Back in 1998, I was a freshman in college and a song came out from a new band called Fastball. The song, The Way, may have been pretty much a one hit wonder, but it was one of my favorites that summer. I remember driving from Des Moines, Iowa to Huntington Beach, California and that was the song that started the trip out. Of course, it's a long trip, so I heard that song a lot during the trip. I mean, it is a 25 hour car ride! It's funny, to me, just listening to it and not knowing much about the song it was a song about getting away. Which was what I was doing. Getting away and having fun in my youth. But the song actually had another meaning.
The 1998 hit song was actually inspired by the tragic 1997 disappearance of Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly Texas couple with dementia who left for a festival and were found dead in their crashed car near Hot Springs, Arkansas, two weeks later in a ravine. The lyrics romanticize their fatal, confused road trip as an adventurous, eternal escape from their mundane lives.
Written by Fastball's Tony Scalzo after reading a news snippet, the song re-imagines the couple as voluntarily abandoning their routine to seek adventure. It focuses on them escaping to a better place ("paved in gold"), suggesting they were happier "on the road" despite the tragic outcome. The song highlights a desire for freedom, the "flavor of young love," and a blissful, albeit sad, departure from the responsibilities of old age.
So, I did have a desire for freedom at the time, being only 19, and enjoyed my time on the road, but I didn't want any kind of tragic outcome. Which luckily I made it back to Des Moines a couple weeks later with no issues, except an empty wallet.
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