horsemen of the rock and roll apocalypse. They've been howling truth since before Nixon learned how to sweat on television."
Dusty, who had achieved that perfect state of intoxication where profound wisdom and complete idiocy become indistinguishable, nodded sagely. "What's disco?"
Doug fixed him with a stare that could have melted steel. "Disco is what happens when Satan decides to make elevator music."
By the time we reached Ashland, our noble chariot was running on fumes, prayers, and whatever mysterious fluid was leaking from the engine. We pulled into a gas station that looked like it had been designed by someone who'd given up on life sometime during the Eisenhower administration.
The attendant was a gentleman named Del and I use the term "gentleman" in the loosest possible sense. Del looked like he'd been assembled from spare parts found in a junkyard, then hit repeatedly with a shovel. His nametag was held on with duct tape, and he had the thousand-yard stare of someone who'd seen too much and understood too little.
Doug approached him like a diplomat negotiating a peace treaty.
"Del, my friend, we find ourselves in a financial pickle. We need gas, but our liquid assets are primarily alcoholic. However, we can offer you this fine collection of ceramic roosters",he produced a box from the trunk”and this vintage gentleman's periodical from the Carter administration."
Del examined the roosters with the intensity of an art critic. He flipped through the magazine like he was studying scripture.
"Deal," he said, in a voice that sounded like it had been filtered through gravel and disappointment.
While Doug conducted his economic diplomacy, Dusty wandered into the field behind the station to "commune with nature." I followed, partly out of concern and partly because I was curious to see what "communing with nature" meant to someone who thought vegetables were a conspiracy.
I found him squatting in front of a Holstein cow, engaged in what appeared to be a philosophical conversation.
"She knows," he whispered, his eyes wide with pharmaceutical enlightenment. "She knows we're frauds. She knows we're just three suburban dickheads pretending to be rebels."
I considered this profound observation while the cow continued to chew whatever cows chew, probably wondering why these two idiots were staring at her.
"The cow," I said with the wisdom of someone who'd achieved perfect clarity through chemical enhancement, "is full of shit. Literally and figuratively."
Dusty nodded, stood up, urinated on a dandelion with the solemnity of a religious ritual, and fell over backward into what we later hoped was mud.
Doug returned victorious, carrying not only a full tank of gas but also three Slim Jims and a small bag of crank that Del had thrown in "for the road."
"Gentlemen," Doug announced, sliding behind the wheel like Napoleon mounting his horse, "we now possess the means to complete our pilgrimage. Tonight we sail into legend!"
Back on the highway, Dusty lit our massive joint with the ceremony of a Catholic priest performing Mass. It took three lighters and nearly resulted in the loss of his eyebrows. He passed it back to me with the reverence of someone handling a holy relic.
I took one drag and immediately understood the fundamental structure of the universe.
It was shaped like a Waffle House, and God was working the night shift.
Ten miles from Bellevue, our trusty Corolla began making sounds that suggested internal organs were being slowly destroyed. The steering wheel vibrated like it was trying to escape. A warning light began flashing that simply displayed the word "HELP" in desperate red letters.
Doug ignored these minor technical difficulties with the focus of a man possessed by destiny.
The lights of Bellevue appeared on the horizon like a hallucination made manifest. We had arrived at our destination: three chemically enhanced college students in a dying automobile, chasing a dream that was probably going to end in jail, the hospital, or both.
Doug performed a power slide into Big Al's parking lot that would have impressed a Hollywood stunt driver, assuming Hollywood stunt drivers were drunk and didn't care about property damage. He parked diagonally across four spaces, climbed out, raised his arms like Rocky Balboa, and screamed to the Nebraska night:
"I AM READY FOR THE WOLF!"
Dusty vomited into his left shoe with the precision of someone who'd had practice.
I looked up at the neon sign blazing above us: "LIVE TONIGHT: STEPPENWOLF. TWO DRINK MINIMUM. MANAGEMENT NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOSS OF INNOCENCE."
Whether this was reality or hallucination no longer mattered.
We had arrived at the gates of rock and roll Valhalla.
