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The Day Harry Chapin Diedby Steve Gibbons |
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This has been a story that has taken me a long, long time to write. It's still very emotional for me and even after all of these years, I remember every detail as if it were only yesterday. I'm self-employed now, but in 1981 I was "the young man on the run" working for a company in the California Bay Area. It was a small company of maybe 30 employees and I'd worked there for about a year or two and had gotten promoted a couple of times. The owner liked me and soon I had keys to the building and pretty much came and went as I pleased.
On July 16, 1981 I knew I would have to work late that night -- real late. Before I went to work that morning, I packed my portable cassette recorder (in those days portable meant it used AA batteries instead of D!) and every Harry Chapin tape that I had. By 6:00 pm everyone had left for the day. Except me, and Harry. I put in the first tape and started punching away on the computer terminal. Yes, we had computers back then! Eight hours later, I was done and exhausted. I packed up for home and grabbed up the tapes and drove across the San Mateo bridge for my apartment. I had listened to every Chapin album that I had on tape at the office. I listened to another one on the drive to my one bedroom apartment in Hayward. I got home, undressed, set the alarm clock, climbed in to bed and picked another Harry tape that would lull me asleep for a few hours before I had to wake up and go back to work. The alarm went off after what seemed like only a few minutes. The clock-radio was set to play the radio instead of the awful buzzing noise. Went I started to shake the sleep off, I could hear Harry signing "Cat's In The Cradle" on the radio, and I thought: "How nice! I fall asleep listening to Harry, and I wake up to hear him too." At the end of the song the DJ says, "That was the late Harry Chapin, singing his big hit 'Cat's In The Cradle'. Harry Chapin died yesterday in a car accident in New York, he was 38 years old. Now, on to the traffic report..." In my still sleep-numbed brain, it took a few seconds to realize what I'd just heard. When I did, I started to choke up and my eyes started to water. Before long I was crying and sobbing like a baby without a bottle! I laid in bed for over an hour crying, screaming in my pillow, and pounding my fists on the mattress. How could God let this happen? After I got a bit composed, I made a cup of coffee, called into work and lied that I was sick and started listening, again, to all of Harry songs. I cried through at least half of them! I looked at his pictures on the album covers, went through my long saved concert ticket stubs and spent the day remembering this man that I just realized, I apparently loved. Now I've had some people die in my life (Grandparents, a favorite uncle, friends...), but even to this day, none has gotten but a small porition of the grief I felt that day when Harry died. I'm sure that'll change some day, but I'm not looking forward to it! Later that afternoon, I picked up my guitar and started playing. After I got through virtually every Chapin song I had taught myself, I decided to try and write a song about my feelings. On the first anniversary of Harry's death, I called in sick again and picked up my guitar, and pen and paper, and wrote it down. It's a short song, but here it is: 
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