A Teacher Summer Break Sampler

When Little Moments Offer Much on a Hot Sunday Night

“My life is dirt, but you seem to make it cleaner, reduce my felony to a misdemeanor.”                                                                       —Robert Pollard, Guided by Voices

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So where might an aging (over 60) educator wander, on a hot summer night in the twilight of his teaching career? Just who might join him?

Why, to the setting of his secret origin story, tagging along with one of his slightly annoyed sons — and Professor Smith, an old, yet younger radical ed colleague.

Of course.

In Hamtramck, the most culturally diverse city in Michigan, we enter a dingy bar room just blocks away from the loudest music of the evening — an outdoor heavily amplified Muslim prayer call.

Curiously, the state’s largest concentration of alcohol-serving venues is surrounded by a majority religion strictly banning such indulgences.

Anyway, our ragtag trio seeks the underground Philly band Second Grade. Some familiar guitar sounds, rearranged into new bursts of quite appealing garage pop prove 90 degree heat does not have to be oppressive.

I simply can’t believe the magic, the simple fun, when accompanying my DNA on these dream-like audio adventures.

“Dad, if you want to sit down, there are chairs in the back!” Slightly Annoyed Son (SAS) yells into my ear.

He’s only (?) somewhat embarrassed, knowing I’m a bit deaf from a 20-year rampage of making and basking in loud music (1980-2000), now preferring to plop on the nearest table closest to the stage.

“Dad—”

I smile and retreat to the bar, a ragged ancestor in sagging shorts and a bright yellow Protomartyr t-shirt, to scan my informal descendants, inhaling their six-string jangle and lively stage banter.

The 20-somethings seem content to play in front of 40 fans.

But why not 400, I would grumble to myself over three decades ago. . . .

Second Grade’s whimsical guitarist and vocalist Peter Gill sings confidently to the musty sway;

I call up the Pentagon
To wage war on a memory
And I need backup
Like I always do
Gimme something
Be my pick-me-up
I’m strung out on you

I shout to my Somewhat Irritated Son (SIS) how the quartet reminds me of the fabled Ohio band, Guided by Voices. My progeny rolls his eyes, while secretly taking mental notes for his own guitar-fed visions.

I swear I did nothing to cultivate his personal mission statement.

However, son, please, uh, don’t do what I, ah, did by dropping out of college for ten years to ultimately underachieve in three different indy bands.

Please?

Hey wait, that could be me on the drums.

Will it? Next summer, maybe?

In 2026, in my 40th year in education, do I come full circle, do I try to return to my rocking roots?

Or will I simply retire in advanced underachievement, hunched over the keyboard, tapping out yet another poem as just another elaborate SOS?

While I’m deliberating my suspended joy in this overheated purgatory, my Somewhat Underwhelmed Son (SUS) tells me we have to leave soon.

Unlike dad’s July, he has to work Monday morning.

Right on cue, an older guy in a GVB t-shirt steps around us. Guess someone else thinks they also sound like Guided by Voices, eh, my son?

Son nods in slightly humiliating agreement.

I want to tell him more about GVB’s iconic Robert Pollard, who taught for many years, both in secondary and elementary schools, who wrote about 3,000 songs—

“Dad, let’s talk about it later.”

We eventually catch a few tunes from the other touring Philly group, Friendship, where Gill also shares the stage with their magnetic front man, lead singer and guitarist, Dan Wriggins, before hugging my grinning audiophile friend glued to the main floor in front of the stage.

Professor Smith,¹ too, will write about this night, about his return to his old haunts and home, enthusiastically reminding my son how he just needs a drummer, someone to pound the skins loudly for his new band. . . .

As father and son stumble back out into the stifling hot air, the electrified sounds dissipate down the dark streets of crowded bungalows, sagging roofs and the occasional squealing tires.

“So, future rock star, whenever I retire, I’m actually toying with the idea of returning to the stage, a solo show, with keyboards, guitar, poetry and stand-up storytelling with—

“—Dad, I don’t think that’s what people want right now.”

I pause for a long minute.

“Well, I am really looking forward to seeing you play out in clubs, once you find a drummer.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The car smells like the moldy socks left on the floor mat from my other son’s last baseball game. We pull out into the muggy darkness, the hum of the AC blower on high.

“So what did you think of that last band?”. . .

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2nd Grade, "Strung Out on You"

At the Outer Limits, July 6, 2025. The band Second Grade, from Philadelphia, rocking Hamtramck, and my ole professor-poet-friend, Andy “Sunfrog” Smith, visiting excitedly from Tennessee.

The Blanks (Detroit), led by singer-guitarist Mike “Woody” Wood in 1984, sharing the (ska) dance floor at the Old Miami, with future members of the Gories, Dan Kroha (on the left) and Mick Collins (right corner).

Mr. Boyer’s tentative teaching journey would humbly commence two years later.

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1. Look for interesting interview with fabled “Teacher on the Radio” in future Substack. . . .