Of brushes with famous persons riding transit

My dad (Dave) went to high school in Peoria, Illinois, where he was involved in speech and debate and dabbled in painting. He would often ride the bus to regional tournaments, and on these buses he became acquainted with a competitive peer named Dan. Dan was another young actor and painter from a rival school in Peoria; one of those maddening people who are good at everything and probably have fame encoded in their genes.

There was eventually a tournament where my dad's lead role in a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream was matched against the scene Dan led. Dave's team won by two points (but they failed to make it to state by one point... O, cruelly elusive Fame...) On his victorious bus ride back to Peoria, Dave heard "Punky's Dilemma" from Simon & Garfunkel's just-released Bookends being perfectly strummed and sung by the unflappable Dan at the back of the bus. So he was a talented musician, too. Oh well.

A few years later, Dave bumped into Dan on a bus to Champaign. They recognized each other and started chatting about music; Dan had just finished recording some songs in Nashville, and Dave had embraced a hippie lifestyle with musical hopes. Dan was on his way to hang out with some friends, and he invited my pop to come along and jam with them. Dad can't really remember why he never followed up on the invitation. Who can say what would have happened had he gone? Life is a long, strange thing.

Thirty-odd years later, David Mosher is a popular pastor living happily and healthily in Iowa, and Dan Fogelberg is a retired multi-platinum musician living happily and (unfortunately) not so healthily in Colorado.

I will not attempt to extract a moral from this mid-afternoon tale, but I will admit that I have always preferred Christopher Cross's dulcet music to Dan Fogelberg's. Also, my dad plays guitar way better than I can. I'm hoping to get a lesson out of him during my holiday visit.

Visual reference: Three Guitarist Contemporaries