by Michael Brown, Harrisburg, PA

It was in 1980, I believe, perhaps February, when I was walking through the Harrisburg East Mall and saw a sign outside a record store advertising a bus trip to the Nassau County Coliseum on Long Island, to see Pink Floyd. Somehow the record store had gotten their hands on a bloc of tickets to “The Wall” Tour large enough to fill a tour bus. But the price was $60, incredibly expensive for the time. I didn’t buy a ticket that night, but in the following few days I decided that this was the chance of a lifetime, and if I ever wanted to see Pink Floyd, it had to be now. So I scraped together the 60 bucks and bought my ticket.

The bus ride was one of the most incredibly fun trips I have ever been on. The driver just drove, and the riders just partied. Everything was available and everything was shared. It was a tribute to the sense of togetherness that what we were about to experience could produce. What I especially recall about that bus ride was that it was the first time in my life that I became aware that at that particular moment in time, I was exactly where on Earth I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, and going exactly where I wanted to be going. At the time, it was a transcendent moment.

By the time we arrived at the arena, everyone was in the perfect Pink Floyd mind set. The performance was wonderful. I felt nailed to my seat, the music just washed over me in wave after wave. I was transfixed. The ride home afterward was like a dream. It was truly my best ever concert experience. But there was more. There was a coincidence that was part of that trip that I’ve never forgotten.

My downstairs neighbor in my apartment building was a big Pink Floyd fan, and when I learned about the trip, I asked him if he was planning on going, but he said it was too expensive for him, and he passed. So on the bus trip, I literally knew no one else there. But during the ride to Long Island, the guy in the seat across the aisle from me had a big container filled with already mixed screw drivers, and he shared them with me all the way to Long Island. I likewise shared my bounty with him, and we had a great time. The day following the concert, I bounced down the stairs to my neighbor’s apartment to tell him about what it had been like, and there sitting in his living room was the same guy with whom I’d shared the trip and our stuff. Before that bus ride, the two of us had never met. We sat in my neighbor’s apartment the next night, telling our stories about the concert.

And after that, I never saw him again.