Suitcase Full of Tears

I first met Sue during Mrs. Kirshbaum’s Drama Class at Casa Roble High School in 1972.
She was funny, loud, talented, cute, and 13. 
Platform shoes were all the rage and Sue said she wanted some platform beach sandals. So, Adam and I made her a pair by nailing some 2×4 scraps to some beachwalker sandals. She loved them.
One day I am cutting one class or another and Sue asks me if I can give her a ride home. She was being sent home for indecent exposure. I’m like, yes I can give you a ride. I had no car, but how was I going to turn down this helpless little girl in the Handkerchief Halter Top? Well, we had just figured out how to start Tom’s Volkswagon with a nail clipper and I figured he wouldn’t mind under the circumstances what with her bein in need and all…

Not long after that Sue left home and I joined the Army, it was the Fall of 1973.

In the Fall of 1975, I was crossing the street to the Jack In The Box when someone hollered “MIKE HERVEY!!”.
It was Susie, all growed up and what not. She had with her the biggest woman in the state at the time, a gal name o’ Laura Dern or somethin’.
We all had a snack and I got her phone number so’s to call her up to go on a date. We did just that and continued dating right on into our country’s Bi-Centennial Year. We broke up after a few months and only had contact once more a year or 2 later when I called her up and made a sort of bad joke. I never knew her name was Sara Sue.

22 years later…

Sara Sue, an IT Program Manager at a large bank in California is surfing the Classmates.com website and comes accross ol’ Hervey living in Small Town, Ohio doing Web Developement. An email goes out and soon plane tickets are purchased and “it’s on” in the late Summer of the year 2000. By February I had moved in with Sara at her place in California ready to start a new life and on Valentines Day 2001 I wrote this song for Sara Sue.

Millennial Summer