view from the lawn before the KISS concert | image copyright © 2019, the author

Me & the Boys are Playing . . .

Friendship and Flashbacks: Twilight of the Rock Gods

It all started back in the 1970s when my good friend Eddie Hostetler and his brothers decided it might be great fun to dress up, transforming themselves into doppelgangers of the mega-rock stars, KISS. Like most young men at the time, my buddy and his brothers were huge fans. No, this wasn’t Halloween . . . just a regular day in the life of a trio of fun-loving young men.

Eddie Hostetler (center) and his brothers Terry (left) and Barry (right), back in the day | image copyright ©2019 E. Hostetler , by permission

A decade and a half younger than Eddie, I have never really been a huge fan of the band even while I remember them as permanent fixtures of my early childhood. Along with Muhammad Ali, Bruce Jenner, Elvis Presley, Evel Kneivel, Bruce Lee, Scooby Doo, Jaws, Saturday Night Fever, Star Wars (the original trio alone, thank you) and the Super Friends, the band were omnipresent — their likenesses molded into action figures and plastered on posters, billboards, lunch boxes and any other surface that could be screen printed.

I am a 1970-model human being, but my Mental Operating System is pure 80’s; I am the original Stranger Thing. Eddie, however, is a product of his times, and it was in the role of buddy and sidekick that I…