I think it was 1996. Jerry and I were supervisors together at a local business. I guess we were both still young enough to hang out with folks from work. . . something that I stopped doing years ago.
The Rolling Stones were coming to Owen Field at the University of Oklahoma and several of us decided to go as a group. Jerry opted for a party bus so that we could drink and not be concerned with driving. Thinking about all of this puts me in mind of how much I have aged just since the nineties, because we went to see the Stones on a party bus — on a work night!! We were older, true, but in retrospect, not yet wiser!
Jerry entrusted the security of the tickets to me. And I in turn, promptly had them stolen! I can’t remember how many of us had tickets, but I do remember that I had them all! Jerry was a long time local business man who was taking a brief break from operating the family business when we met. Jerry had the good sense to purchase the tickets with his credit card, so he was able to have the stolen Stones tickets replaced and waiting for us at will call when the party bus dropped us off at the stadium.
The stadium was packed and all concert goers were herded beneath the bleachers like cattle both coming and going. Our original tickets were on the 50 yard line a few rows back from the tickets that replaced the stolen ones. The new ones were much better because there was a second stage in the middle of the stadium and our seats were on the same row as that second stage. So we got to see Mick Jagger perform so close to us that we could see the groupies toss their undergarments to him as he sweated, danced, and sang to the crowd.
I was not going to let the people who stole the original tickets off the hook so easily. So on the way to our seats, I stopped at the original seats and approached the one who was seated in mine. She was someone I knew from Oklahoma City and she had the audacity to tell me that she had those tickets for over a month. I could see the guilt well up in her face when I was able to name the precise time and place when she got those tickets only a few days earlier.
As far as I was concerned, the group of people who stole the tickets should be escorted in shame out of the venue. But Jerry intervened. He just wanted to have a good time and let the issue of the original tickets go. I didn’t like it, but I was a women in my early thirties who had two kids, at a Rolling Stones Concert with a bunch of coworkers on a party bus! I had a mid-life coming of age moment and I dropped the issue, thus most likely preventing my own homicide!
Cheryl Crow opened and then she and Mick sang a song or two together, and then the Stones performed.
A good time was had by all. . .
Hark, A Tiny Hum 