PART III: "Big Al's Roadhouse: Where Dreams Go to Get Drunk and Fight Each Other" (Wherein our heroes descend into a den of beautiful depravity and discover that enlightenment smells like beer and regret)
Big Al's Roadhouse squatted on the edge of Bellevue like a neon cancer, a monument to everything that was beautiful and wrong with American nightlife. The building looked like it had been constructed from equal parts plywood, desperation, and building code violations. The parking lot was a museum of automotive failure: rusted El Caminos, Harleys held together with duct tape and prayers, and one school bus painted to look like a Pink Floyd album cover that was slowly leaking what appeared to be maple syrup.
The sign above the entrance strobed with epileptic fury: "TONIGHT ONLY: STEPPENWOLF - THE REAL DEAL - WE CHECKED THEIR IDS"
Dusty squinted at the marquee. "They misspelled 'Steppenwolf.'"
Doug didn't blink. "That's how you know it's authentic. Real rock and roll doesn't have time for proper spelling."
We approached the entrance like pilgrims approaching Mecca, if Mecca had a bouncer who looked like he bench pressed small cars for fun. This gentleman and I use the term loosely was approximately the size and shape of a refrigerator that had learned to walk upright and develop anger management issues.
"Cover's ten bucks," he growled. "Two-drink minimum. No fighting, no puking on the stage, no exposing yourselves unless it's artistic."
Doug produced a crumpled twenty from somewhere in his jean shorts. "We're here for the spiritual experience, big man."
The bouncer examined us with the expression of someone evaluating livestock. "Spiritual experience is extra. That'll be twelve bucks."
We walked through those doors and into paradise.
The interior of Big Al's was everything you hoped for and feared from a Nebraska roadhouse: warped wooden floors that had absorbed decades of spilled beer and broken dreams, Christmas lights hanging year-round like alcoholic stars, and a mechanical bull in the corner with a warning sign that read "RIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK - MANAGEMENT NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR INJURED TESTICLES."
The air was a complex bouquet of cigarette smoke, sexual desperation, cheap perfume, stale beer, and something that might have been either cleaning fluid or grain alcohol. Along the walls, neon beer signs cast everything in a hellish rainbow that made everyone look either very attractive or very diseased, depending on your blood alcohol level.
We claimed a booth near the stage, strategically positioned between a woman who appeared to be breast-feeding either a very large baby or a very small man, and a gentleman constructing what looked like a bong from a stuffed armadillo.
Our cocktail waitress materialized like a vision from a trucker's wet dream. She wore a t-shirt that read "SHOW ME YOUR ID OR YOUR TITS" and had the kind of smile that suggested she'd seen things that would make a prison guard weep. Her nametag said "DESTINY" in glittery letters.
"What'll it be, boys?" she asked in a voice that had been aged in whiskey and cigarettes.
Doug leaned forward with the confidence of a man who'd never met a bad decision he didn't like. "Three boilermakers and a pitcher of whatever's coldest. We're here to commune with the gods of rock and roll."
Destiny looked us up and down like she was appraising livestock. "Gods of rock and roll, huh? You boys sure you're ready for that kind of religious experience?"
"We've been preparing our entire lives," I said, which was either profound truth or complete bullshit, possibly both.
The opening act took the stage: a band called "Satan's Breakfast" that looked like they'd been assembled from the clearance rack at a Halloween store. They launched into what they claimed was "Free Bird" but sounded more like a musical interpretation of a industrial accident.
During their performance, the bassist's amp caught fire. Instead of stopping, he played harder, as if the flames were simply another instrument in his sonic arsenal. The drummer appeared to be having some kind of spiritual experience involving extensive air-guitaring. The lead singer, a gentleman who looked like Jesus if Jesus had been raised by wolves and fed exclusively on methamphetamines, screamed lyrics that seemed to be entirely composed of the word "YEAH" repeated at various pitches.
Dusty began slow dancing with his chair. Doug tried to order a sandwich from a potted plant. I found myself making out with someone under the table who turned out to be either a very hairy woman or a very feminine man wearing a wig. In the context of Big Al's Roadhouse, this distinction seemed unimportant.
Then, like the hand of God reaching down to bitch slap reality, everything changed.
The lights dimmed to the color of dried blood. The stage went black. A low growl emerged from the speakers, the kind of sound that suggests something large and predatory is waking up after a long, angry sleep.
A voice echoed through the darkness, deep and mysterious as the space between thoughts:
"Ladies and gentlemen... outlaws and citizens... believers and heathens... The pack you've been waiting for..."
