I may have turned 50 on July 31, but it wasn't until Wednesday, when Jerry Garcia died, that I realized I'm not a teenager anymore. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead have been a constant in my life from the time I first heard them in the '60s, all the way through the '90s shows at Boston Garden, when I had the great fun of shaking hands with the band. One of the prime advantages of being elected Governor of Massachusetts is that if you want to welcome the Dead to the Garden, nobody has the nerve to say you can't. I've gotten 25 years of inspiration and pleasure from Jerry Garcia's sweet voice and sharp guitar, and it's a sad loss. Of course, Jerry Garcia and the Dead won enduring loyalty from all their fans, not just me. A member of my staff, Rose Marston, told me a story that proves their eternal appeal beyond the shadow of a doubt. She and her friends were so in love with the band that, in 1970, they painted a Dead symbol - a skull and roses - on the wall of their dorm at UMass-Amherst. She went back in 1992, and, incredibly enough, the mural was still there. Any band that can survive 22 years of college fashion - not to mention the transformation of a hippie dorm into an "intellectual" dorm - is one for the ages. I should point out that during the Summer of Love, I was not exactly a long-haired, loose-beaded hippie myself. Instead I was a law student interning at the state house, sweating in a three-piece suit and wingtips, earnestly researching something dry as dust. Still, "Truckin'," "Box of Rain," "Casey Jones" were songs that spoke to me. And they speak to my kids, too. This cross-generational appreciation confirms something that I always felt about Jerry Garcia and the Dead. Garcia might have grown out of a particular time and place, that distinctive Haight-Ashbury counterculture, but his music was universal. His songs couldn't have been more American, in the broadest and best sense. They had a great traditional sound, part country, part folk, part blues. They had intensely American subjects, starting with their feeling for nature - all those magnolias and sunflowers and rivers and birds. And then there was that other great American subject: mobility. The Dead must have done two dozen songs about trains and cars. Jerry Garcia was essentially about freedom, and in that sense, he was like Jack Kerouac and legendary beatnik Neal Cassady - a.k.a. Dean Moriarty, in Kerouac's "On The Road." Garcia's music was about this peculiarly American liberty we have to just hit the road and break the mold and find ourselves. That's why stuffy politicians and wild teenagers alike revere it. There was also something about Jerry Garcia personally that prompted affection and respect. You never got the feeling that he sold out, never did anything but the best for his fans, never tried to be what he wasn't. So much popular culture is so harsh and angry, but he was unique in the gentleness and optimism you always heard in his voice. Though he clearly wrestled some demons in his life, that sweetness was always there, even in the saddest songs. One last impression from a time I saw them at the Boston Garden - and this was the thing that made all the Dead's live shows so exiting: They began playing, and I heard a riff from Garcia and thought, ah ha, they're going to play "Bertha." Then I heard another riff out of singer-guitarist Bob Weir, and thought, no, it's going to be "Samson and Delilah." Then Garcia sent something else back. Then it occurred to me that they were having a conversation. It was 25 minutes before Garcia decided which was the perfect song to play. For 25 minutes, the suspense was almost unbearable. But you enjoyed every second of it, because you knew eventually it would all turn into something wonderful. You trusted him.