Tuesday evening we enjoyed visiting with our latest visitor, Jim Lucas. Jim did not come as far as most of the others, a one hour train ride from Connecticut, but he also came from twenty years in the past. Jim and I met when I was in Wichita around 1977. He was a newly minted sales rep for CBS Records and I was relatively new to the record business myself as a singles buyer. He would continue to be my rep until 1991 generally calling on me every other week. Over the years Jim, Toni, and I shared many dinners, concerts, parties, meet and greets, and even a few movies. We also shared much more especially when we had Village Records. The store was our “water cooler” where we would talk about the news of the day, TV shows, movies, oh yes, and music.
Then suddenly in 1991 he was promoted and transferred to the Boston office of Sony Music, which purchased CBS Records in 1987. We have not seen each other since. News of his further promotions would filter back to us through the record business grapevine. Each step was more and more unbelievable.
Jim arrived right on time and true to form with a bottle of fine wine in hand. We spent the next couple of hours trading updates on our adventures over the last two decades. Once Jim arrived in Boston he quickly rose within the company and found himself as the branch manager for all of Boston. A few years later he became branch manager for New York and eventually was promoted to executive vice president / general manager for the entire company. By this time Sony Music had merged with BMG (formerly RCA Records) creating the second largest recording company in the world. The record industry is known for having relatively young executives and unceremoniously dumping them as they reach an age where it is felt they can no longer relate to the young music coming up. The age of this demarcation is usually around fifty years old. I have had several friends in the record label business over the years and this rule of thumb has proven to be hard fast. Jim managed to defy the odds for an additional six years or so and is now enjoying his early retirement.
The three of us went to our favorite restaurant in our neighborhood, Maison, just across the street for round two of our get together. There we were able to continue with our reunion and for three more hours go from reminiscing to sharing our hopes and dreams for retirement and where to spend it. Jim had a long train ride back and it was late and cold. We took a couple of last photos on the sidewalk, shook hands and exchanged hugs. Jim hailed a cab to get back to Grand Central Station while I waited for the light to change. As he climbed into the cab we waved goodbye and like that he was gone again.
This whole evening was totally a result of reconnecting on Facebook. There are many who don’t think much of Facebook but I have to tell you that it is nothing short of magic. I know that we will be able to keep track of each other going forward and we will not take another twenty years to cross paths again.
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