We held our breath. The entire roadhouse went silent except for the sound of someone's pacemaker and the mechanical bull making small, satisfied noises.
A drum roll. And then
BA-DA-DUM-BAM!
"GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNIN'..."
The curtain exploded open like the gates of Valhalla being kicked in by angry Norse gods. And there they were.
Steppenwolf. Not a tribute band. Not some weekend warriors playing dress up. The actual, living, breathing legends themselves. John Kay stood center stage in leather pants that appeared to be painted on, sunglasses that reflected the very soul of rock and roll, and hair that looked like it had been styled by lightning and maintained by pure testosterone.
Doug rose from his seat like a man receiving divine revelation. "HOLY SHIT! IT'S REALLY THEM!"
Dusty burst into tears of pure joy.
I may have urinated slightly.
They launched into "Magic Carpet Ride" and it wasn't just music,it was a religious experience wrapped in amplifier feedback and baptized in bourbon. The sound hit you like a physical force, vibrating your bones, shaking your regrets, making you believe again in everything that was wild and free and gloriously stupid about being young and alive in America.
The bartender started weeping into his jar of pickled eggs. A table of bikers began slow-dancing as one mystical entity. The guy with the armadillo bong fell to his knees and confessed to a crime that may or may not have involved livestock.
This wasn't just loud music. This was the sound of freedom being born, of youth refusing to die quietly, of three idiots from Lincoln, Nebraska, discovering that sometimes,just sometimes,dreams come true in the most unlikely places.
And then, during the breakdown of "The Pusher," John Kay stepped forward into the spotlight and spoke directly to our souls:
"There are truths in this world they don't want you to hear, man. But we've been howling them since '68. You were born to be wild, but they built you a cubicle. You were born to run, but they sold you a mortgage. And you",he pointed directly at me”you were born to fuck up gloriously and love every minute of it."
Doug fell to his knees like he'd been shot by a sniper made of pure truth.
Dusty tried to French kiss the nearest speaker.
And I, friends, I finally understood what it meant to be alive.
PART IV: "The Gospel According to John Kay" (Wherein enlightenment is achieved through tequila, wisdom is dispensed by a German rock prophet, and three idiots learn the meaning of life)
After Steppenwolf finished their set with "Monster" and a pyrotechnic display that involved actual explosives and what appeared to be a flaming mannequin, we sat in our booth like survivors of a beautiful disaster. John Kay had thrown his microphone stand into the crowd like a spear forged from pure rock and roll. It hit a man in a cowboy hat. He caught it and wept with gratitude.
We were no longer the same people who had walked into Big Al's three hours earlier. We had been transformed. We were Before Steppenwolf and After Steppenwolf, and the dividing line between those two states of being was marked by enlightenment, tequila, and the certain knowledge that we had witnessed something holy.
Doug, unholy visionary that he was, suddenly sat up straight with the look of a man who'd just solved the meaning of existence.
"We have to meet him," he announced.
Dusty blinked slowly, like an owl processing complex information. "Meet who?"
Doug's eyes blazed with the fervor of a televangelist who'd discovered cocaine. "John. Fucking. Kay. The Wolf himself. We have to shake the hand that holds the microphone that speaks the truth that sets men free."
I wanted to protest. I really did. But I was deep into my eighth boilermaker and had just had a meaningful conversation with a framed photograph of Willie Nelson that had left me spiritually nourished and slightly aroused.
"Let's go whisper our gratitude into his German ear," I said, standing up and immediately regretting several life choices.
We navigated through the post concert chaos like three stoned salmon swimming upstream. The roadhouse had transformed into a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting designed by someone who'd been raised on grain alcohol and episodes of "Hee Haw." Dusty tripped over a folding chair and apologized to it. I knocked over a mop bucket and spent thirty seconds explaining to a fire extinguisher why I was sorry. Doug bribed a roadie with a Zagnut bar and what he described as "sexual favors to be determined at a later date."
And then, like Moses parting the Red Sea of drunk Nebraskans, we found him.
John Kay sat in a dark corner booth like a rock and roll Buddha, drinking tequila straight from the bottle with the patience of someone who'd seen it all and lived to tell about it. He still wore his sunglasses,indoors, at night, like a man who understood that cool was not just a state of being but a fundamental force of nature.
His hair was pure silver, his boots were snakeskin, and his aura smelled like motorcycle exhaust, leather, and unhealed wounds from the Summer of Love.
