My First Concert

I came home tonight from teaching three Mah Jongg classes in Raleigh today. Nine hours of teaching is not something I can do everyday. I fell into bed just now and opened my email which had gone unchecked all day and discovered that David Crosby had died.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had been the first concert I had gone to and the memory of that came flooding back.

In the summer of 1978 I had a summer job working in a printing factory in Stamford, Connecticut. It was a family owned business and most of the employees were all Italians who were related to each other, but not the family who owned the business. For most English was not their best language so it was lonely for me out on the shop floor running a folding machine.

The one person I could talk with was the owner’s daughter who worked in the front office along with her brother. She was my age and he was a year older. As the owner’s kids they got the cushy office jobs, but they still ate lunch out back with all the factory workers.

I can’t remember my friend’s name, but I do remember well that one summer night we went to New Haven with her brother and one of his friends to see Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The only part of the concert I can recall all these years later is singing “Our House” at the top of our lungs.

I also remember going back to their house in Westport to spend the night and my having to get up early the next morning to get to my 7:00am shift and my friend and her brother not being at lunch because their Dad told them they did not have to come in after the concert. I scoffed at this because they did not come into work until 9 anyway, but they were the owner’s kids.

Rest in Peace David Crosby. You were always a favorite of mine.