University Motel

     I first heard the song "Everlasting Love" in the fall of 1967 while returning to Blacksburg to begin my junior year at Virginia Tech.  Blissfully tooling along Route 460 in my 1955 Chevy Bel Air, I suddenly found myself straining to hear a distant AM radio station.  The sound of "Everlasting Love" was fading in and out, but I could hear just enough to know it would become one of my all-time favorite songs. A week later, and with much excitement, I told classmate Bruce Long about the song.  Bruce was originally from New Jersey, and a member of the "Soulsations" band that performed regularly at dances in Blacksburg and Radford.  He played the electric guitar, and I had spent many hours in his dorm room listening to music, playing and singing, and rehearsing songs for his band.  He even talked me into singing lead at one of their Radford dances.  However, I was so embarrassed I never did it again.  Anyway, Bruce agreed enthusiastically that "Everlasting Love" was a great song, and suggested his band might add it to their play list.  We then kicked back and listened to music the rest of the afternoon.  Was "college life" cool or what!

     Sadly, another year would slip away before the harsh realities of "college life" finally caught up with me in the summer of 1968.  As academic probation and mounting debt from student loans took their respective strangle holds, I reluctantly dropped out of school, and began the arduous task of trying to determine what went wrong.  In September, after my second draft notice arrived in the mail (the first one came in 1965 but was deferred), things changed dramatically.  By November I had signed on for a 3-year tour of duty in the US Army.  And several months later at Fort Benning, GA, I finally awoke from my stunned stupor.  Sitting on a hard Army bunk, staring across the barracks at 30 other young recruits, I began to understand how the hell I got there.  Disillusioned and demoralized, I tearfully recognized that my 3 years at Virginia Tech, from 1965 to 1968, had been frittered away, squandered--wasted in mindless, adolescent, "futile folly".  This would become my life-changing moment, the extreme "kick-in-the-butt" wake-up call I so desperately needed.

     The above story, along with many similar tales, helps explain why I did so poorly at Tech.  Between the music, beer, girls, and Radford dances, it's no mystery why I dropped out of school.  However, I did have a lot of fun.  The memories of all those crazy, rebel-rousing antics, the hysterical, breathtaking laughter, and the good times that never seemed to end, are now only faint remnants that evoke an occaisional grin or chuckle.  Uncle Sam ended the frolicking quickly in 1968, and replaced it with painful grunts and solemn frowns.  It took quite awhile for those memories to return, and when they did, they were never quite as funny.

     The mark of a great song is how many times it has been recorded by other artists.  The following are some of my favorite versions of "Everlasting Love."