Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 1: Three months that shook my world.
Madonna’s “Borderline” reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in June 1984. It was re-released in Europe in 1986 and did quite well on the continent, so I cannot rationally explain why the song was such an earworm for me during the run-up to my inaugural voyage in 1985.
Into the mid-1990s, out of nowhere “Borderline” invariably would play on the radio whenever I was packing my bag for a trip. Indeed, different strokes; lightweight ear candy to some, symbolic prelude to others. “Borderline” still is a favorite song of mine, and it always prompts a smile. From serendipity alone, it became a handy theme song for my early European trips.
(Radio? It’s an increasingly antiquated music dissemination device.)
I didn’t pick the song; it picked me, because that’s the way music works. Borderlines are for containment, and also for crossing. To reiterate, I had an easy life growing up as a white middle-class male in the ‘burbs, with no wars to go fight, compulsions to attain vast wealth, or serious romantic ties.
As this narrative proceeds, I’ll be appending songs that I associate with the trip. This isn’t to suggest they’re all preferred tunes; many are not, although all of them evoke a place and time during the period I was away, whether as background music or free association.
Let’s do a two-fer Thursday. You probably didn’t know that Harry Caray’s singing career was launched not in Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, but at “old” Comiskey Park at the behest of Bill Veeck, owner of the crosstown Chicago White Sox.
Did I mention Comiskey Park? What a coincidence.
My good friends Bob Gunn and Kevin Dougherty drove me to Chicago a day ahead of my flight. We stayed at a chain hotel near the airport and ate gyros at a restaurant in Greektown. Only six days later, I’d actually be in Greece, and to be truthful, the suspense and anticipation were killing me.
Maybe a few crappy beers at a big league baseball game would help to calm my nerves.
The Cubs were playing in San Diego, which had lost the 1984 World Series to Detroit. However, the defending world champion Tigers...Read more
