More than just a t-shirt

Each Wednesday, once The Hartwell Sun has been put to bed for the week and off to the printer, I treat myself to a nice lunch.

Laying out a newspaper isn’t for the faint of heart, and that hour to myself after a grueling 36 hours on a fixed deadline, gives me time to decompress while getting a game plan together for next week’s newspaper.

While there are several restaurants around town I frequent, most Wednesdays you’ll find me at Little Japan on Depot St. While I love all the comforts of small town living, I really miss the abundance of sushi joints that are available when you live in the big city.

Two weeks ago, I sat down in my normal chair inside the restaurant, when a high school girl walked passed me. She was wearing a t-shirt from the rock ‘n’ roll band Nirvana.

As a child of Generation X, seeing someone wear a shirt symbolizing the greatest band of my generation brings back a flood of memories.

“Nice shirt,” I said as she walked by. “Aren’t they a great band?”

The young lady looked at me as if I had three heads.

“What?” she exclaimed. “Nirvana is a band? I just really liked the shirt.”

Sadly, this sort of exchange with today’s youth is far from an outlier.

Several months ago, CNI’s Chairman Alan NeSmith came to town and we went to lunch at La Cabana off Old US 29. NeSmith, himself is a child of Generation X, saw that our young waitress was also wearing a Nirvana t-shirt.

“Hey look, you’re wearing a t-shirt from the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band,” NeSmith told her.

Once again, crickets.

Today’s youth only see Nirvana as a fashion symbol, and that statement is a foreign concept to any member of Gen X who grew up during the height of their popularity.

Comprised of drummer Dave Grohl, bassist Krist Novoselic, and the incomparable lead guitarist and vocalist Kurt Cobain, the band was heralded as the voice of our generation and the most influential alternative rock band of all time.

Nirvana’s quintessential album Nevermind was released in August of 1991, the same month I began my freshman year of high school. By early 1992, the album had replaced Michael Jackson’s Dangerous on the top of Billboard’s album charts.

To members of Generation X, Nirvana was bigger than The Beatles. The band’s anthem, Smells Like Teen Spirit, shifted mainstream rock ‘n’ roll out of the glam rock and hair band phase of the 1980s into its new reality called grunge rock.

While I promise this column isn’t a middle-aged guy having a “get off my lawn moment,” but Nirvana meant way more to us than just a cool t-shirt.

Tomorrow marks 30 years since the group met its untimely demise, and I’m feeling every single one of those years. On April 5, 1994, Cobain, who suffered from mental illness since childhood, killed himself with a shotgun inside his Seattle home.

Every Gen Xer knows where they were when they heard the news of Cobain’s death, and many tears were shed.

To the younger generation, I’d ask you to go easy on us old folks over the next few days because it still hurts, and maybe add a couple of Nirvana’s songs to your playlist before you wear that shirt again.