How the Beach Boys Saved Christmas

WALKING INTO the empty kitchen in my fuzzy robe, my eyes fell on our radio, silent like the rest of the house. I passed it by without turning it on, just shuffled over to the refrigerator. “The West Coast has the sunshine, and the girls all get so tanned,” I sang to keep myself company. I couldn’t have chosen a song with less to do with my own life.

It was a snowy December morning in Wisconsin, where we lived in 1979, just a week or so before Christmas. School had been canceled, but my parents had already gone to work.

Mom was a loan officer, and Dad drove a snowplow. My brother, John, was off somewhere