For my retirement/Christmas/birthday, my friend Lynne gave me Storyworth, a memoir writing tool that sends a weekly question for a year and then sends a bound, physical copy of the book to you. I have loved answering the weekly questions. This week’s question is: what song always brings back a particular memory? Here’s my answer: 

There are so many. Listening to music was always a big part of my life. I don’t listen much anymore but certain songs do indeed bring me right back to particular moments in my life. But there is definitely one that stands out.

In 1989, I was living in Dalton, Massachusetts, above a dentist office on Main Street, right across from the Crane Paper Company, which makes the paper for our paper currency. I had two roommates. One was my girlfriend and the other was a friend of hers from college. Dalton is a small town in Berkshire County, a county that is home to several residential psychiatric centers. In fact, James Taylor wrote parts of the song Fire and Rain about the time he spent at the Austen Riggs Center in nearby Stockbridge. It’s a beautiful area, filled with lakes and mountains and tiny towns that are reached only by curvy, hilly, isolated roads.

One night near Halloween, my girlfriend and I, along with our roommate Beth, attended a party in one of the nearby small towns—I think it was in Beckett. My girlfriend was driving, wearing a clown costume, complete with orange wig, red nose, and fully painted face. Beth was in the passenger seat, dressed as a scarecrow, with a broomstick across her shoulders and hay peeking out from her sleeves. I was in the backseat of the two-door Geo Tracker, dressed as a pumpkin, which made it difficult to get in and out of the car. The night was clear and dark and crisp. As we rounded a corner, we saw a fire ahead of us, on the edge of the forest, about 30 feet from the shoulder of the road. We approached slowly and soon realized that a car had hit a tree and was fully engulfed in the flames. My girlfriend stopped our car and she and Beth jumped out, running toward the fire. Since I was in the back seat of the two-door car and because I was wearing a giant pumpkin costume, I took longer to get out. When I finally freed myself, I got a surreal glimpse of a clown and a scarecrow silhouette running down the road, framed by massive flames. I followed but the flames were so hot that we could get no closer than about 15 feet. We could see very clearly that two people were still in the car and for the first few moments, they were moving. There were no nearby houses. There were no cellphones. We stood helplessly, watching as two people burned to death. After a time (I have no idea how long—time was not working in those moments), other people appeared and said that emergency crews were on the way. The ambulance and fire truck appeared and emergency personnel took over the scene.

We walked back to the car, still in our costumes, not speaking. What could we say? There was nothing else to do but go home. My girlfriend started the car and the music we had been listening to when we arrived on this horrific scene came over the speakers. It was the Indigo Girls’ second album, which had been released earlier that year. Amy Ray sang to us: “Are you on fire from the years? What would you give for your kid fears?” I can’t hear that song now without thinking of that night and how we laughed and laughed when we heard those words.

Postscript: It took weeks for the authorities to identify the two people in the car. The fire had burned so hot that the license plates and other identifying features melted. They were patients at the Austen Riggs Center. It’s not clear what happened to cause the accident.