Dan Gladden

Memories are sparse during the early life of a human. The ones that exist are blurry snippets at best. Unless you’re one of those braggers that claims they remember all these random details from their infancy. But it’s special when you start to remember things. When your brain stops being such a selfish jackass and starts consistently storing long-term memories to be enjoyed at a later date. For me this started to happen a couple months after my seventh trip around the sun, on or around October 27, 1991.

Gene Larkin smacks a single off Alejandro Pena. No one remembers that. They just remember Dan Gladden trotting towards home plate with his fist in the air. They probably don’t even remember that. They just know Jack Morris beat John Smoltz in game seven of The Fall Classic. I jumped up and down and yelled with my dad. Maybe we high five’d. I don’t remember. But it was just us. My memory was alive. The narrative had begun.

It was an amazing moment in an otherwise difficult year that featured the divorce of my parents. To my ephemeral disappointment, the Twins haven’t won a World Series since which only makes this memory more special. I travel back to it sometimes when I feel sad. It’s one of my staples.

My dad lived in Williston, a small oil town in Northwestern North Dakota. My mom lived 100 miles due east in Minot. Because they split custody we met in Stanley, a tiny oil town West of Minot, once a week with my brother and sister to do the whole hand off thing. I remember these drives across the wintery North Dakota landscape being sad, but they’re also the source of my first musical memories.

My mom often played The Phantom-of-the-Opera soundtrack during these drives which seems like a fairly dramatic choice in retrospect. for all of its darkness, it’s also a damn fine opera that deserves some credit in forming the foundation for my slightly above average taste in music. when we were feeling light, The Raw & the Cooked by The Fine Young Cannibals* also received some spin. It’s ironic how many of the sad moments from my childhood would serve as a dopamine boost for my sometimes fragile future self.

Maybe it’s that thing where when you’re watching some film from the drama genre and everything is going so well for the characters you favor, you begin to suspect and even develop a moderate amount of worry that something unfavorable might happen to those very characters. because drama genre films need bottom. In these sad moments, I didn’t have to feel the weight of that worry. And when something joyous happened, like Sarah Brightman’s voice piercing through the dark night, it became crystalized in my memory. I’d found a lighthouse during a storm.

I lived with my dad during first grade which meant I got to hangout with my good friend Daniel. Whilst hanging we’d either be trading baseball cards or talking about our most important common cause, them dames. His star crush was Janet Gretzky. Mine was Geena Davis. I’ve always been proud to call her my first crush. Her performance as Dottie Hinson in A League of Their Own stole my heart. The quiet confidence, the moral compass and the unassuming smile.

The moment I fell in love with her was when her sister, Kit Keller, was running towards home with two outs in the bottom of the ninth during the final game of The World Series. Kit was the winning run and Dottie, the star catcher, had the ball in her left hand. Kit plowed into her and she dropped the ball. Kit’s team won. Despite losing, she smiled, proud of her sister. Dottie’s arch got its bottom.

It’s not all that unlucky that I never met Geena because as I would soon learn I didn’t have that Larkin gene. At least when it came to girls. On my second day of first grade, I developed a crush on a girl and on the third day Dan introduced me to her at recess. As we approached her an insidious thought entered my consciousness. Now I rarely allow my countenance to betray the emotions that are often twisting in my substrate. This allows me to keep my opposition off balance while I probe with questions, a defense mechanism that wouldn’t work on girls in many instances because the situation would spotlight my intent.

Now back to the thought. There’s only one reason for Dan to introduce me to this girl, I had a crush on her. And she undoubtedly knew this fact. I wouldn’t be able to hide behind my aura of mystery. The enemy knew my position. Very soon the situation would require me to be on the offensive which would demand my brain to create one or two sentences that would prove to her my presence was worth her precious few recess minutes. This time constraint created a certain pressure that sent my brain into a state of entropy that prevented it from forming cohesive thoughts. Sentences were definitely going to be a problem.

By the time we reached her I had fully lost the ability to form thoughts. Dan introduced us. I fumbled out a timid wave coupled with a “Hi.” She must have sensed weakness from the consternation in my voice because she went right for the jugular with this punishing quip, “So your name’s Braden like you braid your hair?”, in a tone that was meant to revile her prey. I managed to retort with a “Yes.” She turned to talk briefly with Dan before walking away. I prayed silently for the bell to ring so I could self-efface and reflect on my moment of failure. Talking to girls wouldn’t get easier.

