I first married in 1978. I used to be very reserved and conflicted inside. I was a christian song leader, bible teacher, budding preacher, and horny as hell. I was born in Louisville Kentucky, but when forced integration, busing, protests, and rioting came to our neighborhood, my parents swiftly moved us to a small town in South, central Indiana… THE small town… where John Mellencamp is from.

I've never seen him up close in person, but he was in my oldest sister’s graduating class… the class of 70. I had known who his sister was at Seymour High school. I had chatted several times with his brother while putting gas in his cool conversion van at Marshall’s Service Center. And, a few years later, I installed an additional cable TV outlet for his mother and chatted with her during the install. To me they were well off, and good looking, but just nice, regular people. So, around 1983, I wrote a long, personal letter to John Mellencamp.

We had known about him since 1976. None of us was too sure what to think or say when we first heard his debut recordings in a little record shop set up for Octoberfest in Seymour Indiana that year. We had just graduated high school, becoming adults, and concerned with what other people thought about us.

But now, in 83, Johnny Cougar had made it, and his latest stuff in the Nothin Matters And What If It Did, Uh-Huh, and American Fool records was flat out awesome. So, I wrote him a letter. I told him how cool and talented he was, how proud we all were of him, and how much we looked up to him for his courage, boldness, and the fact that he was just out there living his life, doing that show business thing, just being who he was, and he had REALLY MADE IT.

Then, I suppose, by contrast, I told him quite honestly and openly, how I lived, how I felt, believed, and struggled with different things, but that I was just really grateful for what I had.

I never received a reply, but I think I didn’t really expect a reply to a lame, sappy letter like that, but I figured he might appreciate the perspective somehow anyway – so I was still glad I did it.

Life goes on…

I finished the Color TV correspondence course, got my student loans for Ivy Tech, got my Associate degree in Industrial Electronics, got a divorce, dated three very nice ladies, married one, moved to St. Louis, found out my legal name suffix is II instead of Jr., so changed that. We have our first baby, we buy a house, move out of the apartment, soon, have our 2nd baby on the way, due in October. Its 1993 and John Mellencamp's new record is out: Human Wheels.

I love the cd. The music, is different in many ways, really fresh. Several songs become instant favorites. One song in particular stands out from all rest… John has answered my letter after all… he wrote a song based on the letter I sent him. Damn! I like it…still do. It’s honest. It’s who I was. And it’s who the roots of me still is when I let myself get shut down. Gotta keep on movin’. I never have tried to verify it… I just know… from that very first time I heard it… and even if it's not really, that’s my song. It still works the same... Thanks John.