I was just starting my senior year in college, 21, didn’t know much about anything. Smart enough, though, to get tickets to a Rolling Stones show. Went up to Wisconsin, where my brother was starting in college, to catch them at an outdoor amphitheater in East Troy, the middle of nowhere.

It was September of 1989. The first Bush was just getting started in the White House. The Berlin Wall was still standing; the Soviet Union was still a thing. A month before, we’d been up in Minnesota with my grandparents.

They opened with “Start Me Up,” Keith hitting that riff, my adrenaline skyrocketing. There they were, in the flesh, the World’s Greatest Rock And Roll Band, maybe for the last time. They’d been quiet for most of the 80s, Mick and Keith fighting, doing solo albums, getting old, by rock-star standards. It was reasonable to wonder if this was a finale.

But damn they were good. They did three or four songs of the newer stuff, gave Keith a couple of lead vocals in the middle of the set, blew the roof off with Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil, Honky Tonk Women. Satisfaction closed the set; Jumpin Jack Flash was the encore. We walked out amazed, transformed. Keith is the baddest of all the asses; Mick is the best front-man in the business. Can’t take your eyes off him.

Caught them again in ‘94 in Tampa; five months later, I was a dad. Then in Wichita in ‘06 with my MHS buddy Curtis Crawford, reliving glory days. They were old, but damn they were good.

I still have the poster from that Wisconsin show, somewhere rolled up in the basement. I’m 56 now. We’re getting ready to head up to Minnesota next week, hauling the granddaughter with us.

The Republican candidate is a billionaire populist and the Democrats are the establishment, and they’re a mess, and the Soviet Union collapsed and now another Russian dictator is trying to create a new empire, and we all walk around in a stupor, staring at little screens we carry with us all the time, and it feels like the world is inside out and upside down. College-kid protesters calling the Jews Nazis.

Angie and I drove down to the Ozarks this past weekend, to an outdoor venue in the middle of nowhere, Ridgedale, Mo. We had a place to stay, and it’s the last show of their tour, and, you know, it could be the last one. We splurged, got tickets in the pit. Arrived early. Stood close enough that Angie got the pick that Ronnie Wood flicked into the crowd.

My God, they were good. Hard to take your eyes off Mick. Keith, at 80, hit that riff on Start Me Up to open, and the hair on my arms stood up. Angie teared up, astonished. There they were, in the flesh. The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band. Honky Tonk Women, the best below-the-belt rock song ever written. Sympathy; pretty sure Keith was looking right at me in that solo. Gimme Shelter, because war is just a shot away; because love is just a kiss away. Flash to close; Satisfaction for the encore.

There’s talk of a European tour next summer, maybe another album of new material. Someday, any day now, they actually will be done. A guy their age just had to give up the chase as president because he couldn’t finish sentences, couldn’t walk down stairs unassisted.

But that day is not today. Today, right here, right now, is all we’ve got, and it’s all we’ve ever got, and it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas.