Gonna Back Up Baby

Morgan Davis is a psychology professor. While listening to Porky Chedwick, the legendary Pittsburgh disc jockey, he is catapulted back in time to 1958, when he was a teenager. He now has the body and problems of a teenager, including how to deal with his parents, his teachers, his best friend, his girlfriend, and a couple really tough guys who want to knock his head off. …

Morgan has always regarded his teenage years as the best in his life, but he is now confronted with the realities of what they were really like. He re-experiences the thrill and perils of young love, the exhilaration of drag racing his 1951 Ford, the anxiety of being stalked by teenage thugs, the wonder of reuniting with loved ones who have been dead for years, the drudgery of trying to pass a bunch of courses in high school he neither likes nor remembers, and the sheer joy of living in the age when rock 'n' roll was born. …

Will he try to return to his comfortable, successful, but dull life as a college professor or will he take a risk and start from scratch? That is the dilemma Morgan faces. What would you do? …

MORGAN DAVIS, PH.D. WAS DRIVING on I-70 between Wheeling, West Virginia and Columbus, Ohio. He had just completed a consultation with a colleague at the University of Pittsburgh on a research project dealing with the feasibility of treating schizophrenia using psychoanalytic therapy. Morgan's colleagues in the clinical psychology program at Ohio State were behaviourists or cognitive-behaviourists who felt that Morgan's persistence in explaining behaviour in psychoanalytic terms suggested a strong tendency toward soft-headedness, if not outright incompetence. Morgan knew better, or at least he thought he knew better. Although he admitted he had been mildly depressed occasionally for the past six months, he hated to think what kind of shape he would have been in had he not seen an analyst for several years after the death of his father. Besides, his interest in psychoanalysis gave him a special and somewhat rebellious niche in a field that had, in many respects, long since lost its willingness to advocate for anything that wasn't politically correct or might advance the power and financial security of its members.

The visit to Pittsburgh had been good, and he had seen a game between his favourite baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the St. Louis Cardinals. In preparation for the trip he had resurrected his Porky Chedwick tape, which was now blaring loudly from the tape player of his Honda Accord. Just about the time Morgan approached the intersection of Interstates 70 and 77, the now immortalized, tape-recorded Porky Chedwick was saying something like, "And now from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- the land of Pork the Tork - the fabulous Skyliners are going to Porkify you with their greatest hit, 'Since I Don't Have You.'"

Morgan frequently experienced a visceral reaction to this song, a reaction he attributed to its popularity during the time when he was trying to get over his old high school girlfriend, Sallie Wakefield. However, this time the emotional impact of the song was doubled by the pristine eloquence of Porky's introduction, especially the part about Pittsburgh. As Morgan sang along, his eyes filled with tears and his longing for the past became so intense and distracting that he nearly rear-ended an elderly couple in a Ford Taurus who seemed to have forgotten that the speed limit in Ohio was 10 miles an hour faster than it was in Pennsylvania.

Porky's next offering, the Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You," sent an already shaken Morgan into an emotional state that he had felt only once before in his life. On that occasion he was in the most turbulent stage of his psychoanalysis. Listening to music late one night on his stereo earphones he had become so moved by a rendition of Chicago's "Old Days" that he had broken out in tears and wished from the bottom of his soul that he could be transported back to about the time he was in fifth grade. It was the part of the song about baseball cards and Howdy Doody that really got to him--the magical world of Mickey Mantle and Buffalo Bob--a world of unlimited fantasy and possibilities.

On that particular night his 6-year-old son stumbling on the way to the bathroom interrupted his intense nostalgic mood, but this time there were no interruptions. In fact, the feeling was intensified once again by the Platter-Pushin' Papa's introduction of yet another favourite of Morgan's, 'Finger Poppin' Time' by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. As Morgan sang along at the top of his lungs, substituting as always the word "fuckin'" for "poppin'," tears streamed from his eyes. Soon he was screaming with emotion equalled only by the irrational jealously he frequently used to feel in his early relationship with his wife, Donna, and in his adolescent relationship with Sallie Wakefield, "Take me back! Take me back! Take me back! Goddamn it, take me back!"

Suddenly, and quite uncharacteristically, Porky started to play an instrumental record by a white, rockabilly artist--'Rumble' by Link Wray. As the extraordinarily soulful twangs of Wray's guitar drew Morgan into the deepest, most emotional level of his nostalgic frenzy, I-70 became shrouded with a fog so thick that Morgan could no longer see the highway. The fog streamed through the vents of his Accord as if a giant fire hose propelled it. Losing what little rationality he had left Morgan believed he was being hurled through a large pipeline. He was overcome with fear, dizziness and nausea, and his mind went completely blank.

5.0 out of 5 stars An analytic adventure through Happy Days April 11, 2012

By Melanie

My analyst was fond of closing our sessions with silly sayings, such as, "Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else." When introspecting on my teen times of driving my penis through the 50's, I believed I was one of a kind. Apparently Dr. Adams was riding in the back seat of my hopped up Olds, taking notes, and now publishes this work as his own.

He has penned a propitious memoir sprinkled with enough mirth and gravitas to send the reader spinning back to the days of their choice. This knowledgeable anaylst, with a gift for maintaining focus, allows him to people his story with folk we all know. Reading the resonant and resolute record of his perspective, woven from a lifetime of rich real-world experience, will remind many of our own journeys through the 50's in picture-postcard towns in rural America. He has manfully winnowed through a portentious plethora of memories to serve up some salient sources for remembering "Happy Days."

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little "extra." This author is a master craftsman of that "extra."