the back of Laurie’s junior year photo. “Kick Axis”

This is not a music post, but there is some music (keep reading for a mention of Bad Brains!) and it is certainly about a time that helped shape a lot of the future. Today August 19th marks the 30th anniversary date of my friend Laurie Depies’ disappearance. There’s a zillion media stories about the case that have been published throughout the years, crime TV and talk shows have featured her so I’m not rehashing the details but here’s the link to today’s feature in the Neenah News. (The photo in the story is one that I took in ’88 is also below).

I think about Laurie all the time, though admittedly less frequently as the years have passed. Each year at this time, though, a few of us who are still close always call each other – well, in the pre-texting days anyway. Now we, of course, text. For a lot of reasons it’s hitting a lot harder today. Thirty is a big number anniversary and we are all 50 years old or older (Laurie would have been turning 51 next month if she was alive). My son is also now a senior in high school and it was my senior year and Laurie’s junior year that we became very close. She was one of my few real friends at Appleton East (my other good friends all went to West, were off to college, or had opted out of school completely). We were in art class together and shared a work table; the art teacher always had WAPL on the radio in class and we’d sing along to the lunch-time show jingle that played each day. After art was our lunch hour. These were the days of “open campus” so we’d hop into my car with our other good friend, Mitzi, and either head over to Laurie’s apartment or to Hardee’s.

These are many “small” memories: they are not particularly interesting nor dramatic but really they are the best ones and the most vivid. Dancing to R.E.M.’s “Stand” outside of Laurie’s mom’s apartment in the grass. Driving around Appleton (not necessarily at lunch but maybe on the weekends, heading to some party or another) and her belting out Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” at the top of her lungs, windows down, stereo blasting. Me and Joe (we were just friends at that point, not dating) going to homecoming in the fall of ’88 and, after dinner, picking up Laurie and Mitzi from Laurie’s apartment to head over to East for the dance. I think we stayed 20 minutes and then bailed for something much better to do.

Laurie, Joe, Mitzi and me before Homecoming ’88

Going to High Cliff State Park on an art field trip and sketching the boats in the harbor. Going to High Cliff at night with friends, definitely not a school field trip, pretending to pay the entry fee but really just putting an empty envelope in the dropbox back when State Parks were unattended and vehicle-sticker free. Laurie singing along to Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” with a totally unironic tear in her eye after a big fight with her boyfriend. More dancing around to music in friends’ living rooms.

In high school (a time that was fine but not something I am particularly nostalgic about) I must have had some inkling that history and memoir would be a part of my future: I literally saved every single note and letter ever written to me from 1986-1989 when note-passing was the only good way of communication and one small cure for school boredom. Laurie wrote me A LOT. I have binders of notes and hers take up a good chunk of one of them. A lot are very mundane, the normal bitching teens do to one another about teachers, parents, boys. This one from probably late ’88 is kind of mundane, too, but it also makes me extra sad – I remember being irritated with Laurie about how much she would moan about an ex (the same one as the “Every Rose” singing incident), who in other notes she refers to as “Assface” (LOL). Her writing about our friendship, her looking forward to being a senior in high school and telling me she loves me dearly. I was always “Sarah Bean” and she was always “Lauriella.”

Laurie also wrote to me when I was a freshman at UW-Madison. I think this postcard is hilarious – she and some of our friends ended up smoking “you know what” with the “ex-lead singer and ex-drummer of Bad Brains.” See, this post IS about music.

Mitzi, me, Laurie, Susie, Candace, ’88

Laurie and Candace, late ’87 or early ’88. Candace was killed in 2005

Marc and Laurie, ’88. This was a few years before they were dating. It was outside of Marc’s apartment where Laurie disappeared.

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I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black
With flowers and my love, both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a newborn baby, it just happens everyday
I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door and must have it painted black
Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black
No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black

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