The other problem was that you never knew when you were going to get to Indy and saving money was a new concept for me. By sophomore year I had a job but also had my license. Abercrombie anything was the thing to have. I heard stories of people going to Indy and spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on Abercrombie apparel. I think, looking back, I initially had a hat. An Abercrombie Lacrosse hat - what a poser. Once Abercrombie moved into Fort Wayne, like my beer analogy, it lost its luster. The fascination with Abercrombie clothes carried on for about a decade longer, but it never quite was the status symbol it was in my early high school years. The 90s was such a contrast in trends. Just a few years prior, JNCO jeans and Grateful Dead shirts were huge. We were now obsessed with looking like an east coast rugby player vacationing on Martha's Vineyard.
I have always loved shoes. I attribute a lot of this to the era when NBA/NFL/MLB players were all rolling out signature shoes. You looked up to these athletes and you thought their shoes would help you perform like them. You had to have them and some are now worth a lot of money. It was a harsh reality putting on Bo Jackson's Nike Air Trainer's and not being able to break a bat on your thigh :). Anyway, the summer I turned 16 I begged my parents for a pair of Dr. Marten's. Like Abercrombie clothing, I had seen the boots on some popular guys (that I looked up to) at my school and wanted to look just like them. We were on vacation in Traverse City and happened to go to the mall there. They had a Buckle and my mom agreed to make the purchase. It was the most expensive pair of shoes I had ever owned. I also knew that it was the only pair I would ever get, so I better take care of them. I remember getting into a car accident my sophomore year and my first thought - can the blood be cleaned off my Dr. Martens? I still have my pair. I still have a lot of shoes and my wife complains. I just take such good care of them because I'm afraid that I'll never get another pair. It's just something ingrained in me through experience.
When you're 16 you feel free. You get your license and you're off. I had an '87 Honda Civic. One of the first things I did was have my dad put a CD player in it. My friends did the same and some even added some sweet Rockford Fosgate's to the trunks. Bass was big! I really could have cared less about anything else in or on the car. One of the strangest phenomena of being 16 in Indiana (at least where I grew up) was the surge in popularity of No Limit Records. Like the trends mentioned earlier, it seemed to come out of nowhere and wasn't really that great, but it was EVERYWHERE and popular in the media. Once Master P's single Make Em Say Uhh! dropped, it felt like a new No Limit personality/rapper appeared each week. It seemed impossible to keep up with each new release, but my friends with Columbia House subscriptions were dealing their CDs in our school like they were illegal drugs. It was amazing how big some rappers from New Orleans posing in front of green screens were in the mid to late 90s. Those album covers were LEGENDARY. The hysteria grew even larger in the Fort Wayne area when Master P signed to play for the Fort Wayne Fury of the CBA.
Sophomore year was really strange....
Favorite No Limit Song: Big Ed - Rodeo
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