Chuck LuckAnd it was a shoe, not creed or circumstance, that brought them together ...

For the record, this is not my foot, nor is it my shoe. This is a good thing because had it been my shoe and not my foot, that would mean some foreign bacteria would now be nesting in my favorite footwear. That would be gross.

The time was approximately dark-thirty on a random Saturday evening on the home front, and I was assigned to get some shots of a rowdy doins' popping off in my neighborhood.

I had the anxiety level of a child on Christmas Eve; that sort of kid who has been worrying all month what Santa really thought of him this year. Strange thing, this sensation, because there was no reason for it. Nothing was feeding it, raising it, giving it a place to grow. This anxiety was of the rogue foundation, and that beast needs nothing or no one to survive in the wild.

The work was done, the deadline met, and I was now left to my own devices, along with the devices of a group of acquaintances who were also trying to find a pocket of comfort in a shirt full of aesthetic static on this warm evening in the swampland. The ingredients were all there to bake a "Perfect Night" cake - beer, bands, banter, but no bruises.

Fortunately, the absence of bruises was a bonus on a night that was clearly brought to us by the letter B. 

Though I was no longer obligated to snap photos, I decided to press on, briefly satisfying my urge to practice my craft. Or was it to hide behind my camera as I navigated through the night?

I had no coin to flip. I decided it was both. I drank a little more beer, clutched the camera and carried on.

Open to the public at a local private joint, this special party was a hotbed for mixed demographics. On display were everything from 60-somethings to rookie drinkers, from barroom banshees to picnic moms hoping their kids were safe with the sitter while they, themselves, tried to escape the responsibility realm for a spell and a song.

It's like the song Hard for me to say I'm Sorry ... "Everybody needs a little time away," and a bunch of other stuff. But the early band took care of all the Chicago tunes for the elderly folks serving their bedtime masters. We were clearly in another world as the night wore on.

This nightcap band was curiously catering to the younger cats, serenading them with that faux punk sound that could only have been crafted in the 1990s. And there we all were, enduring one Green Day cover after another, only getting relieved by a stray Blink 182 tune to crack through the monotony as we ever more frequently made room for more beer.

It's not that the band wasn't good, because they were. If I'm remembering this correctly, and I may not be since I'm depending on actual memory in lieu of an iPhone video, the boys were tight as a juke box. That was their job. They were a live juke box without quarter slots.

Just a band fund.

But I was also shooting the moon, and not in the photographic sense. They could have been slaughtering these tunes like Thanksgiving turkeys and I would have probably paid it as much mind. I was loosening up and becoming one with the world, so there's that.

Much to my surprise, I soon discovered the band's genius on an unexpected wave of revelation. I distinctly recall witnessing an audience awareness that only comes from years of experience and incessant band meetings.

And, man, this was grounds for a cultural circus like no other, one rife with good vibrations and whatever terminology more currently is used to describe said vibrations.

With a communal buzz saturating the growing gaggle of runaway dancers, the song selection sharply yet smoothly shifted the time machine into a faster gear of reverse. What was just mere moments ago a time capsule jammed with punk sounds Henry Rollins would gag on, was now warping hyper-speed back a decade and musical generation.

"Step inside, walk this way. You and me, babe ...

"Hey, hey."

The ensuing and unmistakable drum beat meant that we were all about to be baptized with a heaping dose of sugar, Def Leppard style. Well, this band's style, which wasn't exactly Def Leppard, but as otherworldly close as you were going to get in an anonymous small town on a Saturday night when the freaks were out to party.

You know what I mean, and I know you know I know you know what I mean. If knowing is half the battle, we've got this one in the bag.

If there was one "Millennial" in the bunch who took exception to being whisked away to "Gen X" and "Boomer" land (for the love of God, these titles make me want to stab myself in the face), they were staying silent on the matter. Had they not been inebriated, a riot of seismic proportions would have erupted, exploding throughout the next day's headlines as one more thing to be afraid of.

Sorry, I digress. And I was merely being silly. There would not have been a riot ... probably just a non-threatening shoving match before the combatants took their problems to social media where real battles are waged and only the strong survive.

Still joking, kind of. How did you allow me to arrive at this? I was writing about ...

Ah, Def Leppard and our baptism under sugar.

The band must have realized how much they had underestimated the elderly among the bunch, as they were still out and about in enough apparent force to warrant such set list versatility. This was the thick of summertime in northwest Ohio, a time of the year that encourages rebellion among older folks. Curfews, T.V. and bedtimes be damned.

The result was not one of conflict and chaos, rather the scene became one of epic choreography with all participating age groups up and down the scale. Such a rare treat for the observer to see a 65-year-old woman reliving her heyday with a dance that could have, at one time, been celebrated as the "Acid Waltz," gyrating beside a more youthful version of herself with sweaty blonde locks thoroughly engaged in today's more popular "Fentanyl Shuffle."

She was a hot number, that blondie, all made up in her Saturday best. To someone, somewhere, she was the cat's meow.

Or they could have been simply high on life. That's the beauty - and horror - of having an imagination. Literally everything is possible.

I mustered up as many maneuverable skills as I could, sauntering my way through the crowd to the front of the stage and proving to myself that I was still fully in control of myself. Because there was no way a drunker man could have pulled this off without getting splashed with even so much as a drop of another's beverage. And further, just allowing myself to get that close to a crowd, let alone walk through the center of it, told me all I needed to know about my own anxiety.

It had subsided and was pleasantly manageable. I know the beast wasn't sleeping through all that noise and commotion. He was actually enjoying himself, and I wasn't about to question it. Not for a second.

With the music coaxing the atmosphere into a summer wonderland-type of gift, the singer of the band placed his foot upon the light riser, and I quickly pulled off some creative spontaneity of my own. Lo and behold, in front of my very eyes rested a symbol of rebellion dating back through decades of rocker mentality.

It was a symbol of hope, suggesting that certain spirits never die. This includes snug spirits that sometimes hurt your feet and are still appreciated by some as timeless, despite having become trendy a long time ago.

It was a symbol of staying young and participating in old-school hoops. It was the original Air Jordan before Jordan took air. 

It was my all-time favorite shoe.

It was a Chuck Taylor. All was right with the world. I was precisely where I needed to be at that particular moment in time.

Click ...