No. 963 – Amber Cascades

Performer: America

Songwriter: Dewey Bunnell

Original Release: 1976

Year: Hideaway

Definitive Version: None

When I saw America live—my second concert—on Easter Sunday in 1976, America rolled out this song, which was the only song I didn’t know. There was a reason for it: It was a brand new song. Hideaway had just come out literally the week before. (I checked.) But I had no way of knowing this at the time, being too young and too far away from any to start hanging out at record stores.

Actually, this song doesn’t really make me think of the concert as much as a few others songs do but of camping out in the fall with the Boy Scouts. I was pretty much a bust out as a Boy Scout. I made it to Second Class, but I didn’t have the drive to go any further. When my dad moved out in the summer of 1976, mom pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. Being 12 and tired of being told what to do, I didn’t want to do anything that involved hard work or discipline.

But I loved the camping and hiking. In fact, one memorable campout—I can’t remember where—I graduated to unofficial Firestarter, First Class by starting with a single match a campfire that lasted the entire weekend, which required maintaining the hot coals and reigniting it the next morning.

I had some great experiences in my troop, including being an usher at Ohio State football games for a season, but the most memorable one was at the huge Bicentennial jamboree at Scioto Downs racetrack south of Columbus int eh summer of 1976. My best friend, Marty, and I shared a tent, and I recall we took a lot of pipe from the senior troop leaders about our tent, which sagged like a hammock. If Charlie Brown had been so inclined to be a Boy Scout, his tent would’ve looked like ours. Hey, it’s standing, right?

As luck would have it, a gigantic storm came up during the afternoon while most of the troop was at the racetrack for some show while Marty and I hung out in the tent. It blew and swayed and ballooned like a parachute but stayed standing. When the wind finally died down, we went out to explore things, and the entire campsite was decimated: The Charlie Brown tent was the only one that survived.

So Marty and I went out and covered everyone else’s stuff as the rain soaked the open field. We raised as many tents as we could, but there was no way around it: Most others—including the senior scouts—return to wet sleeping bags.

Ours were nice and dry. And … what was that you said about our tent, exactly?