But I would start all that on some other day, when it really mattered.

Today I was zooming across the Land of Lincoln. I had 4 or 5 hours to go to get to the Chicago suburbs to see Mark. I was nearly to the other side of The Great Plains, and it was a long, flat haul at 65 miles per hour. Who knew how they did it 150 years ago? But I was blowing down the interstate, pulling over only to make myself a PB&J at a rest stop.

After all those lonely days on the road, it was good to see Mark, and he seemed happy to see me, as well. He was living with a few guys in a two-story house outside of Wheaton, where he went to school at Wheaton College -one of the most highly regarded Christian liberal arts colleges in the country.

Mark and I graduated high school together, though the two of us could not be more different. Here was a guy who was tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and likable. In high school, he was the quarterback of the football team, the pitcher of the baseball team, ASB president, smart, funny, charismatic, involved in his church. I was dorky, thoughtless, skinny and long-haired. A dropout. Uncool and uncouth. Mark, I know, mostly tolerated me, but we had a shared affinity for film and a complimentary sense of humor. It seemed we always had something to talk about. Also, Mark was, in my mind, a creative powerhouse. It was never a dull moment with him.

We stayed up late nights, watching movies and dissecting them all. We went together to see Cinema Paradiso, which may have been the tenth time for both of us, and we would be so moved at this and other films that we would just leave the theater in silence, not sharing a word. Some great things, we agreed, deserved at least that. Inevitably, we would end up on some hotel rooftop in the city, or some misty train track in the hinterland, and discuss what we thought the day’s film’s greatness was, exactly, and how we’d get to do it ourselves, eventually.

Mark was good at showing me the Chicago sights and letting me tag along anywhere he went. He’d go to class and I’d sit out on the green and write postcards, read my screenwriting books, and ogle the coeds. He’d study in the library and I’d just sit nearby, eyeballing my own pursuits. This went on for a week or so, as I waited on my car, which was out for repairs.

We took it to a guy who knew a guy who knew Mark, and the guy said, “Good luck,” after examining the car a bit. I was hoping not to hear that the thing was toast, for somehow, I actually believed in the vehicle, as if it were some divinely-powered heavenly host. I thought it could be fixed. When I told the mechanic that I had just driven it out from California, he stood up straight, took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked me in the eye and said respectfully, “You have balls.”

Then he directed me to a guy named “Herb” at the Amoco Transmission place next door. Herb was nice, said he could fix it, but didn’t hesitate to add, “Twenty more miles and the front wheels would have popped off.” I took all this as a good sign.

Over the next few days, I followed Mark from event to event, where I watched him charm and ingratiate himself with nearly everyone he met. The guy was a real pleasure to be around, as usual, and it was a daily lesson for me -open up, be interested in others, laugh, have some enthusiasm for the small things. Mark was always thrilled to point out the most irreverent phenomenon at hand, and I found this ever-inspiring.

For Halloween, he decided to “get the band back together.” Some time back, he had formed a band with some friends, because he thought it would be fun -which was reason enough for any endeavor. Forget for the moment that he couldn’t sing or play any instruments, but he was certain that being in a band would be a kick, so, powered only by his earnest zeal and unrelenting passion, he was able to talk a few guys into joining him on a stage. (Any stage. Don’t worry, he’d get the stage.) He got a friend who could play drums, and a couple guys who had guitars, and together they would call themselves “Dungus Mandulainus” which, as translated by Mark, was latin for “eating one’s feces for sexual pleasure.” The Wheaton College Student Development Office was not informed.

Dungus rehearsed several (maybe three) times, and brought back the old Kenny Rogers’ hit “The Gambler” among other favorites. Mark called several Chicago clubs until he found one that would book a band without auditioning them, and then he pasted posters up around campus and the local community. On the night of the show, he and his buddies had a party at their house, rented a school bus, put a keg of beer on it, and then got everyone on the bus and drove them out to the Chicago club, The Stoddola, where they did the show. They packed the place. It was a huge hit. And The Stoddola wanted them back.

“We broke up,” Mark solemnly explained to the club owner on a few occasions, but when Halloween rolled around, the urge to get the band back together and do it one

more time was irresistible. So I joined Mark in getting the event up and running, and I relished the chance. It didn’t look like they could get the same size crowd, and most of the band this time around was people who were merely at the show the last time around -but it didn’t matter. The Stoddola was excited to have them. On the afternoon before the big night, we dropped by the Stoddola to check in and learned that they had booked another local band, “The Sex Kittens,” to open for them. This was a good laugh, as The Sex Kittens happened to be a legitimate band. (They had a record!)

Then we drove around town and procured some ultraviolet lights and fluorescent paint, which the band covered themselves in for the show. Then we got the word out that Dungus headlined at midnight. I was the video guy.

And it was hilarious. Mark performed mostly in his underpants, (and bright green and purple paint) and the crowd was thoroughly spirited and supportive, many in costume. I had an unforgettable time, and drove Mark home at four in the morning, laughing and shaking my head at what I’d just witnessed. At some point in the night I had found an ATM and went to withdraw my last few dollars from my checking account, so I could buy my new friends some drinks, but the ATM sucked in my card and I would never see it again. “Oh well,” I thought, as I walked back to the bar with an I.D. I had borrowed from someone whom I had just met. We had the same hair. It worked.

A couple days later I got the call about the car repair. It would cost $254, which I paid for by calling home and asking my mom to cash out my Disney stock, of all things. It was an awkward phone call, (she was worried about me) but cashing out the stock ended up not being too complicated of a task. (I owned one-and-a-half whole shares of Disney!) So a couple hundred in profit covered the auto problems, but did nothing to repair my bank account.

Which, later that week, was deemed closed altogether as a result of some prolonged overdraft. Also, my Visa had been maxed out and I was down to my last $50, but there was one saving cushion that I would fall back on through all this: my Chevron card. It had a high limit, and it would bankroll me to the Atlantic and back, as long as I had access to a service station. And the Honda, when it worked, got excellent mileage.

After a week in Chicago, I was sure Mark and his roommates were sick of me hanging around, taking long showers and eating their food, so on one cold, November morning before class, the first snow of the season coming down, I hugged Mark goodbye and unsentimentally left town, heading east. He just turned and went inside, unmoved by the parting, and I remember thinking how grateful I was to have a friend like him. I drove off, and halfway down the block lost control of the car on the icy road -but quickly recovered. I remembered about the bald tires, and vowed to drive carefully. Then I watched the snow turn into rain, just like in the Dan Fogelberg song, “Same Auld Lang Syne” (I had noted this in the journal,) was grateful for it, and considered for a moment that I only had fifty dollars in my pocket.

For some reason, it didn’t bother me much.