No. 913 – Vasoline

Performer: Stone Temple Pilots

Songwriters: Robert DeLeo, Dean DeLeo, Scott Weiland, Eric Kretz

Original Release: Purple

Year: 1994

Definitive Version: None

I referenced The Dungeon—the small, cramped Gym where I’d work out occasionally when I moved back to Columbus. On Mondays, which I had off when I first joined the Dispatch, I’d go to my other gym, which was … well, not quite the opposite, but close.

Monday was my shopping/hunting day, and often my routine would be to head to the gym, run whatever errands I had and then go over to my Dad and stepmom’s house for dinner. This was before my relationship with Debbie made that an impossible arrangement.

But this gym near to where I grew up in Upper Arlington held a lot of memories from back in my high-school days. Back then, it was just a racquetball club—Supreme Racquetball Club. My friend Jim and I used to play a lot during high school. I was really into the sport when it was hot for a very brief time, and I loved that it had a whirlpool tub in the men’s locker room.

But now, 14 years later, most of the courts had been converted, with a few walls knocked down to build larger weight rooms, but the locker room was mostly the same. I could feel the ghosts swirl around me while I worked out with the dulcet tones of STP cranked on my Walkman. The building’s still there; it’s now a church. Time marches on.