Eliot Swainson

High School Friend /Houston Metropolitan Police 

Secretary

Having just moved to the big city of Houston, Texas back late in 1978 from the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan and after getting settled into the local area Alief High School, I set out to get a summer job.

     Not venturing very far I soon found myself working at a local area full service gas station.  You remember the kind, where they check under your hood and checked the air in your tires.  It was while working at this job that I met a very tall, like minded coworker named Barry Hill.  We both were hired on at the same time at this gas station. We began to learn more about each other’s lives over the coming months.

     Barry came from a very stable home life, a mother and father who were still married (even to this day) and a younger brother and sister.  He liked motorcycles and shortly after getting hired on at the station started sporting around town on an Enduro (the on road off road style bikes).  He was by family tradition an all around good Baptist kid who even played piano. Just an all around good kid.

     Being young high school kids, as is the same for kids today, we had an insatiable love for music.  At the time the biggest thing going that just drove parents bonkers was this horrific band known as KISS.  Barry and I quickly found a bond in the fact that we both liked this band despite what our parents felt about this matter. I had already started considering myself a guitar player and Barry quickly found himself purchasing a used bass guitar and amp.  His amplifier speaker box was nothing more than the cardboard box that the bass speaker came in from Radio Shack with holes cut into it to let the sound come out.  He quickly was able to teach himself enough bass cords to make some noise with me.  I think his talent and the piano playing helped him adapt very quickly. 

     We quickly got onboard the dream train of making it as the next big thing in the history of Rock and Roll. This standing around checking tires and oil under very hot engine hoods in the middle of Texas summer heat was for the birds.  This also happened to be the about the time U.S. was going at it with Iran.  So for us here at our little gas station, before we even pulled up to start our day in the early morning light we would already find what seemed like a trail of endless cars double, triple or quadruple stacked in the driveway of the gas station.  And a trail that extended out of the drive, down and around the street for what seemed like forever.  We needed out of this!!

     Barry and I basically went to the same school.  I say basically the same because it was a strange setup.  For some unknown reason to us, the school district had two high schools that were housed in the same building. The only thing separating them was an attached court yard.  I went to Hastings and Barry went to Elsik.  While I spent my time cracking jokes, being sent home from school for dressing up in full Gene Simmons makeup and costume and showing up for class dressed like that, Barry would be studying music, participating on the school swim team and joining the school newspaper as a field reporter/writer.  I think you get the jest of this relationship…. He was just an all around good kid!