Thirty Miles from Home
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about growing up on the Avalon, the loved ones who have passed on, and how my older sisters left home to marry before I joined the Armed Forces. But back in high school around 1975, my best friend on the road was Aiden. Though Crohn’s disease left him at just four-foot-eleven, he was a sharp Memorial University student who loved to blow off steam on weekends. We spent our nights hitchhiking around the Irish Loop, always staying within thirty miles of home just in case we had to walk it. With his small frame and trademark dark glasses, Security at Gus St Croix’s Place in St. Vincent swore his look was a disguise to get inside—but Aiden smart-talked his way past the door by pulling out his university ID.

We were always thirty miles from home
On the Irish Loop where young hearts roam.
Different roads now, different lives we’ve grown,
But I still see Aiden, dark glasses on,
And thumb up—thirty miles from home.

The rides we caught along The Shore were legendary, soundtracked by “Lyin’ Eyes” by The Eagles playing on old dashboard radios. One night around 1:30 AM, our buddy Vince picked us up in Fermeuse in a hundred-and-fifty-dollar crate, only to blow the motor drag-racing a stranger on the highway. We slept right in the dead car, hitched home the next morning, and stopped to dip our tired feet in a cool roadside pond before noon. Other times, our buddy Mikey gave us a lift in his brown 1969 Chevy Impala, stopping at every single gas bar along the Shore to feed its wicked oil leak. We have all grown up and taken different roads since those wild days, but when I look back, I still see two boys completely free on the asphalt, watching the taillights fade into the Newfoundland night.