When I wasn’t embarrassing myself in front of the fairer sex, I was making it look difficult in Williston’s prestigious Mites Hockey League. One of my first memories playing sports, and one that would foreshadow much of my sports career, was unintentionally allowing Dan, who played on a different team, loose on a breakaway. My folly had put our goalie in a tough spot. For a moment I felt his anxiety. Hundreds** of people were watching Dan glide towards him with the puck and it was all my fault.

Not to fear. I skated hard, caught up to my good friend, dove, reached my hockey stick out, hooked his right skate and tripped him from behind. I had robbed him of his hero moment. He lay on the ice looking back with his classic snarled tongue. I looked back at him terrified at what I had just done. He kicked me with his skate. I received a penalty and skated off the ice. Someone on the bench pointed out my neck was bleeding. I was proud of myself for not crying. I think it was just a long scratch.

One morning the following spring my dad came into my room singing that annoying “It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning” song so that I’d get ready for school. But with the following addendum, “Hey Hoot***, you want to go fishing tomorrow?” Fishing with my dad was my top rated activity in those days so my answer was probably something like, “Uh yea.” All I had to do was clear it with my teacher, Mrs. Bonsness, because to make things even more righteous, “tomorrow” was a school day. I vaguely remember walking up to her desk to ask her with a smile so big Dottie would have been proud. My countenance had betrayed my emotions.

The next morning we hitched the blue Lund to my dad’s blue Suburban with saddle blanket seat covers and left Williston around the time the florescent sun was starting to edge above the dark horizon. Our destination was the confluence of the Mighty Mo’ and Yellowstone Rivers near Fort Buford along the Montana border. The drive was roughly 35 minutes. I’d never fished there before so I peppered my dad with questions while he sipped coffee from his camo thermos. My custom concern was whether or not we had a chance at a Walleye large enough to earn a Whopper Patch****. “Yes” was the consensus. My excitement was palpable.

After arriving at the boat ramp, we launched the blue Lund into the crisp waters at the confluence. My dad broke the silence and awakened my olfactory system by firing up the ole Mercury 50-horse which purred as we drifted down the river. The plan was to fish a spot on the Yellowstone which was around 15 minutes from the ramp. Dad cranked the tiller as I grabbed my hat waiting for the boat to take off. The boat lurched forward. I watched its wake build and flatten as The Ballad of the Mercury reached its crescendo. The Seamaster read the water while guiding us confidently to his fishing hole. We’d fish together many more times but never again where the Yellowstone met the Mighty Mo’.

Most of my memories from that summer include me hanging out with my first group of friends. One day Dan and I were at his friend Ryan’s house. Snow had released his debut single “Informer” and Ryan had it on tape. The only tape I had was The Pretty Woman Soundtrack. That would need to change. We formed a miniature mosh pit while we listened to “Informer” on loop while yelling our favorite part “Skibbidy boom boom bang.” My memory isn’t robust enough to store too many photographs but that orange Snow tape occupies one of its slots.

Another time we were hanging out at a park and one of the older kids in our squad had taken to pinning me down on the ground until I ate dirt. I was able to refrain from indulging in the unfertile park soil until a dude from a rival squad who was destined to become a star football player barreled him over to free this frail fella. I proceeded to give him a few high fives and maybe even a hug. Dan later told me he could eat eight pieces of pizza when he wasn’t even hungry. I never met him again but he was such a hero to me that eating eight pieces of pizza in one sitting became a lifelong goal.

In Virginia Woolf’s classic To The Lighthouse she describes a dinner that she had been looking forward to for a long time. As the evening comes to a close, she absorbs the last few moments. noticing each scene as they quickly turn into the past. She understood the importance of these fleeting moments and the impact they’d have on her progeny. Would its permanence be a source of anguish or relief?

I have a lot of memories from my youth but none were more formative than the ones from 1991. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized it can be difficult to stay grounded. It’s easy to drift away from the center. It’s easy for things to fall apart. 1991 is my anchor. It reminds me of who I am. It allows the center to hold. And for that I’m Dan Gladden.

*As I sit here editing this on February 29, 2020 at Hudson Hill Coffee in Denver, CO I spy this record on vinyl behind the bar.

**Dozens is more likely.

***A nickname I was gifted due to the chance misspelling of my last name by an unknown clerk in Williston, ND.

****A catch-and-release whopper is 25 inches. I wouldn’t land one this large for another 8 years.

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