3 more days

well tonight I began actually packing up my stuff.I found a cd that me and some friends recorded my freshmen year of college. The blue CD-R is labeled “Big Nick and the Bandits.”
It was the last week of school spring semester 2004. My Dad was turning 50 years old on May 1st and me and my mom wanted to do something special for him. He doesnt really like to make a big deal about his birthdays but this one had to be big. He has never really had a nice guitar. As my teacher, and as much as I have played and bought stuff, he had never owned a nice guitar himself. He still to this day has a jr model guitar that he bought at western auto in kosciusko when he was 15 years old. It has my moms name carved in the back of the head stock from when he bought it in high school. He still sits in his chair at night and plays it while they watch tv. So me and my mom decided to get him something nice that he could plug up and play, since he had started to play with some other guys in town. I shopped for a while and found him a nice acoustic electric guitar, it was a new series of Ibanez, black finish, full bodied, with a fishman pickup in it. We had it all planned out. Mom invited people from home to cock of the walk on the Reservoir and I was going to bring guys from the dorm. That night, she brought him down to eat in Jackson, and he walked in to dining room full of people saying surprise. I also walked in with his brand new guitar. What a great night.
But the night was not over.
After eating and hanging out for a while, I headed back to MC to finish packing. It was the last few days of school and I had already moved my furniture out, so needless to say my room was pretty empty. It was raining outside, and everyone that was stuck in the dorm were all just hanging out in the hall. earlier at cock of the walk, my friends had all started a drum line/ stomp on all of the dishes etc at the table in the restaurant. and with open space in my dorm room the beat continued. A microphone was placed over the room and the recording began. around the circle were the following: me, mark simpson, rob dent, john reed, cade monatgue, reece myers, sunshine(josh miller), dex mccune, david barger, and big nick. its started as just jamming with guitars but that escalated into a full band as 50 gallon buckets with drum sticks appeared, harmonicas passed around, and anything that made noise became a part of the music. but this was not enough, we were not satisfied. then the missing piece found his way to the center of the room, under the microphone, only after removing his shirt, and Big o nick began to freestyle. there are many things spoken through his lyrics was great to hear again. he said things that reminded me of that feeling at the end of freshmen year, how he couldnt wait until we came back next semester in the fall, when we would jam again. And we did in other forms, bands, jam times, but never again did we recreate that moment. we got older, busier, got jobs, had harder classes, got girlfriends. you know, everything that begins to take your time. and we happily gave our time to those things as a part of growing up. we thought there would be other days, but that night was the only one of its kind. and we still have it recorded.