Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die

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Our state putting finals were in Fort Wayne this year. On the way I passed the small town of Fairmount, so I made a stop on the way home. Fairmount, Indiana is small-town America. I’ve seen dozens of small towns quite similar to it. I used to live in one just like it. What sets it apart? Fairmount was the hometown, and is the burial place, of one James Byron Dean. James Dean was before my time. My brother was three when Dean died in a car wreck, shortly before completing the film Giant, in September 1955. But Dean came along — and, tragically, died — at “the right time” in history. Rock and roll was starting, and Dean’s disenchanted teenager portrayed in Rebel Without a Cause hit a chord with the youth in America. As a result, the past 65 years or so have seen Dean as a cultural phenomenon. Would that have happened if James Dean hadn’t died in a car wreck before two of his three movies had been released? It’s hard to say; and, of course, it would be nothing but conjecture. His popularity, however, is evident. There are -shirts that bear his image, worn by kids whose grandparents barely remember Dean. And he is as much a “hot topic” in songs as beer is in a country song! A few examples: — ”James Dean” by the Eagles, with its proclamation that Dean was “too fast to live, too young to die.” — ”Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed, which says that one of the Andy Warhol Factory characters depicted in the song “thought she was James Dean for a day.” — Headknocker” by Foreigner, where the title character “swears James Dean isn’t dead.” — Rock On” by David Essex invokes Dean’s name. — Even the country song “Do You Remember These” by the Statler Brothers reminds people that “James Dean, he was king.” I’m not the only one who’s visited his grave in Fairmount. There are — no kidding (see photo) — lipstick marks on the headstone. “Gifts” from cigarettes (smoked and unsmoked) to a pair of sunglasses were on the marker the day I visited. Fairmount is also near the hometown of Garfield creator Jim Davis, and the museum in town (which was closed on a Sunday evening by the time I arrived [this is small-town Indiana, remember]) celebrates both men. But there aren’t any signs promoting “Garfield/Jim Davis Days” in town the way there is for James Dean.