Just Some Place Next to Murfin’s

Hey there, Delilah…

The Noise and the “Quiet”

There once was a place in Willard, where beneath an abundance of uncontrollable noise you would always find music. 

A place where, on most days, the walls echoed with gunfire and laughter and friendly insults that could be heard in the “quieter” moments between the booming of exploding grenades. A potent mixture of mayhem and raucous sound traveling up and down a long hallway and over the tops of three-quarter-high walls. Yet sometimes the din died down just enough to leave the place more relaxed and subdued. 

And, occasionally, there in the relative quiet, marvelous things would happen—like classic scenes borrowed from old movies, only in real life.

GameCorps, barely visible at the far left

Rumors and Innuendo

Until fifteen years ago, a competitive video-gaming parlor named “GameCorps” (pronounced “game core”) occupied the commercial space directly next door to what was then Murfin’s Market in Willard. Opening in late-2005, it remained there until January of 2009, after which it moved to a much smaller location next to Dimensions Hair Salon at the corner of Main and Jackson. And there it stayed in business for a couple of more years before eventually shuttering its doors forever in 2011.

While next to Murfin’s, a set of tall and opaque white blinds hung the full length of the plate glass windows, making it nearly impossible for curious passersby to see what was going on inside—unless they stopped on the sidewalk and stood directly in front of the narrow entryway door, squinting through the reflective glass—and even then a labyrinth of interior walls and dim lighting made it difficult to see much of anything on the other side, particularly on sunnier days.

School children and college-aged young adults wandered in and out of the front door at random—the older ones gathering on the sidewalk to smoke cigarettes and/or to talk; the younger ones generally headed either to or from Murfin’s to purchase some sort of food more nutritious than the sweet and salty offerings available at GameCorps (although many others did try to live solely on the store’s endless reserve of energy drinks and candy bars and tiny bags of chips—including me).

Unsurprisingly, the combination of a dimly-lit interior, perpetually-closed blinds, and school kids laughing and chatting alongside college-aged smokers on the front sidewalk led to all sorts of wild, small-town rumors from concerned citizens—most of whom had never once set foot inside the “dastardly degenerate” place.

And the clientele—both young and old—found the rumors of pre-teen sex, drug use, and underage smoking completely baffling (not to mention humorous). For at GameCorps, even merely exceeding G-rated language—no matter what your age—would result in your game console being immediately shut off by the balding, stressed-out, and unforgiving (though understanding) proprietor. 

In reality, the blinds remained closed due to the annoyingly distracting glare that uncontrolled daylight caused on the glass screens of the pre-LCD gaming monitors, and the interior track lighting also remained dimmed down for similar reasons. Occasionally, after dark, the blinds would be opened to attract attention, but even then bright headlights from passing vehicles would create issues.

The place certainly was no church youth group, but those rumors—as rumors so often are—weren’t based in a recognizable reality (at least none that I’m aware of).

A Memory

During its few years, games like Halo and Call of Duty and Gears of War were the bread and butter of GameCorps’ trade, but it was the varied and memorable personalities—both those who stayed only awhile and those who hung around for good—that brought the place to life.

I was thirty-six years old when GameCorps first opened its doors (it operated for a full year in Springfield before moving to Willard), and although I just turned fifty-five a few weeks ago, all but one of my good friends is almost twenty years younger than I am. My decision to open a competitive gaming parlor two decades ago is completely to thank (or to blame) for that.

There were so many times when all the shouting and explosions and excitement would get the better of us, leaving the proprietor of Movie Mania next door with little choice but to either put up with the noise or to come over and ask us to keep it down. To his credit, he was always polite. A good man with a lot more patience than I would have had.

But on one of those rarer, quieter nights, a young man—a GameCorps staple who came to be known as “Bees”, and who happened to have been born the same year I graduated high school, and who possessed whatever superpower it is that enables a rare few by their mere presence to immediately swing the mood of a room from overcast gloom to sunny day—came in, sat down, and began playing Halo 2. And, as always happened when he came around, the mood of the entire place, there among the gunfire and the dim lighting and the flickering screens, noticeably and immediately brightened.

Aaron Wallace, “Bees” 🐝

And on this day, not long after his arrival, GameCorps’ Pandora music playlist found its gentler side, and the Plain White T’s, “Hey There Delilah” began playing softly over the store sound system. Bees, characteristically, began to hum along, and everyone else began humming along with him. Then, when the chorus kicked in, and without a word, and as if by some universal magic that coordinates human actions, everyone in the entire building quietly joined in, singing in unison, layering the air between us in sweet and hushed tones:

“Oh, it's what you do to me

Oh, it's what you do to me

Oh, it's what you do to me

Oh, it's what you do to me

What you do to me

Oh, whoa, whoa 

Oh whoa, oh

Oh, oh…”

“Hey There Delilah” is a wonderful song about the dual promises of youth and of the future.

But here, in reality, life doesn’t always play along.

Bees is a young man who will always remain young because he would, a decade later, at the age of thirty, tragically die at the hand of that enemy who goes by the name “Cancer”.

I don’t remember who else was present that night, but we all sang every refrain until the song was over with. It wasn’t the only time GameCorps unexpectedly transformed into a choir, yet it is, for me, the most memorable—a bittersweet moment between a bunch of geeky-cool, game-playing guys. Made all the more so because the one who instigated the experience is no longer with us.

I’m not sure why some memories remain foremost in our minds while others do not, but I am confident in my gladness (and my sadness) that they do.

And though it oftentimes may not seem like it, it is an undeniable fact that each of us is living through our very own epic. Yet for some odd and unexplainable reason, most of us, if left only to ourselves, probably wouldn’t recognize that we’ve been part of that epic until it’s too late.

Maybe that’s why we have friends (and family).

Not only because they are a part of it.

But because they serve to remind us.

Both here.

And from beyond.