Doug approached him like a pilgrim approaching a shrine, hands trembling with reverence and residual chemicals.
"Sir. Mr. Kay. We just witnessed your sermon. We drove here from Lincoln in a car that's mostly held together by prayer and duct tape. We live in a house where the plumbing is more of a suggestion than an actual system."
John Kay looked up. He did not smile. He did not remove his sunglasses. He exhaled smoke in the shape of a question mark.
"You boys high?"
Doug nodded with the honesty of the completely intoxicated. "Extremely."
Dusty raised his hand like he was in school. "I can still taste colors."
Kay took a pull of tequila and pointed the bottle at us like Moses with his staff. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of someone who'd seen the sixties from the inside and lived to warn future generations.
"You think this was a show, man? This was a fucking wake up call. Rock and roll isn't entertainment,it's prophecy. It's warning. You think 'Born to Be Wild' is about motorcycles? It's about the death of the American dream, brother. It's about a machine that wants to grind your soul into hamburger and sell it back to you as a Happy Meal."
We sat in silence, reverent and slightly aroused by proximity to such concentrated wisdom.
Doug whispered, "Tell us more, oh Wolf."
John Kay stubbed out his cigarette on a napkin, folded it into a perfect origami swan, and continued his sermon.
"They want you to grow up, get a job, buy insurance, make payments on a house in a subdivision that looks like every other subdivision from here to California. But your soul doesn't want insurance, man. Your soul wants to howl at the moon. You weren't born to punch a time clock. You were born to make noise, make love, make mistakes, and make them all at maximum volume."
Dusty wept openly, tears streaming down his face like he was witnessing the Sermon on the Mount delivered by a German rock god in leather pants.
I stared at my hands like I was seeing them for the first time, which in a sense, I was.
Doug grabbed a pen from the waitress and began writing what appeared to be either a manifesto or a suicide note on his thigh.
Kay handed us the tequila bottle. We drank. It tasted like lightning and regret and the tears of angels who'd been kicked out of heaven for playing music too loud.
Then he reached into his jacket and produced something that would change our lives forever.
A pack of gum.
He placed it on the table with the solemnity of someone offering communion.
"Big Red," he said. "The best gum ever made. Don't let anyone tell you different. When the world tries to make you small, you chew Big Red and remember that you were born to be wild."
We accepted this gift with the reverence of disciples receiving holy relics. Baptized by the Wolf. Confirmed in the Church of Rock and Roll.
Then John Kay stood, adjusted his sunglasses, and delivered his final blessing:
"Now get the fuck out of my booth. I've got to take a piss."
We stumbled away like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, changed forever by our encounter with the divine. Dusty clutched the pack of Big Red like it contained the secrets of the universe. Doug scribbled notes for what would later become his senior thesis on "The Sociological Implications of American Rock Mythology." I chewed a piece of that sacred gum and tasted enlightenment.
We had done it. We had met the Wolf. And we had survived.
PART V: "The Long Road Home (Or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hangover)"(Wherein our heroes face the harsh light of dawn, the wisdom of Taco Bell, and the eternal question of what it all means)
We emerged from Big Al's Roadhouse at 1:47 a.m., reeking of bourbon, enlightenment, and what the health department would probably classify as a biological hazard. Doug's pants had gone missing sometime during John Kay's sermon,he claimed they had "transcended the physical plane." Dusty was barefoot and covered in what appeared to be either love bites or a severe allergic reaction to spiritual awakening. I had a bite mark on my thigh in the precise shape of the state of Ohio, which seemed like either cosmic significance or really bad luck.
Our noble Toyota Corolla waited in the parking lot like a faithful dog that had been hit by several trucks but was still wagging its tail. Someone had written "WASH ME" in the dirt on the windshield, except they'd spelled it "WAZH ME," which seemed appropriate given our current state of consciousness.
Doug spread his arms wide like a conquering hero addressing his troops. "Brothers! We have done the impossible! We have communed with the gods of rock and roll and lived to tell the tale!"
Dusty climbed into the backseat and assumed the fetal position. "He gave us gum," he whispered, clutching the pack of Big Red like a rosary. "A legend. A living legend. Gave us gum."
I lit a cigarette backward and spent thirty seconds trying to figure out why it tasted like filter before my drug-addled brain processed the error.
The drive home was less a journey than an exercise in automotive chaos theory. The Corolla swerved and lurched like it was being driven by someone having a seizure, which wasn't far from the truth. Doug insisted on playing "Born to Be Wild" on repeat until we all felt like we were trapped in some kind of rock and roll purgatory.
Every pothole we hit produced a sound from beneath the car that suggested expensive things were breaking in expensive ways. Dusty threw up into a McDonald's bag, sealed it with the precision of a scientist handling plutonium, and announced he was "saving it for posterity."
Thirty miles outside Lincoln, biological necessity and the fundamental laws of physics conspired to demand sustenance. We needed food. We needed grease. We needed... salvation in the form of processed Mexican food.
At 2:47 a.m., we pulled into a Taco Bell that looked like it had been constructed by someone who'd lost a bet with the architecture gods. The building squatted under fluorescent lights that cast everything in the sickly green glow of institutional despair.
Behind the counter stood a night manager named Chet,at least according to his name tag, which was written in quotation marks, suggesting either corporate policy or existential uncertainty. Chet had a ponytail, a visible hickey, and the thousand yard stare of someone who'd seen too much of humanity's 3 a.m. decision-making process.
Doug approached the counter like a diplomat negotiating a peace treaty with a hostile alien species.
"Chet," he said, reading the name tag carefully, "we have just returned from a pilgrimage to the holy land of rock and roll. We need sustenance for our journey back to the world of the spiritually unenlightened."
Chet looked at us,three half-naked college students reeking of alcohol and existential awakening and nodded with the understanding of someone who'd worked the night shift long enough to achieve his own form of enlightenment.
"Three Enchiritos
and a large Mountain Dew," he said. It wasn't a question. It was a diagnosis.
We ate in the car under the fluorescent glow of corporate America, three philosophers contemplating the meaning of existence through a haze of ground cheese and pharmaceutical-grade intoxication.
Dusty broke the silence with the profundity of someone who'd achieved a higher state of consciousness: "I think my soul just farted."
Doug raised his Mountain Dew in a toast. "To John Kay. To the Wolf. To the night we learned that rock and roll is not just music,it's a way of life."
I raised my lukewarm enchilada. "To being young, stupid, and wildly alive in the greatest country on earth, where a German immigrant can teach three idiots from Nebraska the meaning of existence through the medium of amplified guitar feedback."
Dusty managed to raise a single tear, which he let fall into his BellBurger with the solemnity of a religious ritual.
When we finally limped back into Lincoln, the sun was beginning to paint the cornfields in shades of pink and gold. A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance, probably at us, definitely in judgment of our life choices.
We parked the Corolla behind the Cornhusker Co-op. As we climbed out, the rear bumper fell off with a sigh that seemed to sum up our entire automotive experience.
Inside our decrepit palace, nothing had changed except us. Empty beer cans still decorated the coffee table like aluminum flowers. The smell of mildew and abandoned dreams still permeated the air. Doug collapsed face first onto the couch, landing in a plate of what appeared to be Rice-A-Roni from the Carter administration. Dusty disappeared into the bathroom with a roll of paper towels and a copy of National Geographic, mumbling something about "documenting the experience."
I sat on our tilted front porch, lit a bent cigarette, and watched the Nebraska sun rise like a cosmic hangover. I thought about Steppenwolf, about John Kay and his cryptic wisdom, about how he'd looked at three drunk college students and seen something worth saving.
And maybe just maybe he was right.
Because for one perfect night, we hadn't been just three underachieving sophomores with questionable hygiene and even more questionable judgment. We had been pilgrims. We had been disciples. We had been goddamn wolves howling at the moon over the infinite flatness of the American heartland.
That pack of Big Red gum sat in my pocket like a talisman, a reminder that sometimes the universe reaches down and hands you exactly what you need, even if what you need is a pack of cinnamon gum from a rock god in leather pants.
As I sat there watching Lincoln wake up to another day, I understood something fundamental about the American experience: We are all born to be wild. Some of us just need a little help remembering how to howl.
And that, friends, is why you should always keep a spare pair of pants in your glove compartment, a pack of Big Red in your pocket, and the complete works of Steppenwolf on your stereo.
Because you never know when the wolf might call.
THE END
Author's Note: No animals were harmed in the making of this story.